Did you ever know someone who took their own life? Given that someone in England and Wales takes their own life every two hours, there’s a fair chance you will have. When it emerged some years ago, that people who were most likely to kill themselves were young men, I was not surprised. I have been losing friends and acquaintances for a very long time.
Whilst I knew people who were suicidal – and still do, actually – I never quite got that far myself. The thought was there from time to time and even as recently as the Christmas past, I checked the Samaritans phone number just to be on the same side. My desire to live was never worse than equal to a desire to be dead. I always managed to keep the right side of the line. Not everyone was so lucky.
I’ve been to a few funerals – three, I think – of friends who killed themselves by hanging. Two of them I knew suffered from shocking demons which often came out in the things they said and did, in a reckless, couldn’t-give-a-fuck kind of way. One came out of a clear blue sky. Of course, they were all tough to deal with, particularly to his immediate family, but the ‘clear blue sky’ suicide shocked me like nothing had ever shocked me before.
I will give no clues about the latter in this blog because, quite frankly, you never know who might be reading. However, I can say that when I got the call, I didn’t know what to think. The momentary thought that this might be a prank passed in a millisecond. Then, the how, why, where thoughts began. And why didn’t I spot that something was wrong? Was I so up my own arse that I forgot to care about everyone else? Then, I stopped the self-pity, which was my first reaction, and thought about him and his family.
Decades on and we are still none the wiser. He died with his demons undiscovered. Death had come as no accident, no experiment gone wrong. The happy, carefree life must have been anything but, yet we never knew. We never will. And there are many deaths like that every year.
How bad things must be if you want to end it all? There are days when I do want to get up but I usually manage and my solitude is usually chosen, not enforced. Even this week, I have managed a slight dip by locking myself away as best I can without reverting to my previous hermit-like status. I never looked for a rope. I was never desperate nor, may I say, brave enough to do that.
What does it say about our society what we tolerate so many awful things? I am as guilty as the next man and woman. Why is it that mental health remains the Cinderella medical condition of our time, one that we cannot and must not talk about and certainly not regard as equal to physical illness? The politicians lie when they say they care about the suicide rate because if they did care, they would act quickly to alleviate and end it. It is one of the reasons I have begun to despise politicians as much as everyone else does. Aside from the wonderful campaigners Luciana Berger MP, despite the appalling abuse she gets for being a Jew, and Norman Lamb MP, I see a parliament devoid of sympathy and empathy. It’s almost as if the rest are saying “Let them die!”
So, today there could be 12 suicides, with Christ alone knows how many lives wrecked as a result, and still society looks the other way. Instead, our eyes are diverted to the every day trivia our media highlights and the rest of us lap up.
How many suicides are too many? How about one?
