In the six weeks since Father’s Day, three friends of mine have died. All were men. They were aged 48, 57, and 59 – my approximate peers. Two of the three are confirmed suicides, while the most recent death (which I only learned about yesterday) is presumed to be suicide as well.
Each of these men was, like me, divorced. Each was facing financial difficulty, and two of the three were fathers.
These things come in clusters, for an obvious reason: the choices of others open up possibilities for us, particularly when we fall into the same demographic as the person who has made that particular choice. A friend takes up running and raves about it, so you do the same. The cousin you grew up alongside leaves her unhappy marriage, and you realize you can also abandon your stale and bitter relationship. Men who face the same battles you face, and like you, have struggled to endure that long slow slide into invisibility and irrelevance? They punch out, and you wonder if you have a pass to follow.
(Part of what follows is lifted from a Substack I wrote in December 2021. But for my own sake as well as my readers who reel after suicide, I share it again.)
It’s been nearly 40 years since I first learned one of the most basic truths about our mental health system: the fastest way to get seen is to say you’re about to commit suicide.
This makes sense. All medical care rests on the principle of triage – the idea that the sickest and most vulnerable patients should get care first. You treat a gunshot wound before you treat a broken wrist and so forth. In psychiatric medicine, the fastest way to get to the front of the queue – and more often, the ONLY way to get any kind of medical attention – is to either be (or claim to be) actively suicidal.
You say: I’m filled with despair, anxiety, and self-hatred
“Are you having thoughts of suicide?”
Constantly.
“Do you have a plan? Do you intend to kill yourself in the very near future?”
I have a plan, but no, I don’t have permission to die. As bad as things are, I will not kill myself. No matter what.
“Okay, that’s great. Keep reminding yourself of that! Go, you! Remember people love you! Oh, and I think we can arrange to have someone call you back within the month. Is that okay?”
Plenty of battered veterans of the mental health system will recognize this exchange.
You won’t die from a broken wrist, but you still need treatment.
Since I was first hospitalized at 19, my mental breakdowns have unnerved and terrified my family. I have genuinely attempted suicide three times, made ineffectual (if bloody and dramatic) suicidal gestures at least a dozen times, and been placed on temporary psych holds many other times because I was unable to promise I wouldn’t try to kill myself.
Several years ago, I spent a week reading every study I could find on the adult children of fathers who had killed themselves. I was looking, of course, for reassurance that if I did do this thing, my children might still thrive. I was looking for stories of adaptability and resilience, for tales of well-adjusted adults who had easily come to terms with an early and traumatic loss.
As you might suspect, that’s not what I found. I did read essays by adult children of suicidal dads, and though some clearly had found happiness, the pain invariably endured. I read that the risk of suicide increased exponentially among the survivors of a parent’s self-chosen death.
I messaged a friend I knew whose dad had hanged himself when she was in high school. She was the one who gave me the phrase that has become my mantra. “You don’t have permission.”
I want to choose my words carefully here, as I know that some of my readers have lost loved ones to suicide. What I say is not a judgment of their choices nor a condemnation of their character.
I find the idea of not having permission to be immensely helpful. It’s not that I’m a naturally rule-abiding sort; my life is filled with ample evidence to the contrary. It’s that in the end, our autonomy is constrained only by love. Obligation comes from the Latin verb ligare, meaning to bind. Love is a tie that binds, as the old hymn reminds us. Generally, it binds us from not doing what we would do if we were not so well-loved. We stay faithful rather than cheat, we go to work when we’d rather sleep in because our children need to eat, we keep showing up for this life even when we’re in complete despair. We are bound by the thought of what would happen to those we love were we to loosen the knot and slip ourselves free.
I’ve seen what infidelity, divorce, mental illness, poverty, and public humiliation can do to children. My friends who’ve lived through the loss of a parent to suicide promise me that that particular pain is a thousand times worse than anything I have inflicted so far.
One of the most powerful recent country tracks on the subject is Vincent Neil Emerson’s Learning to Drown.
I'm barely a man and livin' hard
My father killed himself
And my mother hit the bar
Well, ain't it funny?
Ain't it funny how
The world'll set you free?
I spent my whole life wonderin' why I'm down
I don't feel easy if the blues don't come around
And my face don't look right without a frown
Well, if you can't swim, you better learn to drown
Emerson’s father really did commit suicide.
When the narrator of the song says he’s been set free, he makes it clear he’s adrift — barely surviving, wondering with bemused detachment when and how his own end will come. What loosened the bond and put him at such reckless liberty? His dad’s decision. I think of my own children and imagine what pain I would permission in Heloise and David if I gave myself the freedom to opt out.
Amanda Shires, a Texan like Emerson, takes up the same theme from a different angle: the wife and mother insisting that even if living seems pointless and wretched, what you want to be an option can’t be:
Between you and the kids
I’ve been lifting and cleaning
Feeding and bending for over 20 years now
We might be standing here
Looking at the end of our world
But there’s beauty in knowing
The closure you owe to your girls
And you don’t get to go
Out your own way
You don’t get to choose
So just spare me
I get a great deal of solace and resolve from country music!
In that famous soliloquy, the very young, self-absorbed, and very childless Hamlet debates suicide, and comes to the conclusion that the unknown beyond the grave — that “dread of something after death” is too scary. “Conscience makes cowards of us all,” says the Danish prince, but he who is not a parent might have different fears than they who have children. My great fear is not the life to come -- mine is the horror of simply shifting my own immense pain onto my children, my family and my friends. A gentleman doesn’t lighten his burden at others’ expense. For someone who prides himself too much on his manners, that would be a disgraceful show.
It is dangerous to tell someone you’re staying with them out of obligation. No one wants to be married to someone, say, who doesn’t enjoy the union at all, but feels compelled to honor a promise made long ago. I go back and forth on whether suicide is different. Part of me desperately wants acknowledgement that simply staying alive is frequently such grueling, tedious, stupendously numbing, exhausting work!
The act of not only not dying, but actively showing up in spite of wanting to die, feels as if it should be regarded at least as vaguely heroic, if only because it feels so immensely difficult. On the other hand, your loved ones would prefer not to be saddled with a guilt trip; they’d so much rather you not only were willing to stay, but actively enjoyed your staying. Giving someone praise and recognition for not killing themselves is a bit like complimenting your wife for just barely restraining herself from banging the hot pool boy who caught her eye. Shouldn’t promise-keeping just be a given? How needy and frail must one be to want constant praise solely for not hanging oneself? Better to neither ask nor expect.
And yet, it is still very hard to stay, even if I very much love the people who constitute my reasons for remaining.
Years ago, my therapist asked me ,“If you did have permission, would you go?” And I said that I would, but only if I could trust that the permission was granted with warmth and enthusiasm, not regret or grief or resignation. “That’s a tall order,” Danielle commented, and I agreed it was so. The ties remain, and I stay, and I will make the best of my staying, even if it is not always what I would have chosen.
In the absence of the freedom to do what I want most, I will make the joyful best of what I am permitted. Happiness is a discipline, not just a feeling. Especially when it’s hard, as it is most of the time, I owe my children, my friends, and my family not only my staying, but at least the outer performance of good cheer at doing so. Experience tells me that if I stick around, unexpected joys will arrive like bolts from the proverbial blue, and at least for a while, the suicidal ideation will retreat, replaced for a moment by sunlit gratitude and something approaching contentment.
That has to be good enough. I stay, and when I leave, it will not be on my terms, nor at a moment of my choosing.
And for my friends and brothers K, R, and G – may you be at eternal peace, perhaps welcomed home by the ancestors: safe in their embrace; understood; seen; absolved.
If you don't know it, have a look at Jennifer Michael Hecht's book, _Stay_. It's a really fascinating survey of religious and ethical arguments against suicide drawn from multiple cultures and eras. The book grew from a viral blog post in 2010, which is a lot more personal and raw. Here's the key quote from the post: "I’m issuing a rule. You are not allowed to kill yourself. You are going to like this, stay with me. When a person kills himself, he does wrenching damage to the community. One of the best predictors of suicide is knowing a suicide. That means that every suicide is also a delayed homicide. You have to stay." I find it really helpful to come back to her writing every so often as a way of reminding myself that, yeah, that particular exit is going to have to stay closed for me, despite whatever despair, self-loathing, and madness.
One thing that strikes me in your piece is that there's a kind of undertone of gendered shame. (You have no idea who I am, but I've followed your online career for a long time, and I'm aware that gendered shame is something you've had occasion to reflect on.) There's talk about disgrace, heroes, and gentlemen.
A message I've picked up my whole life is that a real man doesn't buckle under the weight of day-to-day existence; he just does what needs to be done. If he's suffering, he damn well doesn't bitch about it. That creates a pretty deadly vicious cycle sometimes, as follows: I feel shame. Then I feel so much shame that I start thinking about offing myself. Then I talk about my suicidality, which exposes me to more shame. Or I shut up and fake it, which isolates me and breeds more shame.
Stay (book): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300209363
Jennifer Michael Hecht's post: https://thebestamericanpoetry.typepad.com/the_best_american_poetry/2010/01/on-suicide-by-jennifer-michael-hecht.html
In my journey over the past several years, I’ve come across the work of Dr. Kelly Posner from Columbia University where she has developed an effective tool she affectionately calls “the Columbia” that allows mere mortals to assess and help anyone with desires to hurt themselves. It’s worth learning about. I often carry the Columbia questions with me in the chance that I might be that someone that signals they care enough to not give permission. https://cssrs.columbia.edu/the-columbia-scale-c-ssrs/about-the-scale/