For years, I would only discuss the suicide of my friend Kori with a handful of close friends.
And not even the friends who knew her, but the ones who didn’t. It just seemed easier, confiding in people who had no knowledge of the situation. Back then, I could barely deal with my own emotions — why would I want to burden myself with somebody else’s? So I sorted things out on my own, in fits and starts.
It wasn’t easy.
Talking about Kori’s death made me sad, but it also made me feel like nobody in the world could possibly understand what I was going through, unless they were going through it, too, and if they were, well, I didn’t really want to talk to them. And I resented it when people danced around the topic, or acted like some huge shameful thing had occurred. In short, there was no pleasing me — I found fault with almost every conversation I had about suicide.
Of course, there are plenty of people who would have understood what I was going through, because suicide is, unfortunately, all too common. In 2005, it was the 11th leading cause of death in the U.S., accounting for more than 30,000 deaths. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, in America a person dies by suicide every 16 minutes.
Most readers are probably aware that in recent months three Schenectady High School students have committed suicide, and several others have attempted suicide. Early on, the district maintained that any discussion of the suicides would encourage more children to think about killing themselves, but eventually switched course and sent a letter home to parents informing them of the recent deaths. I didn’t know any of the victims, but it was heartbreaking to read that they were posting messages of grief on MySpace, and that one teenager even left a suicide note there.
Suicide is a tragedy, yes, but it is preventable. There are usually warning signs — a previous suicide attempt, a strong wish to die, increased alcohol/drug use, signs of depression — but not enough people recognize these signs.
Another obvious problem is that people are reluctant to talk about suicide. As the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes, “Most people are uncomfortable with the topic of suicide. Too often, victims are blamed, and their families and friends are left stigmatized. As a result, people do not communicate openly about suicide. Thus an important public health problem is left shrouded in secrecy, which limits the amount of information available to those working to prevent suicide.”
Myths about suicide are also an issue.
Many people mistakenly believe that talking about suicide will cause someone to attempt suicide, which just isn’t true, according to the Youth Suicide Prevention Program in Washington state. “Talking about suicide does not create or increase risk; it actually reduces it,” the organization explains. “Open talk and genuine concern are a source of relief and key elements in preventing the immediate danger of suicide.”
My friend Kori died in 1996, during my sophomore year of college. She had battled depression and anorexia for years, spent time at a psychiatric hospital, and undergone several rounds of electro-shock therapy. Her letters about these experiences were candid and engaging; it was difficult to believe that the cheerful and eloquent young woman who frequently wrote to me while I was away at school was the same person who required such intense intervention. I cannot say I was surprised when she died, but I was unprepared for it, all the same.
Years later, I made a conscious decision to talk about Kori now and again. To mention her, to tell people a little bit about her. There were a couple of reasons for this. For one thing, I had grown weary of the way people talked about suicide — the myths and barely suppressed hysteria and lack of real information — and I felt that perhaps, in some small way, I could counteract that by humanizing it, by speaking about it honestly and matter-of-factly.
But I also began to talk about Kori because I didn’t want the sad facts of her death to overwhelm my larger sense of who she was as a person. She was smart and funny. She liked to fiddle with my radio when I was driving; she really enjoyed the song “Somebody to Shove,” by Soul Asylum. She preceded me as editorial page editor of the Lebanon High School Times, and was passionate about journalism, as well as politics. Why she killed herself is something I’ll never really understand.
Looking back, the one thing I really wish I’d done after Kori died is talk to a counselor. I think it would have helped. In retrospect, I think it’s safe to say that nobody should deal with the suicide of a friend or loved one the way that I did, and I’d like to think that outreach and education around the issue of suicide has improved substantially during the last decade or so.
But I get the impression that a lot of people still deal with suicide the way I did, mostly silently and alone, without enough information. And that makes me worried.
Foss Forward makes a weekly appearance in print, in The Gazette’s Saturday Lifestyles section.
