Everybody Hurts

By: Amy Marcle

We have all heard the saying “big girls don’t cry” or “tough guys don’t cry.”  Society puts a lot of pressure on us all to be strong, courageous, tough, brave, or whatever term you may choose to use.  But, understanding mental health and promoting mental health awareness means society needs to reevaluate how we pressure people to suppress their grief, their worries, their anxieties, and their addictions.  It’s not healthy to keep emotions bottled up inside of us for long periods of time.  We become pressure cookers when we practice suppressing our grief and eventually an explosion will occur.

According to a recent Google search I performed, suicides in the United States reached an all-time high in 2022, recording 49,449 people who took their own lives.  According to Google, that is a 3.1% increase from the previous year.  We all know that the pandemic and lockdown is partly responsible for depression and anxiety that could possibly be linked to some of these deaths.  However, suicide is not new to us, but we still shy away from talking about it for various reasons. 

Some of the reasons we refuse to talk about suicide is because, let’s face it, it is a disheartening topic.  Nobody wants to think that they have suicidal tendencies, nor do they want to believe someone they love has suicidal thoughts.  But I would believe we would be hard pressed to find very many individuals who have not at least had the thought cross their minds at one time or another.   Another reason we fail to openly talk about suicide is because of the lack of mental health education.  We often learn how to perform CPR if someone stops breathing.  We know how to perform the Heimlich if someone chokes. We know how to put a bandage on a cut when someone falls down.  However, the general population simply does not have the mental health support and resources to talk to someone honestly about suicide.

I feel as a society, we do not take suicide seriously because so many people joke about it. We have all at one time said things like “I’m gonna blow my brains out” or we hold a handgun symbol to our head and pull a fake trigger.  But have you ever had someone tell you they were going to kill themselves?  Have you ever had that conversation with anyone?  Because I have, and those threats, regardless of the way they are said, need to always be taken seriously. 

I’m going to give you some personal examples of how suicide threats have affected my life, starting at an early age.

When I was a kid, I remember vividly one evening when my grandmother called my father to tell him to come to their house because my grandfather had grabbed a gun and headed to the barn.  We lived less than a quarter mile from their house, and I remember us jumping in the car and going up to their house.  My grandparents were supposed to watch me that night because my parents and my older brother had to be at a school event.  When we arrived, we saw what had upset him so much.  An individual who owned land next to my grandparents had taken a backhoe and dug out the front part of their yard pushing my grandparents bank down into a gravel road that was adjacent to their front yard.  My grandfather had become so upset over someone attempting to destroy his land, he didn’t know what else to do. 

My parents and my grandmother were able to calm him down.  He noticed the fear in my eyes and apologized over and over again begging me not to be mad at him.  It was a very dramatic experience for me at such a young age.  However, I never thought any less of my grandfather for the way he felt that night.  I knew that what was bothering him was serious to him, even if it seemed silly to anyone else.  But, how different could that incident have ended had he not had family to talk to that night?  Not everyone has a family they can talk to, if you do, be thankful.

A second incident that will forever be etched in my mind involves a person who I am very close to even to this day.  To protect their identity, I will not reveal their name, but I do want to share this experience with you.  We may think that our day-to-day interactions with people do not mean very much to others.  That could not be farther from the truth.  We have an impact on everyone we meet, whether good or bad.  And it is because of this that we need to have empathic communication with people at all times. We have to remember that we never know what someone is thinking or dealing with at any moment in their lives.

In this situation, I knew exactly what the individual was facing.  Their name and reputation had been smeared in the local media after false accusations had been introduced into their lives.  All it takes these days to make someone feel different about you is to have someone plant an idea that you did something wrong, whether it is true or not, and this person had fallen into this trap.  Those of us who knew the individual were constantly reassuring this person that we stood by them and believed in them.  But we all know how rumors and whispering behind your back can get to someone.  It takes a toil on you mentally and physically because you are in a constant fight to protect your good name. 

I was totally unaware of this situation until years after the fact.  The individual of whom I am speaking had visited their attorney in a nearby town and was driving back to their home.  Fearful and overwhelmed, the person was driving alone and came to a nearby bridge where they felt as if their only solution was to run head on into the bridge, killing themselves.  However, just before impact, the person stopped and gathered themselves together and drove home, unharmed.  They later told me that the reason they did not hit that bridge that day is because they had remembered a conversation they had had with me about my future.  And they wanted to be a part of that future with me.  Thankfully, that person was able to attend the event they had envisioned that day, moments before they almost took their own life.  Relationships are important.  Had that person not remembered that others needed them in their lives, the outcome would have been different.

Every time I visit a local Wal-Mart supercenter, I think about a phone conversation I had with a former co-worker.  At that time, there was a McDonald’s in the back of the Supercenter, and I sat in the dining area on the phone trying to convince my friend that he did not need to kill himself.  He and his wife had been fighting over an addiction he had at the time.  He had relapsed and his wife was threatening to leave him.  He felt as if he had no reason to continue living.  Another co-worker of mine had called me and asked if I could talk to him, to try to talk him out of doing something he would regret.   Finding the right words to say to someone who is on the other end of the phone threatening suicide is a situation I would not wish on anyone.  I am no counselor, I could only tell him what he meant to his friends and his family, even his wife who was currently mad at him.  I reminded him of the times he had helped me by letting me talk about my eating disorder and my fear of going to rehab.  I told him that although he was currently in a bad situation, that did not make him a bad person.  Setbacks are temporary and I did not want to see him throw his life away over something everyone knew he could overcome.  Did what I say keep him from killing himself?  Probably not.  But did it help him to have a friend on the other end of the telephone line tell him he was important, most definitely.  That individual today is alive and doing well. It all could have ended differently, if he did not feel like he had people who were there for him.

Sadly, not everyone talks about suicide before they follow through with the act.  Most often, people do not announce it or make threats or suggestions about it. But, most often there are hints.  Hints go missed because we do not look for nonverbal clues or practice empathetic communication with people.  We don’t want to be a pest, so we stop asking them things like “hey, you good?” or “Do you need to talk?”  We don’t want to make a big deal out of something if someone’s mood is off, because we don’t want to look like the overreacting friend who worries too much.  But suicide is definitely something we need to take seriously.  If something seems off, it is better to be the overprotective friend than the friend who could have stopped a tragedy.

A few years ago, I learned about a former co-worker who had tragically overdosed at a young age.  He was a smart, funny, caring person, and hearing about his passing was heartbreaking to me.  We had worked together for a few years, and he had been a pivotal part of my recovery from my eating disorder. His mother was in the medical field, and he would talk with her about the issues I was having with my diabetes and my behaviors that were slowly killing me.  He got me appointments to see her, who ultimately got me an appointment that one day saved my life.  (More on this in another blog).  I often wondered after hearing of his passing what his mental state was like.  I prayed that his overdose was an accident and that he did not feel alone.  I prayed that he somehow knew how thankful I was for what he had done for me, and I wondered if there had been signs I missed about his issues because I was consumed with my own.  I’m not saying that anything would have prevented him from passing, but I just prayed he did not die feeling lonely.  It still haunts me when a Conway Twitty song comes on the radio, because he used to walk around singing “Lay Me Down” at work.  Notice the signs.  Wait, don’t just notice the signs…look for the signs.

When we began this blog, I read one of my husband’s posts discussing a day when he had a gun in his mouth ready to kill himself when a friend called him.  The friend had no idea what Jason was doing at the time.  It was literally a coincidence that he called at that moment.  I was living with Jason and had no clue that he was at a point in his life where he felt suicide was the only way out.  Why had I not noticed?  Because, we don’t want to think that it can be happening to someone we know.  But, suicide is happening to people we know.  It is happening to people we love.  Every day someone is taking their own life because they feel that is their only way out of grief, depression, or anxiety.  They feel that is the only way to not have to worry about finances or health or aging parents or grown children.  We have to do better.  We have to do better by allowing people to feel pain without shaming them for crying or being upset.  We have to do better lending a hand to someone who is overwhelmed.  Thoughts and prayers are nice, but actions are even better.  We have to act if we want to stop suicides in our country. 

All of the people I discussed in this post are strong individuals who have blessed my life in various ways.  They are strong people, good people, which goes to prove that strong people have weak moments too.  We should not judge people during their moments of weakness.  Strong people have a right to cry, to grieve, to hurt.  Nobody can be strong all the time.  Nobody. 

The Bible teaches us to bear each other’s burdens.  “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way, you will fulfill the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2    Burdens became easier to bear when we share the load.  There is not a person on this Earth who should ever feel so lonely that they take their own life.  If you need help, we want to help you.  We’ve been there, we will listen.  Or call the suicide hotline at 988.

You mean something to someone, we mean it.