Radha Krueger
June 8, 2018
I have very complicated feelings about suicide. Celebrity deaths rarely phase me. But today has been hard.
Maybe this is another one of those things we don’t talk about and maybe you don’t need to know this. But I have to say it.
Someone close to me has talked about suicide for years. Decades. It was a certainty. “When I do it.” Not ever “if”.
There are times I check on this person often to make sure they are still alive. We’ve had more than a few conversations in hospitals where I made a case for living instead of getting discharged and going home to do the deed.
It sounds petty to say I have come to resent the constantly hovering threat of suicide. But it feels like abuse. I feel bruised after every interaction where the suicide card is played. I hold my breath, wondering if today I find out that this person finally did it.
There’s no end to the story yet. This person is still alive. I still wait daily to hear the news. I worry. I push for getting professional help. And even that brings out the suicide threat.
Everyone dies. But this is knowing there will be grief of an usual kind. I’ve had to learn how to love a person without emotionally investing deeply. Without harboring expectations of a future.
There’s no lesson here. Except that being a human is complicated. And as we get older, we spend a good deal of our energy covering up our scars to somehow pass as normal.