#worldwithoutsuicide

Dear Tyler.

by: Blake Simons..  copyright 2013

Awakened by pain, excessive agitation

Sick of the stress, suicidal thoughts are exacerbating

Mind racing, no sign of slowing down

Why is it so hard to smile, yet so easy to frown

  Tracing my thoughts, antidote to the pain that’s consuming me

Looking at the calendar, struggle is nothing new to see

9th and the 10th consciously and unconsciously brings pain

No matter the struggle, meditated mind stays sane

  Posttraumatic stress, highlighted by two days

 Brains response to stress, releases more agony

The rope around his neck, images burned with dismay

Why did he do it, I wish it all was blasphemy

  Changing what’s permanent, life’s impossible task.

Moving on with positive solidarity is all he would ask.

His mental suffering, lead him to the rope.

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day, along with the week long National Suicide Prevention Week (September 8-14), and the AFSP asked people to post why they support a world without suicide.  I lost my older brother Michael to suicide on March 27, 2002, the day before he would have turned 24.  If I had written something like this in the immediate aftermath, it would surely be different,and if I were to write this ten years from now, I know it would be different still.  In this moment, in 2013, here are my thoughts.

Why do I support a #WorldWithoutSuicide?

So that I didn't have to be that girl enjoying her senior year spring break, on the brink of her 18th birthday, awaiting the life passage that is high school graduation and double checking that my brother Michael would be home from Colorado in attendance. (After all, I did attend every band concert, scouting event and anything he ever did. Like a model little sister.  I mean, remember his graduation ceremony that my family and I drove cross-country for where he overslept and didn’t even show up?  Yeah, I was there.  I think I was due some payback in sibling duties!!) So I wasn't that girl whose whole world was ahead of her, potential and promise so large it was immeasurable and then in an instant it was shattered. Obliterated. The world is unkind. So I wasn't that girl, who was so instantly jaded, robbed of any remaining childhood innocence, cynical, and angry, oh so angry. One phone call, one sentence, sobs and screams and that was it.  That was the moment in time when my life was frozen. Frozen. It's 11 and a half years later - and some days, some minutes, I am still frozen.  So I didn't have to be that girl, so angry, how could you do this to me, Michael?? I loved you, I looked up to you more than you ever knew...and now I am forced to make myself picture my brother in hell, forced to question my shaky beliefs, so so angry at him that I actually believed, had he not chosen such a sure method, had he done a shabby job and become a survivor of a suicide attempt, I wanted to see him not in a clinic for help, but see him behind bars for committing the crime of attempted murder. In jail, in hell where you belong you selfish little bastard how could you do this to our perfect family?? And then it was the guilt, anger and guilt swaying back and forth, two unstoppable forces in my mind why did you do this to us?? Why wasn't I able to stop this?? Why can't I see you again??  It's a guilt I still bear to this day.  I am ridiculously hard on myself about everything and anything.

So I wouldn't have to be that girl reading through his journals, aware of the privacy I was invading yet so desperate for an answer to my why?? That I had to keep reading, to fill in answers in encrypted lines, to search for references to a little sister, to invent meanings to words I hadn't authored. So I didn't have to be the girl who swears off Tequila because they found alcohol in his system and an empty bottle in his room, the only thing they found in his system. When I just really needed something to blame other than myself and all I got was Tequila. So I wouldn't have to see his bloody body every time I closed my eyes to attempt sleep, the pictures my mind made up since I never actually saw his body he was miles away until the funeral with the bullet wound so perfectly stitched up. So I wouldn't be reminded of his death upon every instance of gun violence, every murder, every mass shooting, every political debate, every gun rights rally, every mention of the word gun, every gesture of a friend putting two fingers to his/her neck or temple and pulling the imaginary trigger, every time anyone had a dreary view on a petty problem and made this point with catchphrases- just shoot me now, I’d rather kill myself, I wanted to shoot myself…

So I didn't get preyed upon and scooped under the wing, so I didn't become a lost, blind puppy, a sheep, a minion, so I didn't lose my way, lose my potential, lose my relationships, lose myself. 

As selfish as my DNA and my birth order and my life experiences have made me, it’s not all about me.  It’s about my loved ones also…

So my mother never has to live another second of another minute of another day thinking she's to blame or that she ever failed as a mother, her most basic inherent function.

So my father never has to grieve the loss of his baby boy, never has to feel the guilt and shame associated with this sickness and this cause of death.

So that my big brother never has to know the pain of losing his only brother, his counterpart in the family tree.

So that my big sister never has to feel this crushing blow, her baby brother, her confidant, her friend.

So that my grandmother doesn't have to spend old age outliving another family member.

So that my aunts and uncles and cousins don't have to see him as a memory.

So we don’t have to think twice when answering the simple questions, “How many kids do you have?  How many siblings do you have?”