Five years ago, in a Freshman Psychology course that I was attending, a question was posed to the class:
“Why is it so hard for us to forgive people that commit suicide?”
Of course, many thoughts were volunteered, but no one could really touch the heart of the issue. Yes, we all agreed that the act in and of itself was selfish…but why? Because they could have reached out to us, confided in us? Was it because they refused to see anything but the one way out? Or because it was not their decision to make, but the One that had created them—was it an example of human ego?
None of the answers seemed to satisfy. They all fell short of the goal. People are selfish every day, for every reason, but we have no problem overlooking forgiving those blunders. We cannot deny that on occasion, even we ourselves are guilty of being self-centered.
Five years this question has haunted me. I needed to know, I needed to find the key. Why, I didn’t know, but after all this time mulling it over in my head, I think I have finally unearthed a theory.
When a person commits suicide, they are very publically announcing that whatever has happened to them in their life is something so heinous it is unable to be overcome. Their sadness, depression, helplessness, hopelessness is so severe that the only way to escape it is through death. Those left behind can only wonder, “What was so bad that they could see no other way out?”
Every one of us has had tragedy happen to us. Something so heartbreaking, soul-crushing that we feel we may never recover. Things happen in our lives that knock us flat on our asses, and we plain and simple just do NOT want to get back up again. We want to call it quits, give in, let the emotions overtake us. Though we may not consider killing ourselves, the thought that we want “out” passes through our minds. It’s the same realization you have when you experience the worst pain of your life. Emotional distress causes very real hurt, and sometimes it feels like you might very well die from the agony. Surely no one human can endure this much anguish and survive.
I believe that when someone we know takes their own life, we secretly view it as a dismissal all of those moments that have so scarred us.
Now, I am not saying they are doing it intentionally. It is likely they have not even considered us before committing (or attempting to commit) suicide. But it is hard for us to swallow—if I had to crawl my way back from the brink….why couldn’t they? Is what happened to them, how they were feeling, so very much worse than what I have experienced? And it hurts. It honestly, good ol’ fashioned HURTS, that they have given us another scar to bear, another burden to carry.
After the disbelief and the wondering have passed, all we are left with is the anger. How could they have possibly known how we feel? How could they have, when they were only thinking of themselves? That’s when we decide they were selfish when they acted so rashly. That’s the hurt that we have trouble letting go of. Death is hard to cope with in the first place, but suicide feels like a very insult to everyone left behind. They seem to be saying, “You will never know pain like I have.”
But the truth of the matter is: suffering is the human experience. We all have those moments—if you haven’t, you will…the only difference between “them” and us is that we keep on fighting long after they have given up.
