I was previously unaware that Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016) had committed suicide because the pain of her fibromyalgia had become unbearable. Please click the Fishy banner to find out more about Jane's story.
We will never learn how to reduce the rate of suicide if it is a stigmatized, taboo subject. If people are afraid or ashamed to discuss suicide ideation, then their struggles will remain internalized. The ways that suicide ideation and attempted suicide are currently handled are ineffective and the unthinking and unfeeling diatribe that the surviving family members of a person who committed suicide are subject to are simply shameful.
Any time a celebrity commits suicide, there's always someone sanctimoniously spouting about how "selfish" this person was, and I want to take them aside and shake them and shout: "Hello, you insensitive twit! Did it never occur to you in your moment of self-righteousness to realize that anyone listening to you could have a loved one who took their own life? How dare you be so thoughtless!"
When I was in high school, I had a friend whose brother had committed suicide when she was eight years old. She said that people would come up to her on the playground and tell her that her brother was in hell for what he'd done. I say there ought to be a special spit in hell reserved for mealy-mouthed marshmallows who make such unkind assertions.
I leave you now with this banner that I use as my Facebook avatar anytime a celebrity takes their own life because I just know that the ignorant spoutings are going to elevate at such times.
I'm not much for the whole "content warnings on everything" culture, but to avoid that blasted criticism, I will tell you that what I'm writing here is not going to be pretty, so if you feel like you might be upset by discussions of topics such as suicide and suicide ideation, you can give this post a miss.
I have an online friend whose name is Richard. Richard has autism. At one point, he wrote a post which said he hears people say all the time that they support people with autism and would never bully or hurt anyone who is autistic. He followed this up with the statement that a lot of these people are probably unaware of the times when they have been interacting with someone who was autistic and decided that it was okay to bully or belittle that person because that person was "just weird."
I cannot write a first-hand account of what it means to be misjudged and treated poorly as a person with autism, because I don't have autism. My son does. However, members of my extended family like to tell me that he doesn't, because he's high-functioning. He doesn't show signs of being overstimulated when he's in public. In their words, he's "just shy," he "just needs to come out of his shell," he "just needs to put himself out there." "He's intelligent, it's about damn time he went back to school/found a job." "You baby him too much."
If I don't listen to what my son is saying and ignore the fact that he's becoming overstimulated, he shuts down on me and it's hard for me to open communication with him again.
My son went to a school where people were taught to be understanding and accepting of one another's differences. My friend Richard wasn't so lucky. A lot of people are not.
A whole lot of years ago, I learned about a very unusual fellow by the name of Per Ohlin. If he were still alive, he would be 50 years old now. However, he died from a self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head when he was 22 years old.
There is a lot of misinformation about this unfortunate soul floating around. After reading a fair bit about him from people who actually knew him, such as his brother and the few real friends he had, I believe that he may have been autistic. Per's brother said that Per would become hyper-focused on whatever task he was working on and get very upset at being interrupted from what he was doing. Although highly intelligent, he performed very poorly in school.
Per's classmates in his early years accepted his idiosyncratic behaviors. However, when he was twelve, his parents divorced and he ended up going to a new school. His new classmates not only bullied him mercilessly, but they also ganged up on him and beat him so badly that he ended up being declared clinically dead. There was evidence after this beating of brain damage. None of the individuals involved were ever punished.
Per experienced high degrees of suicide ideation and engaged in self-harm. In his case, the suicide ideation ended up being completed. I am not sure that anything could have been done to save this tragic soul.
However, people can prevent the likelihood of further such occurrences by educating themselves about neurological and psychological differences and by attempting to be a bit kinder to those who present with unusual personalities.
I do not have autism. I am not normal neurologically, which expresses itself in problems with balance as well as varying degrees of difficulty walking. I had a small stroke in early 2017, which is likely the culprit in this case.
What I do have is something I refer to as a trifecta of fuckery or a hot trifecta of mess. This is the Universe's Asshat Trick and it involves rapid-cycling type 2 bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Even though there are all too many people who love to use the term "bipolar" to mean "moody," and I do call people out when they do that and advise them to educate their ignorant selves and not use people's health conditions as insults, I'm going to talk about borderline personality disorder, because it is even more misunderstood than bipolar disorder.
I do not write anything that is normal because I am not normal. I use a lot of metaphors, and my characters are extremely fucked up. I am getting to the point with this, so bear with me. It's a bit difficult to put it out there.
The risky behavior has been toned down for many years. I can't drink alcohol and I don't do illegal drugs. I don't even like the way most drugs make me feel. I don't have any kind of sex, let alone unsafe sex, and I don't want to. Most of the time I am able to resist inflicting self-injury, but not always. I tend to keep my behaviors in check, but there are still things that bleed to the surface.
Having been treated poorly by people who claimed they loved me is something that has led to a strong inability to trust. I generally only form very superficial relationships with people because I don't want to get attached to them, even on a platonic level. I do not have strong bonds even with most of my family members. This is not because I am incapable of feeling. It is because I am capable of feeling too deeply.
When I have written about the consuming love/obsession I have felt in the past, there have been people who have expounded that this is the only way to love, and I am rather horrified. I honestly don't think that obsessive love is healthy. I have scars on my arms that will never go away because of an obsessive love for awful men who treated me like a used condom. I'm glad if you liked the poem, but, yanno, it wasn't meant to be a "how-to" guide. It was really more of a warning.
I had a person comment on a character in one of my stories, asking if the character was a "teenager," and, to be honest, I was a bit insulted by that insinuation. The character was an adult in his mid-twenties. Being insecure is not only the hallmark of teenagers. There are some teenagers who are quite self-assured (I can assure you that I was not one of them) and some adults who are extremely insecure. These feelings of insecurity are magnified many times over in a person who has a condition such as borderline personality disorder.
I personally don't "do" romance because I don't like having my every thought consumed by the fear that I am going to be abandoned, which is what happens when I do romance. I sure as hell don't do casual sex, because I don't like it. Since I really don't like sex much in the first place and would only engage in such an activity with someone I trusted, why the hell would I want to do it casually?
I am far from being a teenager, but borderline personality disorder ensures that I will be one of the most insecure and least trusting people I know until the day I die. It also means that I have a high degree of self-loathing.
Writing is two things to me. First of all, it's catharsis. Second, I really don't know how to do anything else.
I'm not sure if I'm a "good" writer, a "bad" writer, or something in between. I write a bunch of shit. If you like it, great. If you don't like it, whatever. I'm probably not going to stop doing it, even if the occasional bad review makes me hate myself for a few days and I might end up with some cuts or bruises.
A lot of writing critics are looking for formulaic writing, for a type of "normal." I learned this while applying for ghostwriting jobs. I don't do formulaic writing, and I'm not normal. My brain doesn't work normally.
I often compare the way my brain works to the famous images of webs created by spiders on various types of drugs.
I say that my thoughts work a lot like the spiderwebs in the top row. They look normal at first glance, but on closer look, they are not. I can "pass for normal" enough that people who meet me in public don't notice anything particularly unusual about me. But I am actually quite fragile in spite of being rather a hulking figure physically.
So, I write the shit that I write and in the end, it will all amount to nothing. I will very likely die destitute and unwell. When I was young, I had myself fooled that I had something to offer the world. I no longer believe this is true. At this point, I'm just doing the shit that I do, and you can come along for the ride or not. It doesn't really matter that much to me one way or the other.
~Cie~
The ultimate borderline personality disorder anthem
Suicidal Tendencies - Nobody Hears
Lyrics
I talk through my eyes, the words pourin' down
Nobody hears
You ask me what's wrong, but what can I say
Nobody hears
I try to tell you
I try to show you
How else can I tell you?
How else can I show you?
I'm screaming inside, why can't you hear?
Nobody hears
You're looking right though me like I'm not here
Nobody hears
When the last tear falls down
Nothing gets washed away
Another plea put to rest
As nobody hears, nobody hears
So what did I do to you
That makes you run from me?
Now I'm sitting here screaming inside myself
Don't understand why nobody hears
You figured it and shaped it to your perfection
Nobody hears
Subtracted my feelings from this equation
Nobody hears
Is it all in my mind?
All in my mind
Then it would be easy to find
Easy to find
When the last tear falls down
Nothing gets washed away
Another plea put to rest
As nobody hears, nobody hears
So what did I do to you
That makes you run from me?
Now I'm sitting here screaming inside myself
Don't understand why nobody hears
So if it's all
If it's all in my mind
Then wouldn't it, wouldn't it
Wouldn't it be so easy to find?
When the last tear falls down
Nothing gets washed away
Another plea put to rest
As nobody hears, nobody hears
So what do I have to do
To make you comfort me?
Now I'm sitting here screaming inside myself
Don't understand why nobody hears
So I'm sitting here screaming inside myself
Well I'm sitting here crying inside myself
So I'm sitting here screaming to nobody else
Don't understand why nobody hears
And nobody nears, nobody hears, nobody hears, nobody hears
The Hokku (Haiku) stanza of this Tan Renga was written by Akutagawa Ryunosuke a.k.a. Gaki (1 March 1892 – 24 July 1927, death by overdose of Veronal.) The Ageku or closing stanza was written by me.
One of the things I treasure about this type of poetry is the way it makes a mundane item or creature such as a sardine beautiful and precious. Some people mock minimalist forms such as Haiku/Senryu or Tanka/Tan Renga, but I find that they have a meditative quality.
My monkey mind is far too chatty and jumpy for me to meditate very well using traditional meditation methods. Either my mind wanders off track and I get bored and antsy, or if I do manage to relax, I fall asleep.
This type of poetry allows me to meditate. I find that engaging in the Tan Renga challenge has made me calmer overall and given me an eye of the storm to escape to although my life is very chaotic. I am extremely grateful for this gift.
I am aware that the go-to when one believes that someone is suicidal is to tell them to go to the emergency room or tell them to call the suicide line.
Please don't tell me to do either of those things.
I have lived with suicide ideation for as long as I can remember.
If I went to the emergency room every time I felt suicidal, I'd have to live there.
If I may be so bold, fuck that shit.
I'm afraid that in my experience, suicide hotlines are, well, not that helpful, if I'm to be blunt. I had one asshole who laughed at my distress. I had one kind but not at all helpful fellow who wished me luck. So, that has been my experience with suicide hotlines.
Suicide ideation is in a different class than someone threatening suicide, particularly if they have the means and a specific plan to complete the act.
A person may have a high degree of suicide ideation but a low level of planning, which tends to be my case when my suicide ideation flares up.
A person like me is not likely to telegraph it if they are actually going to commit suicide. If I were to commit suicide, no-one would know until after the fact. Thus, telling someone like me to go to the emergency room if I say I wish I was dead isn't going to accomplish anything except for wasting my time. With someone like me, it works much better to ask what's going on to make me feel that way. I might say that I'm on a downswing, or it might be something more concrete. But asking why I'm feeling as I am will make me feel as if you care rather than causing me to make a mental note to myself that here is yet one more person I can't tell anything because they just don't fucking get it.
It is a fact that people who experience suicide ideation are more likely to complete suicide than people who do not experience suicide ideation. It also is a fact that people who experience suicide ideation over the long term tend to have mood disorders such as major depression or bipolar disorder. A lot of us do not respond well (or at all) to the "magic medications." For people living with a chronic mental illness, it tends to be unhelpful and demeaning to suggest that we "try meds" or "seek counseling." Many of us have had bad experiences with "mental health professionals" and will avoid them like a bad case of athlete's foot.
If I could find a therapist who did cognitive behavioral therapy and whose services were covered by Medicaid, I might consider it. Such beasts, however, are rare as the proverbial hen's teeth. I find artistic pursuits to be a far more soothing balm than spilling my guts to someone who a) probably doesn't give a fuck, and b) will frustrate me by just not fucking getting it. I can find someone who fills those criteria by walking out onto any street corner and yelling "hey, come talk to me!"
TRIGGER WARNING FOR MENTION OF WEIGHT LOSS, SUICIDE
I recently unfriended someone that I had been online friends with for 12 years. I encountered him through blogging and a mutual love of the horror genre. He was the coolest guy until his life became all about weight loss. Then the cracks started to show.
I tried to give him a break, even though I found him becoming more and more confrontational. He wasn't friendly anymore, but I hoped maybe the characteristics that made me like him in the first place would resurface.
I never could be his weight loss cheerleader, and he seemed to resent that. He was always posting pictures of himself next to a pair of his old trousers, announcing how much weight he'd lost, and want people to stroke his ego.
The only comment I ever made on one of his weight loss pictures was that I thought he was a cool guy regardless of what size he was. He went off on a tangent about how much better he felt and looked and so on. I tried to be sympathetic because I knew he'd gone this route because he'd been bullied, and I didn't blame him.
The straw that broke the camel's back was actually not about weight loss. I was doing my thing, trying to raise awareness and end stigma where suicide is concerned. He wrote this long comment about how he didn't feel sympathy for people who committed suicide, he felt sympathy for the people they left behind. He felt that people who commit suicide are weak and cowardly, and then he went on a tangent about how he had been bullied and molested but he forgave his abuser and he never committed suicide, so why could these people not do the same and realize that whatever higher power they believe in has put them here for a purpose.
And then he went on about how he has lost 368 pounds and his health is sooo much better (except it really isn't, he still has the same underlying issues, he's just thinner so he doesn't get the same ration of shit from the doctor anymore.) I had to hold back from saying "ah yes, your weight loss. Great. What do you want, a cookie? Oh, I'm sorry, that's probably not on your diet. So, I'll eat it for you."
I said that I was sorry that he had endured such a hard life and it was good that he was able to overcome his adversities, but everyone is not wired the same and I was distressed that he seemed so unable to muster any sort of sympathy for people who were unable to go on. I said that I did not feel that my cousin was a weak person for committing suicide after many years of fighting severe depression with no relief. I said that some people are better able to withstand adversity than others, for a variety of reasons. I then said that maybe he was somehow superior because he had come through adversity without attempting suicide, but that doesn't mean that people who aren't able to do so are lesser.
Initially, I didn't unfriend him, but then I realized that I always dreaded interacting with him since he began his "weight loss journey." After about an hour of deliberating (okay, wrestling with myself) I made the decision to cut ties with him. I told him that I felt no animosity towards him but I couldn't be friends with someone who could not muster the least bit of sympathy for people whose despair led them to a desperate act.
I opened up about a gruesome suicide scene which was burned in my mind and gave me years of PTSD. I said I never hated the person who caused this memory. He was autistic, had brain damage from an incident where he was so severely beaten by his bullies that he nearly died, and had other serious mental health issues, including severe depression. This guy fought on as long and as hard as he could, but eventually, he couldn't anymore. I was angry at him for a time, yes. But I never for even a minute thought that he was weak or selfish or cowardly.
I've lost several people to suicide. I'm willing to realize that people are ignorant about this issue and to educate them, but when you express that much vehemence towards a person who was obviously in a great deal of psychological pain, there is too much of an empathy deficit, and I can't maintain a friendship with people who hold such beliefs.
I just made something of a difficult decision to unfriend someone who has been an online friend for about 12 years. I didn't block this person, I don't hate them, but I really can't be friends with someone who expresses harsh opinions of people who commit suicide and is not willing to attempt to have sympathy for those who have made this desperate decision.
Trigger warning for discussion of suicide and severe trauma
Not everyone is wired exactly the same way. Some people naturally bear up under adversity better than others. Those who can't manage to get through are not bad people.
One of the experiences which caused me PTSD for years was the sight of a young autistic and severely mentally ill man with brain damage who could no longer continue the struggle and who blew the front of his forehead off with a shotgun.
For years not a day went by that I didn't see that image in my mind. I never hated him for it. Most people had no idea the struggles this guy went through. The day came that he couldn't do it anymore.
I had to "flatten" the image and desensitize it so I would stop thinking of it all the time. It's the same thing I had to do with the last time I saw my father. He was a shell of his former self, lying in the bed in the hospice, not breathing and not moving. I was very stoic and didn't cry. I knew I would never see him again in this life when I left the room, but I had to leave. I was a zombie. I dreamed of that image of him and I didn't want to remember him that way, so I had to flatten the image in my mind.
When a person commits suicide, it causes trauma to those left behind. It's fair to be mad at the person. It's not fair to say they were weak or selfish or a coward.
Also, not everyone responds to the "magic pills" in the same way. Some people do very well with antidepressants, but not everyone is wired the same. My son had no response to them at all. For me, they made me manic and psychotic. I had a cousin who tried many medications and didn't respond to any of them. She ended up committing suicide. She was not weak, selfish, or a coward. She was at the end of the line and couldn't go on another day. What she did does not make her a bad person.
There is this tendency to believe that people who live with mood disorders aren't "trying hard enough." In fact, few people try harder to overcome their "stinkin' thinkin'" than people with mood disorders. If it was easy to break out of depression, nobody would be depressed. Who the fuck WANTS to be depressed?
Happy people are not "better" than people who are unable to be happy. I can count on one hand the times I've truly felt happy. I've been giddy, which is not the same as being happy. There is a peace that comes with actual happiness. Giddiness is a form of mania.
My baseline is moderately depressed. Over the past few years, I've realized that doesn't make me a lesser person than someone who is always happy. It is highly unlikely that I will ever become a person who isn't always at least a bit sad. This realization has lessened the suicide ideation to a degree, but the suicide ideation will also always be there. I don't need to "heal" and become a "bright light" to be worthy of respect and good treatment. If you believe in a higher power, maybe us "dark" sorts serve a purpose just as much as the social butterflies. Introspective people have a tendency to be both observant and empathic. That's hardly a bad thing.
If I commit suicide, it probably won't be because of my mood disorder. I can't say I'm friends with my mood disorder, but we've reached an understanding. I won't continually try to eradicate it, and it will quit trying to kill me.
No, if I commit suicide it will be because I am either in an intolerable state of physical pain or because I have developed dementia. If that happens, I will not tell anyone before I do it, I will just do it. No-one will know until after the fact.
I would never say that someone who committed suicide for this (or any other) reason is "weak," "selfish," or a "coward.
If you're a person who can continue on in spite of adversity, great. Maybe that makes you a "better person" in some ways. But it doesn't make people who can't bad people who should be treated with disdain.
A little empathy is in order. Maybe if you can't muster any, you should be questioning why your beliefs about people who are suffering are so harsh.
The tragic tale of Per Yngve Ohlin, vocalist for the Swedish death metal band Morbid and the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem, evokes strong emotional responses. Per suffered from severe psychological disturbances. Reading about him in the chapters translated into English from Blod Eld Död, I have the feeling that he may have been autistic. He would become greatly upset if disturbed while performing a task. Despite his intelligence, evidenced in his thoughtful and provocative song lyrics and his clever though disturbing artwork, he did poorly in school.
After Per’s parents divorced, he changed schools. His previous classmates were used to his unusual behavior and were generally tolerant of him. His new schoolmates bullied him, and, on one occasion, beat him so severely that he ended up clinically dead. Following this event, he became obsessed with death and referred to himself as not being alive. The head trauma he incurred from the assault may have caused him to develop Cotard Syndrome, a rare condition in which a person believes their body is dead.
Although he has been gone from this world for twenty-seven years, Per continues to be exploited, both by those who insist on seeing him as some sort of icon for evil and those who look only at his physical appearance without seeing the very troubled human being behind the flowing blond hair and the striking, angular face.
Per was obsessed with occult imagery, but he wasn’t truly evil. He was angry at a world which had caused him grievous harm. Many of those who attacked him probably identified as “good Christians.” It’s no wonder that he wanted to be the opposite of his attackers or that he dreamed of being able to exact revenge against those who injured him.
As for the idea of Per being some sort of sex god, there is no evidence that he was ever sexually involved with anyone or that he even had any interest in sex. There have been fantasies written about him by a certain contingent of horny female fans, usually postulating him as some sort of vampire king or demon lord. I wish I could say these fictions were worthy of their subject. Most of them are poorly written and I wouldn’t feel right about quoting the explicit and ludicrous scenarios postulated therein.
Worst of all, there are still people who see fit to share the actual, post-suicide image photographed by Per’s former bandmate, Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth. My opinions of Aarseth are not exactly favorable, but I became somewhat more sympathetic to him after viewing interviews with his former bandmates and schoolmates, Kjetil Manheim and Jorn “Necrobutcher” Stubberud.
Regardless of my personal opinions of Euronymous, photographing the corpse of your housemate, even if you weren’t particularly kindly disposed to him, is unconscionable. As the surviving members of Morbid said on the liner of their 2011 release, The Year of the Goat, “No thanks to the distributors and buyers of the post-mortem pic. Fuck you.”
There's no doubt that Chris Cornell was a very attractive man.
It's fine to acknowledge that.
It is not fine to behave as if his physical appearance was the only thing about him that mattered.
It is not fine to say lewd and lurid things about any person, but it is particularly distasteful when that person struggled with mental illness and ended up taking their own life.
Making anyone into a sex object is shallow and demeaning, and when the "object" is as talented and personable as Chris was, it's patently ridiculous.
Chris was born July 20, 1964. He committed suicide by hanging himself on May 18, 2017. He was 52 years old.
Chris is probably best known for his work with Soundgarden and Audioslave. He was also involved with numerous other side projects and collaborations.
Chris was a compassionate person. He and his wife Vicky formed a charity to assist homeless and needy children.
Chris had two daughters and a son. His daughter Toni joined One Republic to sing a combined tribute to her dad and his good friend Chester Bennington of Linkin Park. Bennington committed suicide not long after Chris' death.
Chris struggled with addiction and depression. The autopsy revealed that there were multiple prescription medications in his system at the time of his suicide.
Chris is not a "sex object." He was a talented, troubled, multi-faceted human being. He deserves better than to be the object of lurid "locker room talk."
