Before You Write That Suicide Note.

 

Yes, I know.

You wouldn’t need to write a suicide note.

This is for your friend who might.

 

You are the only one who can stop your friend from taking that painful heartbreaking step.

One of my biggest regrets in life after I received word about a friend who committed suicide- I wish I communicated more with him before he took that extreme step.

 

On the other hand, most people these days don’t leave behind suicide notes. They leave videos online. Blogs. Text messages.

In fact, there are academicians and scholars who study in detail the ‘pretext’ and ‘context’ of a suicide note.

 

In fact, in one of the studies, this suicide note was discovered:

Dear Betty,

I hate you.

Love,

George

 

Most suicide notes never make the light of the day. The ones which do, are purported to really great guys. Some of these great guys are really good guys too.

 

For example, the man behind the lens of one of the most painful photographs of the century – a Sudanese child, starving almost to death, while a vulture is waiting for her to die so that it could devour the body. A shocking image of poverty, the photograph made Carter famous and he received the Pulitzer prize in 1994. Carter, desperately chased the vulture away after taking the photograph but couldn’t do much to help the girl. After experiencing breakdown and depression for months, Carter finally committed suicide in 1994 at the young age of 33.

His suicide note read: “..I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners …”

 

Then there are really famous guys, who can’t handle the fame.

Musician and singer, Kurt Cobain, whose suicide shocked the world nearly three decades ago, had this suicide note: “…I don’t have the passion anymore, and so remember, it’s better to burn out than to fade away.”

 

But most people who commit suicide are not really famous guys. They are regular guys like you and me. Some of them are your friends and some your enemies. We will deal with our enemies in another blog. But what about our friends?

 

 

A friend who failed in his school year.

A friend who did miserably in his college course.

A friend who failed to get an office promotion.

A failed relationship.

Failure makes us look at life differently. You and I may not bother about that failure, but for your friend that failure shattered him. Ruined his world. We were too concerned about our success and image, to stand with our friend in his failure.

 

 

A friend who is tired of living a fake life.

Faking it at home. At his college. At his workplace.

Faking who he is and who he wants to be. A façade that he is tired of maintaining on his social media accounts.

How he wished he could take off that mask and be real to someone. Someone who will not judge him regardless of how messy the real face is. Maybe, I dropped enough hints that I preferred the façade instead of my friend’s battle within. He or she tried too hard to live up to your standards. Maybe if I was little more real. Maybe if I dropped my façade a wee bit.

 

A friend who did not have a father figure in his life.

Orphaned by his circumstances. No one bothered to walk with her and be the voice of a father in her life.

Maybe I was too bothered with my own circumstances, and my need for a father figure that I did not care for my friend. While we are stuck in our selfish world, our friends are sliding towards suicide. Our orphan tendencies are poisoning the world around us to live out broken and fatherless lives. I am probably not writing a suicide note, but my pain is causing enough pain to shatter my friend’s world.

 

A friend whose foolishness we blindly tolerated in the name of trendiness or being cool.

Once in a while, these real foolish apps or games comes out which brings out the worst in us in the name of appearing ‘cool’ .

Remember the Blue Whale Challenge. The online ‘suicide’ game that made young people appear adventurous for 50 days to try out 50 crazy challenges. The challenge on the 50th day is to kill yourself. All that your friend needed was a sane, sensible voice to jerk him out of a foolish make-believe world. A sensible voice who needed to stand up to a friend and boldly state: you don’t need to be cool by being foolish.

But I preferred to be considered cool and trendy to a friend rather than tell her the real facts. I kept my image, but I may have lost a friend. Forever.

 

A friend who couldn’t make sense of his faith.

A friend who did not recognize who he actually is.

He is created in the image of God. Crafted for an amazing God-designed plan.

Nobody told your friend about his unique potential.

I kept quiet and failed to let him know this awesome truth: ‘all the stages of my life were spread out before you, the days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day’(The Bible).

While I practiced my faith privately, my friend lived out his fate publicly.

 

Failure. Façade. Father-figure. Foolishness. Faith.

 

My friend was probably battling with all of these issues. And much more.

I was too busy figuring out my life to bother what happened to him.

Before my friend wrote that suicide note, he needed to know:

Failure is not final. We will deal with it together.

Take off the façade. I am taking it off too.

I am willing to be a father-figure in your life. I will be by your side.

Quit living foolishly. You are too smart to play these short term games.

You have a purpose. God created you. Follow His blueprint.

 

 

#WorldSuicidePreventationDay