One of my favourite writers Jerzy Kosinski wrote his last words as follows: "I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity." May 3rd 1991.
So often I hear it "Did they leave a note?"
Yes. They always leave a note. Their body is the note. A message written in their own handwriting, written in the line around their throat, or the slits in their wrists all saying the exact same thing. I DID IT THIS TIME. I got to the point, the full stop, I fucking ended it! It's almost always scribbled out in impulse, an impulse to be postless. To write out the final scene, to be rushed off stage and call the curtains of the final act. Sure the lead up is premeditated, thought through, mulled over, imagined in day dreams and night terrors, weeks, months sometimes years. Somewhere in despair and fantasy, contemplated ways of how it could happen.
I know we try with our just hang in there, you'll get over it, it could be worse, you're NOT thinking of ... Are you?
It isn't easy and our fear of not knowing what to say sometimes means we don't say anything...
Sometimes it's the fear of just waking up, getting the dosage wrong. Nobody ever survives a suicide they just gain a suicide attempt, keeping tallies by the marks on their wrists.
We ask if there was a note? To understand the why, is it to say here it is, this is to blame for where it all went wrong, to somehow absolve us left behind from the responsibility or the what ifs. Maybe the living invented the suicide note as an expectation.
Suicides never seem like the egoist to me.
It's the rich and wealthy who leave wills, it's the terrorists who leave manifestos, it's the activists who leave an ethos all for the living to pay attention too and argue over.
But the suicidal leave only their body because it's not about what they leave behind but what they're leaving with. That's why they leave alone with the shakes or blue in the face, that's why they leave with the one last jump to conclusion. They leave under oxygenated, they leave over medicated, they leave with a BANG! They leave with one last thing to say. I DID IT THIS TIME.
So maybe we need to begin to learn to write to them before they write to us. Maybe we will write 13 11 14 (Life line Australia) and YES we can call it together! Maybe we start to write them so many friend poems, and write songs for them if it will just keep them dancing a little longer.
8 People a day in Australia write a suicide note with their body.
Let's start writing it in every street, every building, every home and every workplace that we are becoming aware, that we will be here for them. That we are willing to help them write a different story.
Because a lot of the time the writing is already on the wall, we just have to learn how to read it.
To open ourselves up and talk about it. Let's stop asking if there was a note written.
Let's learn how to ask if they are thinking of writing a note and begin to destigmatize Suicide.
Let's start rewriting...wherever we can.
