Suffering in Silence: the quiet killer

There is no limit to sorrow, there’s no measurement for the depths of discomfort humans can feel. With the right amount of pressure applied to the distinctly appropriate places, anyone would crack. We’re all made up of the same stuff, anyway.

Sometimes because we’re 80% water, it can feel like we’re drowning. When water fills your lungs it’s both painful and debilitating because you are unable to breathe or speak. Your lungs fill with water and 20,000 leagues under the sea is approaching far faster than your 10-year plan allowed for.

It’s possible there are no warning signs because your lungs are filled with so much water you can’t cry out for help. Suicide isn’t the killer; silence is. Suffering, when hidden in silence and barred from expression, becomes a deadly secret. It’s a secret that is taken to the grave with, on average, 44,965 Americans each year.  For every suicide, there are 25 attempts.

We’re most vulnerable when we aren’t expressing just how vulnerable we truly are. We’re more susceptible to walking down a darker path when gate to the lit pathway is locked – or so it seems. Did you know suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in our country – and the number one leading cause of death in several US states?

Where there are fewer people, there are fewer resources. There are fewer shoulders to cry on, fewer friends to lend a helping hand. This isn’t to say that rural places are doomed in terms of mental health care, but it is more difficult to provide community and support when homes are miles apart and people are, to some degree, isolated. It’s as if the environment encourages depression and suffering – explicitly in silence.

It isn’t that celebrity has brought suicide into mainstream conversation and it isn’t Kate Spade that made our country realize there’s another epidemic not even coming – it’s already here. Suicide is the epidemic of 2018, fueled by silence and stigma and lack of support. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, with statistics rising and the average amount of suicides per capita per year is continuously increasing.

The turbulent increase is cause for alarm.

The news reports the morbid details which are somehow spun into reality television style episodes. The very next day, the most tragic event of someone’s life turns into a trending hashtag to promote awareness. And then, suddenly or slowly, it is no longer popular and life covers up the event because the world continues to spin on; madly on.

It spins madly and it spins quickly. Life has a tendency to move so quickly that we’re lost in our day-to-day rush from home to work, from meeting to meeting, deadline to deadline, back home and to whatever activities happen after. We have so much responsibility – to ourselves, to our jobs, or families, and more. With so much on all of us, all humans alike, it’s very easy to understand that sometimes we miss the opportunity to connect. We forget to ask how someone is doing – how they’re really doing. And instead of shaming those who have come to the ultimate conclusion, we should focus our efforts on accepting their immensely personal decision.

Have courage and be kind. You never know who you may be helping swim to the surface.

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