When Death-stiny Calls
Please note: this piece includes real, frank conversations about suicide.
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently,” I said, peering at my friend Lizzie over the smudged rim of my wine glass. “Offing myself, I mean.”
“Yeah. I have too,” she said, not missing a beat.
Neither of us said anything else for a while. Hot tears pricked my eyes. I looked up at the dingy ceiling to force them back, listening as a man on the next table complained about his chips being “soggy and weird”.
His gruff voice melded with the poppy background music, so the words sounded like lyrics. “Don’t eat them, then,” went the next line, this time in a huffy soprano.
(Note to self: if you stay alive, don’t order the chips).
I hadn’t planned on telling Lizzie about the “offing myself” thing that evening. Ever, really, but especially not that evening. We’d only gone out for a quick drink because it was the end of another dull day at work, and we both wanted a distraction from “the war and stuff”.
It’s a sort-of unwritten rule that you don’t tell your friends about your suicidal thoughts during a snatched half-hour in a crappy pub. If nothing else it’s hardly polite; you’ll only leave them fumbling around for something kind and reassuring to say, in a public place, against the clock, senses dulled by alcohol.
Unless of course, that by saying the words out loud, you made it OK to say them right back.
Back in my twenties, I volunteered for a listening charity, where I took calls from distressed people who needed to talk. As part of my training, I was told how important it was to ask each and every caller if they’d been thinking about taking their own life, no matter the ‘official’ reason for their call.
I found the idea of this shocking, as did most of the other trainees the first time we heard it.
How could we just ask people if they’d thought about committing suicide, out of the blue? How would we know when to ask a question like that? What tone would we use? Wouldn’t people complain? Besides, if they’d called to talk about suicide, why wouldn’t they say it themselves?
Patiently, our trainer told us that some people struggle to get the words out; that it might be the first time they’d ever said them. “If you ask the question first, you’re making it safe for them to open up,” he said.
“They’ve called because they’re scared. If they are contemplating suicide, most of them will want you to talk them out of it.”
He was right. The moment I asked callers that question, I could almost hear the tension easing, like a hissing pressure valve had turned in their heads.
That memory flooded back to me now that I was on the receiving end of it myself, there in the pub with Lizzie.
But as I said, I wasn’t going to talk about suicide.
It’s weird, how openly sharing suicidal thoughts feels like such a taboo. To me, idly contemplating suicide every so often isn’t just completely normal, it’s perfectly understandable.
Life is hard, so if you’ve never, ever thought about absenting yourself from the whole shebang then quite frankly, you’re the one who’s weird.
Especially now.
There are lots of reasons for the internal drama of whether I should continue to exist. It’ll sound silly to write this out loud, but my brand-new kitchen has played a supporting role in it.
It just feels so boilingly insolent, having new worktops and a shiny gas cooker fitted during the same week as a terrifying war breaks out, and as living standards plummet to poverty-inducing new lows.
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Suddenly, it feels like the chasm between those who have (me) and those who have not (lots and lots and lots of other people) has ripped more widely open than ever.
Now, getting a new kitchen isn’t exciting, it’s a strange emotional burden. Now, getting a new kitchen feels like it’s asking for karmic trouble.
“What’ll probably happen,” I said to my Dad, as news of the war began to circulate, “is that the planet will get nuked before I’ve had a chance to use my new dishwasher. That’d be just my luck.”
I make stupid jokes like these all the time because I’m scared. Not just of potentially getting nuked, but of the future as a frightening whole.
I’m scared that I haven’t got whatever it’ll end up taking to survive: not just what’s happening or what’s about to, but how deeply I feel about it all.
And I’m terrified of finding out for certain that I really haven’t got what it takes.
Mostly, this is because I’m a massive wimp.
I cried when Brexit was announced, and when Covid made its phlegm-splattered debut I chose to hide, not help. My pathetic brain went into paralysis; it was all I could do to haul myself out of bed in the morning, let alone hold a normal conversation with someone I love.
Then a friend, one around the same age as me, actually died of Covid. More than a year later, I still find it hard to understand how one moment she was here, texting about catch-up cocktails, then less than a week later, she wasn’t.
Dying is far too fucking easy.
To be fair it always has been, but now it feels cold-breath-right-in-your-face easy.
So why not trip the switch myself? At least I’d be in control of something.
Every day, I look forward to going to bed. I don’t worry about anyone or anything when I’m asleep, so why not make that a permanent state?
I hate how intensely comforting I’ve started to find that thought, and I hate how cowardly my late grandparents would have found it.
Grandad flew fighter jets during World War Two (admittedly only after he’d downed a bottle of whisky first), and Nan went to bed every night after dodging the London bombs, wondering if tomorrow would be the day she’d become a widow.
Their grit and bravery must have skipped a generation.
You’d think I’d just be grateful for the charmed life I’ve got, but weirdly, all I’m doing at the moment is moaning incessantly about trivial things that honestly don’t matter.
I won’t shut the fuck up. I’m driving myself crazy.
(Don’t talk to me about ‘gratitude journals’ and the like. The moment I start feeling grateful for anything, a wave of guilt follows because… well, what did I do to deserve any of it?)
Anyway.
I told all this to Lizzie in the pub, and then she opened up to me, too.
We talked for so much longer than the half-hour we’d intended to stay that we both missed dinner (but I’d be damned if we were going to order those horrible chips).
Afterwards, we went our separate ways again, this time feeling a little bit more supported and listened to.
It felt like somebody understood. Like neither of us were as alone as we thought we were.
Like we might just battle on through.
