Talking To A Suicidal Friend — While Feeling Suicidal
Bringing some humour into the void
Trigger warning: discussing death and self-harm
As November rolled around seasonal depression joined in.
As if scheduled on the night of the 1st I had insomnia and an intense bout of suicidal thoughts — the first of 5.
This continued into the 3rd week of November, and after the 23rd it finally eased off (Scorpio month, anyone?)
Sometimes I don’t know what got me through those bouts, as I sat there, on the edge of the bed, with an excruciating bottomless void where my heart is supposed to be, wanting to end it all but using my very sharp kitchen knife to play a little game of dissection on my forearm.
How do you talk to someone having suicidal thoughts?
In my case, dark humour, and a lot of it. Throughout my Life I’ve seen my family make some absolutely “messed up” jokes and laugh at the most horrible things.
So this is my go-to.
You could say it’s blatant denial and disrespect for the problem. I say it’s a brilliant way to literally laugh death in the face.
After my 4th bout, my best friend called, and I admitted to him that I spent the past 20 minutes passionately wanting to go slit my veins open. His reaction is one I’m gonna remember forever because it was dark and hilarious:
“Oh what, did you try to play violin with your veins?”
After which he shrunk a bit thinking I’d be offended, and then surprised when I broke out laughing and wheezing because that was absolutely brilliant.
Another recurring thing that happened during my suicidal episodes was that they had a soundtrack.
Yes, my suicidal thoughts had a soundtrack. That is how fancy I am. It was one recurring soundtrack for all 5.
The words “Kill Yourself” sang by Burnham were my recurring, persistent soundtrack.
Even in those moments, I’d think how insane and hilarious that was along with “Brain, you’re not helping.” But maybe that’s exactly what it was doing — helping by trying to distract me.
It’s not to say I don’t take me wanting to end my own Life seriously. I will be seeking professional help in the new year and will continue working on my self to be overall more at peace.
What I think this approach does is humanize the situation.
A lesson I learned from Daniel Sloss and his show “Dark” is that if you can laugh at something, no matter how tragic, it means for a moment in time you’re allowing yourself to not be engulfed by the heaviness of the situation.
It’s how I coped with the loss of my grandad. He was the second grandparent to pass in the 9 days between my brother’s and I birthdays. I’d say “well, now we definitely know who’s the more loved grandchild.”
Or “Well that’s fucking unoriginal grandad.”
Or when my grandmother passed this year, 3 hours before my flight to London, I laughed “Wow, guess I’m not going back to London, huh?”
Or when my best friend called me recently telling me he’s been having suicidal thoughts — I immediately started cracking jokes by saying “well, welcome to the club! We’ve missed you here.”, and now a few days later, we’re cracking hangman jokes and laughing.
I’ve found that humour helps humanize the pain you’re feeling in those moments. Because when you’re feeling suicidal, you already know that people love you and will miss you, and that life gets better, and the lot. Someone reminding you in that moment just makes it worse because you feel even more guilty.
What stops me reaching out to people is the dreaded reaction of pity and how dumbfounded they feel, which is understandable. Not everyone knows how to react to the feelings of suicide, that’s normal. You don’t want to hurt or scare people, so you don’t reach out.
All you want in that moment is for someone to remind you of your humanity, and maybe a distraction from the spiral of emptiness. You don’t need another pity party.
So this was what I did. I cracked jokes and made him laugh 2 minutes into the call, and proceeded to do so hours after. We talked about it, what led him there, why he felt like that, and if the thoughts were serving him and how can we work through this.
We got to the heavy parts. We discussed it with empathy and understanding.
Before you can get to the serious parts, you first need to lift the mood and get the person out of that state, because in that state they are not rational. They are in a negative spiral and cannot rationalise until they get out.
It’s been the same for me and panic attacks. Trying to rationalise while you’re in it only makes it worse. Distracting yourself or having someone talk to you about something innocuous and unexpected has been the best strategy.
Sometimes, we don’t need to be fixed.
Often, we just need to be heard.
