Suicide

I’ve been meaning to write something on this for the longest time but I guess with the news of a recent passing of someone, this couldn’t come at a better time.

Recently, I came across a Facebook page called “In Loving Memory of (insert name here)”. When I first discovered the page, there were about 400 people in the group. I got pretty intrigued by who she was and how she died. The first thing that came to mind was that she had an illness like cancer. Reading the testimonials of her close friends and boyfriend made me feel that yes, she was someone beautiful who must have made an impact on people’s life. Delving further to find out the real cause of her death, I came across another site and when I read about how she really died, I was stunned. She died through suicide.

What drove her to that point, has been left for the public to speculate. But one thing’s for sure, she was a troubled individual whose best option was to end it all. Death is the ultimate journey of life, but suicide is a premature end to life. When a suicide happens, it is sudden and most of the time unexpected. Family members will be questioning themselves as to why the victim did it and they will retrace the steps to the past few days to see if they’ve left out any signs of breaking. Most of the time, when family members do this, they do manage to piece things together and somehow everything makes sense.

For the survivors, coping with suicide is a lifelong struggle. The scars will always be there and they would be always blaming themselves for whatever that has happened. Even though if it was no fault of theirs, they would still be blaming themselves on how they did not notice signs of the breakdown and questioning the “what-ifs”.

The most clichéd statement of all time is that “No problem is too big for us, and there is a solution to every problem.” And up till this day, I still believe this statement holds true. Sometimes as humans, we tend to bottle our feelings up, afraid of letting others in because we are afraid of being judged at. That’s when our mind goes wild and we get all confused. Sometimes all we really need is to talk it out.

And talk is what we can choose to do. Find someone whom you feel comfortable with and talk it out. Someone whom you can feel vulnerable with. Someone who won’t depose that trust. When push comes to shove, and if you really can’t find someone to talk to, there’s always the helpline which are being managed by certain organizations around Singapore – namely ComCare Call (1800-222-0000), Samaritans of Singapore (1800-221-4444). These organizations are run by qualified individuals and they practice anonymity. So there are options, will you choose to take it?

To the family of the demised individual, my condolences go out to you. Please be strong for each other and know that all hopes not lost. There is life after death, quite literally. Your life, has to go on.