As I write this, the death of Robin Williams has become by far the dominant subject of social media. It’s very sad, and he certainly will be missed. It’s certainly accurate to say he was a comic genius. But he was clearly also a troubled soul. To end it all as he has done is the ultimate tragedy. Suicide is a deed that can never be undone. His death, and the reactions surrounding it, have brought up lots of things for me. I’m going to try and put down some of my thoughts here. I can’t promise complete coherence, but I will try.
While I can’t say I know what Robin Williams was going through, I do have at least a vague idea of what it feels like to do what he did. I know. I tried it myself. Back in October of 2007, I had pretty much reached the end of my tether. I believed that I had made an absolute mess of my whole life. I had alienated pretty much everyone I cared about, I hated my job more than I could put in words, and the icing on the cake was I had been evicted. So. On a lonely Saturday night, in a hotel room paid for with money I really did not have, I saw one viable option. In that time and place, I truly believed that everyone would be better off without me. So I swallowed the bulk of a large bottle of Tylenol PM, roughly sixty pills in all. Almost immediately, I snapped back to true reality. Luckily, I called 911 and was able to get help in time before any real permanent damage was done. I then went about the task of putting my life back together. It certainly hasn’t been easy, and I’ve had some bumps and setbacks along the road, but sitting here nearly seven years later, I can say the reconstruction project has been pretty successful. It’s a work in progress, of course, and I know the work will never be done.
I have no idea what drove Robin Williams to end it all today. But I do wonder if he has ever attempted suicide before. I don’t know, but I suspect he has. Recently I heard a rather telling statistic. Nineteen of twenty people who attempt suicide fail the first time, but they are 37 times more likely to succeed the second time. There is still a huge stigma surrounding the subject of suicide. If some people encounter a suicide survivor such as myself, they will sometimes not say anything at all for fear of saying the wrong thing. What I can say is in the time immediately following my attempt the interactions that meant the most to me were the ones where people simply said hey, I’m here for you. Even more than that, it was very helpful to me to have people who have been there themselves share their experience with me. Some people truly believe that those who attempt suicide are just attention-seekers. I can’t deny that attention-seekers do exist, but I believe they are the minority. Sadly the stigma results in diminished resources for suicide survivors. There needs to be more of a discussion about suicide in our culture. It would go a long way toward reducing the isolation some suicide survivors feel, and almost certainly it would prevent at least some second and subsequent attempts. I for one am very glad I ultimately chose life, and it’s sad to me that Robin Williams will not have the chance to make that same choice.
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