The Noose.

She has always been such a formal display of cruelty. For me, I have known her more as a Halloween prop than anything else. Through a few history lessons, I understood lynching. Now, I see her differently. I see the craft and variety of ways she is made. Rarely is she actually made the way I saw growing up. We visualize a rope, in reality she can be a tie, a t-shirt, a blanket even, for the rope can be too obvious a giveaway. When you say rope I think of water skiing, I think of a ladder up to a tree house, rarely do I consider the same rope used for someone to exit stage left, early.

Yanked out while the audience looked away, never to return. There is no bow after this performance. The play keeps going without skipping a beat, reminding the audience that character, you, were background at best. The play wasn’t about you. Even a lead actor, taken off stage, the one we were meant to look at, he is a shock, he grabs your attention. Luckily there are many others and things to satiate a void.

Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade, within a week, indicating a plague of mental health problems, yet kids are playing this game all the time. Adults end themselves prematurely through use of destructive living constantly. In fact, we all roll the dice every day by going to work, leaving the family with hopes to come back, to bring something with us. A family has to eat, yet, if family time was as important as people like to consider it as, then wouldn’t we work 20-hour weeks, barely with any extras, but rich in time spent together? Why must we work the mandatory 40, plus driving, plus activities, plus…, only to watch it all go. We see the deaths on TV and then we look at where the time has gone, or selfishly we look at our own self first. “I would never…” so then, after a brief pause, we can safely deem them as “sick,” us as “well,” and moving on.

“He hung himself…”

Such a scene. I imagine the dark room, alone, sad music playing on a record. A beautiful, artsy song depicting underlying pain, a sonata of sadness. A bottle of alcohol on the floor, a final push to get the job done. Dried tear streams as the body’s self-preservation kicked in telling the emotions to hang on last second. The rope, tie, blanket, t-shirt acting like a Shawshank catalyst. “Brooks was here,” reminding us that others have done this, others have checked out on their own accord, hopeless.

My own mind tricks me here, for the scene is not so romantic. The scene is instead gruesome and traumatizing for the one who finds it, then the rest who hear about it.

Why?

What could we have done?

What did we miss?

Nah, this wasn’t about you, this was something else. The noose now forming a loop large enough for a neck, stable enough to hold soon-to-be dead weight. If done right, a knot thick enough to knock a skull to one side, snapping the neck, making this relatively painless.
Still romantic, for the perfect, Halloween noose getting the job done quickly. What about in real life, the kicking, the thrashing, the regret as soon as the material of choice tightens around the neck, cutting air, allowing the brain just enough time to think one last rational thought. Maybe blood was shed, maybe vomit was spewed, maybe the bowels released and the room is not a romantic tranquility, but that of a bathroom, feces, and an underwear waistband around a neck, just tight enough indicating a slow painful release from life. These details are seldom discussed, yet we want prevention. Tell the truth. Use the truth to sell the lie that is hopelessness.

A chemical deprivation can cause depression, a sadness deeper than skin, yet, one we have also understood to be treatable and relieving on its own. However, we displace a scene in our minds when another one happens. When another suicide takes place. A news story shares “sad news…” yet, that is it. The news anchor slightly drops their eyes releases a quick blurb about who it was, where, and what they may have been doing at the time. Then the worst part, when a friend or family member shares a memory or feeling about the person, or the details of the incident. All of this is accumulated within hours of completion. Sometimes I feel for celebrities they have brief clips of their life on file waiting for them to expire just to be the first with their sad montage.

All a façade, all unreal, all a publication this suicide thing is. Instead, it is sad, gruesome in all the wrong ways, wretched to the heart of survivors. For the victim of suicide, their lifeless form, no different than every other lifeless form. You are going to be burned or buried too, no matter how rich or famous, the body is now decomposing like every other mortal. The family, friends, acquaintances, they move on. They have to. They have to tolerate the pain, learn to live a new life, one without the victim in it, for tolerance is what the body is made for. You are now a statistic, not a hero, not immortalized as we all like to think this tragedy ends. No, this isn’t that, suicide is a loss of potential, loss of experience. It is not selfish, nor is it a way out, nor is it anything but what it is.

The knot, the rope, the fading of the eyes into a gloss. A lifeless corpse. What we leave behind turned into a news story about mental health, is that what our life was for? Or were we convinced this was the only solution? If so, this is everybody’s problem, for loss by choice indicates something we are overlooking, maybe even playing in to. Like breaking my phone in half when the internet is a little slow. For you tying a noose, loading a gun, preparing the pills, harvesting the razor, preparing to jump, starting the engine in a small place, for you, what do you think is going to happen, and what about you was so bad off that time could not heal?

Life should not end with a question, but with a resounding reason. What reason do you have if you remove yourself before you’ve had the opportunity to make your impact, to contribute, to give to another what they might not have felt in themselves. You with the pain, you have a gift inside those eyes. You have a rare, near-death experience in which you can look into the eyes of someone who feels like the world doesn’t get them and let them know, you get it. The gift of validation, a connection that someone else understands, priceless. A gift that not all have, but one you there with the rope may be able to give away.

God bless.