When Anger Is Justified – Part 74: Lessons I Learned About The Stigma Of Suicide: College Freshman Year – Section K

***The following post mentions suicide. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room. You can also call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Lessons I Learned About The Stigma of Suicide

My freshman year of college was not all bad, but it was not always good either. I did survive it though, and I have lived to be able to share it as a part of my college freshman experience. It was during the darkest moment of my life that gave me lessons about the stigma of suicide. As soon as I called the suicide hotline after attempting to take my life in my college dorm room, however, I inadvertently placed myself on the list of stigmatization.

The first stigma was that I was a sick individual … sick, as in mentally ill or unstable. Although this was true, it was not true in the sense that I should have been shunned by anyone. Despite there being a plethora of information on mental illness, there were not enough people talking about mental illness as if it were a problem. Culturally, these discussions were shut down or illusively avoided at all costs.

If mental illness was discussed, it was discussed in a way that made the victim of mental illness at fault in some way. Family, church members, and people in general seemed to treat mental illness with kid gloves or they would not touch the subject of mental illness at all. In most cases, mental illness as a topic on its own was simply taboo. Yet, everyone had someone in their family that was supposedly “insane” all while skipping over anyone battling anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and the like.

My family brushed my struggles with mental illness under the rug. Although they seemed to be aware that something was wrong with me, they did not address my issues. I was most often told to pick my chin up, snap out of it, or some other directive. If I was asked what was wrong with me, it was not because anyone truly wanted to know. It was always just a rhetorical question for which they alone seemed to have the answers.

I recognized inner sadness within me beginning at the age of three. Growing up within a narcissistically abusive household made me prey for abuse and trauma. I suffered sadness a lot. I recognized that my sadness had worsened after I endured a horrific sexual assault at the age of nine. Then, nearly four years after that trauma, I suffered sexual abuse again riddled with the trauma of being shunned for speaking out against the abuser.

Those traumatic experiences left me stigmatized as well, but throwing mental illness into the mix was more than anyone wanted to handle with me. Most often, people chose not to deal with me. I was left alone … a lot. By the time I had reached college, I was holding myself together with the thin threading of dissociation. My mind and heart could only handle so much. Yet, all the while I was coasting my way through the avoidance of emotions. Mainly, I felt numb.

When I faced being bullied for my neuro-divergent personality that was an outlier compared to the neurotypical personalities of others on the college campus, I had reached my emotional limit. I could take no more. The pressure of such strong emotional pain was all too consuming for me. I decided that it was best for me to bring an end to my life because I felt I had nothing left that I could do and nothing really to live for even though deep down, I wanted to live. I just did not know how to live without feeling like I was not alive (if that makes sense).

No one talked about depression, anxiety or difficult issues. Nothing was addressed, and often well-meaning people had difficulty broaching such topics too. It was always “put your hope and trust in God”, and although I did pray, praying was not enough for me. I needed physical help, and getting physical help seemed like a daunting task when all people wanted to do was to avoid talking about such dreadful topics involving depression or suicide.

Stigmatized

When people on campus first heard about “the girl that tried to kill herself”, that alone was the start of me being stigmatized, isolated, and left to deal with the massive influx of people’s judgment on my own. It was difficult. There was not much I could explain, and it was hard to defend myself. I was recognized as a self-murderer, depressed attention seeker, and a host of other bad names.

Most campus-mates could not even look at me once they discovered I was “that girl”. Others who would look at me would stare with condescending eyes of curiosity. For the most part, I was avoided and made more of an outcast than I had already been prior to the suicide attempt. A few people that gave me their support only did so away from peer groups. I faced a lot of social rejection. In most cases, this was okay with me since I already had strong social paranoia as a result of social anxiety.

I was often made to feel as if I should be ashamed for not wanting my life. It was difficult to explain that not wanting my life was not the problem at all. I did want my life. I just wanted my life to be better, and I wanted a way to relieve my pain. No one cared about my pain. No one understood it. No one tried to understand it. I was an island unto myself for the most part, and when I thought about the many times I had heard that I should reach out, I thought about how laughable that advice really was concerning my mental health.

It was an oxymoron to tell me to reach out only for me to reach out and then be rejected for what I reached out for in the first place. It was cruel, but looking back, I see this all as a part of the stigma that goes with suicide. No one wanted to deal with it. It is dark and morbid. It is a discussion about death. It is a discussion about planned death. No one wanted to talk about death … let alone planned death.

In the next post, a continuation on the stigma of suicide …