There's a Special Kind of Purgatory for the Suicides

When the gods created the world, they forgot to leave room for the suicides. People who struggle with suicidal ideation don’t belong with the rest of you. There is a special kind of purgatory that keeps us in isolation. It’s created by those who judge us. We see your criticism and raise you a hundred years of silence.

They say suicide is selfish. This is why my friend, Theo, hid in purgatory when the compulsion to die became irresistible. He knew giving it a voice would attract judgement, so he chose silence—and death—instead.

Surviving suicide shoves a whole barrage of anger into your world. Those who love us are often furious, but the rage of finding out that we survived is even greater.

Suicidal ideation paints all your windows black and then convinces you there is no world beyond them, but it’s too often conflated with sadness. You, who judge, think that we are merely unable to cheer ourselves up the way you do when you’re sad. You think we’re weak. In that same breath, you fall apart over the last white lie or black mood that comes your way as though you have enough strength to cope with something more earth-shattering… like depression.

I see your judgement and raise you this wish: may you never learn why your opinion about depression is patently wrong. If you do, you will remember how you once complained about the terrible stress of shopping for Christmas gifts in the same hour you sent a bucket of rage to a depression patient who was struggling to afford the hospitalisation he desperately needed. In that moment, I hope you’ll remember Theo, the one who did not survive suicide, and realise how instrumental you were in creating his purgatory—the very purgatory you now have to survive, too.

May you never need to learn how survive.

Years after my suicide attempt, I began to track down the numbers of the doctors who saved me. Depression is a liar and I wanted to thank them for knowing that. My life isn’t perfect, but there is no room in this world for perfect lives. Like perfect people, they don’t exist. I’m happy I survived. I’m happy four men found my life worthy of fighting for but, like all suicides, I must keep part of myself in purgatory. I must push to get to the other side of silence because I know the stigma all too well.

Silence is deadly. Stigma is deadly. If you ever meet a depression sufferer you consider weak, remember what they’ve survived.