Volume 13, Number 1: Rachael Reynolds

Four years ago today, September 9, 2014, suicide hit as close to home for me as it ever has.  Rachael Reynolds, a 19-year-old woman who had graduated from Farmington High School the year before, ended her life by jumping off a freeway overpass in Farmington Hills.  Farmington High is just a couple miles southwest of my high school (Harrison High), and the freeway overpass in question is just a couple miles away from either school.  From what I read on her Twitter page, she had dropped out of college and wasn't happy with her body, even though she certainly looked nice to me.  Her final tweet: "The worst and the last day."

It's particularly awful when it's someone so young, someone who does not have the life experience to understand when someone else--someone who just might have gone through a similar situation in their youth and recognizes the pain--says to them, "Don't give up--things are going to get better."

Take it from me--yeah, things can and do get better.  Fifteen years ago, I was out of work and heavy in debt.  And I had no way of knowing where my next job would come from.  I was fearful of becoming a burden on my family, fearful that I would descend into a life of shame and destitution.  It took support from my family, a few years of working dead-end jobs that barely made ends meet, and a little good luck*, but I got out of that mess.  If, on the other hand, you take your life, you wipe out whatever chances you may have.

The real challenge is when the depression and anxiety becomes so severe that in an instant, you forget all the previous times things got better and the good times and how everybody goes through some kind of shit that nobody else does and how there just might be some good luck in the future to address the problems you have today.

Here's my perspective on asking for help.  I've come to realize that it is not a sign of weakness or incompetence--an act of strength. It takes strength to overcome anxieties about how people may think of you as a person based on what you say, strength to ask questions when you don't have the answers, strength to persist in telling your story if the first person or the first two people or the first 100 people don't listen

Metro Detroiters, remember the Electrifying Mojo?  He said, "If you ever feel like you're nearin' the end of your rope, tie a knot.  Keep hangin', keep rememberin', that there ain't nobody bad like you."

In closing, I'd like to share a song about what a terrible option suicide is. Out of Control by Oingo Boingo.  This lyric should always stay in my head: "Don't you know / That everyone around you / Has felt the pain you feel today." I wish everyone who has ever contemplated suicide would instantly hear this song, which Danny Elfman wrote in 1990.


*Luck--that could be another blog entry in itself.  The two bits of good luck I needed to get out of the mess I had in 2003 didn't come until 2005 (when I got the help I needed to get out of that debt) and 2007 (when I landed the job I have now).  Had I ended my life in 2003, I would have left behind loved ones wondering what they could have done or said to prevent it, denied myself the opportunity to prove I could overcome my problems; left behind still more people wondering if they inadvertently left a proverbial straw on the camel's back that proved to be one too many; and obviously, I would have missed out on what I have now.