We continuously engage death, but last week was different. Abigail Ragoobar, said to be in a postpartum depressive state, died from injuries sustained after falling 40 feet from a building. Concurrently, 16-year-old Faith Samantha Gajadhar was reported to have died by suicide, and the hysteria of shock, sympathies, judgment, and speculation mushroomed.
I have replayed the TV report on Faith, trying to appreciate the sentence: “Her dreams were cut short in an instant when the 16-year-old St Francois College student was found hanging in the bathroom of her home.”
My theory is that, because Faith’s dreams were cut short, she suicided. It’s not that suicide cut short her dreams—that act caused her death after she stopped dreaming. I’m betting too, there was nothing “instant”, since there would have been contemplation and planning, as in most cases.
But who’s concerned about accuracy/sensitivity/ appropriateness of language when melodrama is journalism’s central tenet here and, better yet, when headlines can be “attractively” populated with words like “mental”, “bipolar” or “suicide”?
Suicide is never a solution. But for those who battle depression it can appear as an ideal alternative to the lonesome struggle. Lonesome, because people generally do not participate objectively in your anguish. Who do you know invests time in someone’s distress to understand depression?
Mostly, when I open up about internal pressures, others, both selfishly and unknowingly, never see me reaching out. If my expressions involve them, typically it’s interpreted as an attack, and generally they pull away. And that’s usually in the middle of struggle, when I can’t seemingly do anything right and, often, desperately need compassion.
Trinbagonians are simple-minded in these issues. Despite education, social standing, or relation, there’s hardly one who could/would engage struggle, so people do not open up.
But if someone who’s visibly depressed gathers courage to say something, anything, even if that thing involves you, would it be too much to assume or accept that the person is mostly trying to stall a slide into deeper darkness? How creditable it would be to relinquish ego and yield to higher instinct!
Why make a person’s suffering about you? Why not be different in a superior way that says “I’m here for you”? Why add layers of self-centeredness? Why pull away?
Imagine if in the midst of your misery, people close to you can only think to take offence at your openness, abandoning you while you’re fighting to conquer feelings of desolation which hurt so deeply, sometimes I frighteningly ask: “If this pain kills me, would it be “natural causes”?
As I’m pondering Faith’s death, I wonder how many days or months of private confusion and slight sympathy she experienced about something that finally became overpowering.
Despite the care I place into expressing myself, I’ve ended being ill-treated as though I was being malicious. I have been ostracised for expressing my feelings in an attempt to alleviate my own suffering. I take to writing sometimes just to get the thoughts out comprehensibly. People have taken to responding with their own interpretations, accusations, and grievances. Even the “pen” fails me.
For months, I’ve been managing mood instability. I am not suicidal nor ideating, but the physical and emotional pain from both the disorder and people pressures cross-examines the worth of my existence. Recognising my body’s imbalance and being told that the pain in my face for the past year is a diagnosis of severe stress more than the other physical/neurological complications, self-preservation is my retreat.
I write today from complex despondency, the culmination of too many incidents/ imbroglios that, separately could mean nothing, but depending on what portends, could well be the anatomy of a suicide.
With the recklessness of one individual causing me great expense I could hardly afford, I’m one day and a few thousand dollars away from exiting The UWI programme. With eight distinctions in nine subjects, I face the possibility of not finishing school because of insensible “family”. And then silence.
I recently communicated with someone about an instant of inconsideration to disentangle myself from the heaviness it caused me. For pointing out what was admittedly an unnecessary hassle, I’ve been accused of causing “hurt” by deeming the person “uncaring and inconsiderate” (their interpretation).
My reaching out is embroiled in the consternation of one not appreciating that acting insensitively is possible for the most considerate among us. Then the coolness.
The other, it took weeks of torment and awkwardness to muster courage to say without blaming, what had gone wrong in our exchange. Without fail, my friend who knows what I’m experiencing, interpreted my account as indictments. That’s not what I said/did. Then communication drops.
I have relatives and friends who do not understand that their unstable attitude of blowing hot and cold demoralises me. And I could go on. But finally, last Monday, I returned to my silent zone. Why bother?
So, while nobody gets to verify the composition of a suicidal death, I think I know something about the place from where suicides progress. Much of it, I believe, is birthed in cold-shouldering when people’s suffering is deepest.