No More Suicides

I've written about the RAGE I feel about young people, especially young women, killing themselves before on Shebytches, almost exactly two years ago. Then I was writing about teen chess player Jessie Gilbert, who threw herself to her death from a hotel window, but this time it's personal.

I lost a friend. Perhaps worse, a potential friend, one of those rare, brilliant people who can connect to others in a single conversation, who is honest, open, funny even after years in the corporate world. Who is loved by people who've only emailed with her. Who was full of ideas and plans to make them come about, who believed fiercely in making a difference, and offered amazing support to others who also looked at the world differently.

What I feel is probably too raw to be writing about, but that's what blogging allows. Raw pain. Raw anger. Raw fear -- fear that I could be next, or any one of my friends who has also experienced depression, rejection, financial burdens, physical illness, and an uncaring world that says "Well, that's your problem. Toughen up." Especially if you're female, or queer, or of colour, you've got to be tougher than tough, brighter than bright, take everything they throw at you in your stride.

So I'm angry. Not at my friend, but at all the people (myself included) who didn't break the bounds of propriety and 'civilised' behaviour to help her. Like many people who have experienced depression, she was skilled at managing and disguising it, although this took the form of withdrawing from the world and any contact. But, frankly, who wouldn't? Depression is a badge of shame, especially for a professional adult -- it's characterised as irrational, irresponsible, somehow dirty -- and somehow avoidable. As if exercise/diet/sleep/sense could cancel it out.

I'm angry because I feel that the world has let her down, the world that she was promised if she worked hard (she did), achieved academically and socially, was polite, friendly, a 'good girl', stood up for herself, did everything she was supposed to -- to inherit what? A damaged society where women are still not taken seriously (women in full-time work stand to earn £369,000 less than men in the same jobs, it was reported today, and in part-time work the gap is even bigger). A blinkered society where oppression gets passed around in whispers. Where a male boss with wandering hands is par for the course. Where a writer of colour is told to write something "more Brick Lane" because no-one will read/believe a book about a woman of colour going to Cambridge. Where the US president could use feminism to justify bombing Afghanistan "back to the stone age."

These are some of the things we talked about, in lively tones of setting the world to rights, when we met -- a first conversation that went on for hours and promised several more, as well as book exchanges, movie screenings, gossip... the things that make up a life. It makes me furious that someone so clear-eyed, so talented, so vivid and with so much to offer found nowhere she could reach out for help.

So: no more suicides. What can we do -- as friends, as mothers, daughters, fellow workers? As ourselves, survivors of suicidal attempts or ideations? Where do we start to change the culture around depression? How do we talk about suicide honestly, instead of covering it over in shame? Where is the charity on the scale of breast cancer research that offers acute counselling and care to people struggling with depression?

Some places to start, if you need someone to talk to and have come across this blog. Please, please ask for help:

Samaritans (UK)
Befrienders (Worldwide)

If you're looking for counselling that is sensitive to issues around gender and sexuality, including body image, abuse, sexual identity and transitioning, you can contact:

WCREC (Toronto)
The Pink Practice (London)