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Happy New Year! Yay, we made it out of the highs and lows, the thrills and chills of the holidays. Many believe December is our deadliest month, when suicide rates soar.
It’s imperative that we all erase that myth. Truth is, spring is our most dangerous season. We’ve survived winter’s harshness, but now as flowers bloom, days brighten, and our bodies revive, we might wonder how it is that we’re struggling worse than ever. The question of “is that all there is?” can become palpable.
This links to expert discussion on the whens and whys of suicide occurrences. There’s more on how important it is that we know about the role of seasonality (Australian’s monthly fatality rates are the inverse of here in the U.S.) at this link. This official site addresses how media should report accurately. For free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals in the United States, dial 988 or click here.
Putting together these brief paragraphs leaves me breathless with sadness. This older guest blog post and this other one about a dear friend discussed suicide as well.
It takes incredible courage to share about when suicide has touched one’s immediate family. Fortunately for us, today’s guest, writer/blogger Marie Zhuikov, (her author site is here) is a brave soul indeed.
By day, Marie is an award-winning science writer and communications project manager whose specialties are environmental and medical topics, and that’s just the start.
By night, she authored award-winning eco-mystic romance novels for new adults, short stories, a blog-memoir, and a soon-to-be-out collection of magical realism short stories.
By Happiness Between Tails standards, she’s a super heroine…
Putting the “Happy” back into New Year’s Eve by Marie Zhuikov
New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day used to trigger me. The triggering event happened during college in the early 1980’s when I was living away from home for the first time in Minneapolis. My parents called shortly after New Year’s Day, saying that my sister Debby who lived in California had tried to commit suicide.
They didn’t know it at the time, but Debby actually made three attempts in quick succession, all of which failed. At first, she tried pills, but woke up. Secondly, she tried to slash her wrists, but it hurt too much. The third time, she used a gun. She put a pillow between her head the gun.
I don’t know if the pillow had anything to do with it or if her aim was just bad, but the bullet didn’t kill her. However, it did cut her optic nerve and make her unable to walk. It also left her with short-term memory problems.
My parents rushed out to California to be with Debby. As she stabilized, they stayed there for several months, eventually deciding to bring her back to Minnesota.
College was already stressing me out. My dreams of becoming a biologist had been dashed by huge, impersonal calculus and chemistry classes, where I floundered. I was studying via a scholarship that required a B average.
I stopped going to class. I had never had trouble academically before and was in the honors program at college. I didn’t know what to do. My whole identity as a smart kid was shattered and I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep.
One day, as I walked across a tall bridge over the Mississippi River on campus, that bridge looked like an enticing escape – a quick way out of my problems. I stopped in the middle, looking over the railing at the muddy brown Mississippi tracked with white streaks of foam. It would be so easy to lean over the railing and fall into the beckoning water – move with it to another place, another state of being. I wouldn’t have to feel bad for skipping classes, wouldn’t have to go through the work of finding another major, wouldn’t have to tell my parents about my failure. I could just tip over and give in . . .
Then, still standing at the railing, I was hit with the sensation of falling: the wind rushing through my ears, the terror of sudden weightlessness. I was falling, falling. Then came the hard smack of oblivion.
Shook, I stepped away from the railing and kept walking. I took a paved path that followed the riverbank, walking for miles and miles wondering what that had been. The experience had been so real – like I’d actually jumped. There was no way I was going to jump now. What I had felt was too scary – too tangible. So, what did that leave for me to do?
Face reality, that’s what. During Christmas break, I told my parents the bad news about my grades. I had flunked out of both chem and calc, but on a bright note, I received an A in beginning poetry. I cried as I told them. I felt like such a failure.
My parents were understanding, however, and helped me set up an appointment with my academic advisor. The advisor suggested that I take classes I enjoyed. She hoped this would help my academic confidence return.
So, it was into this emotional milieu that Debby’s suicide attempts entered. Debby was twelve years older than me (the baby of the family). In the aftermath, I learned that my parents and brothers had all sheltered me from many unsavory incidents and details about her life. They thought I was too young, too sensitive. That sheltering backfired. I was almost as upset by discovering all this behind-the-scenes intrigue as I was by my sister’s serious medical condition. It made me feel like an alien in my own family, like I had never really belonged.
But my sister’s suicide attempts also made me see how selfish suicide was. I’d like to think that if Debby ever realized what her suicide attempts would do to her family, she never would have gone through with them. It made me so relieved I had never acted on my similar impulse.
I never told anyone about my suicidal thoughts or about the strange thing that happened to me on the bridge. But I did end up seeing a therapist on campus because of Debby and my feelings about my family. Unfortunately, the therapist was of little help. She came up with some diagnosis based on birth order, but she got my place in the order wrong, so her whole theory was invalid. She obviously hadn’t been listening to me closely!
But, one thing another therapist who did my intake interview said was helpful. He suggested I allow myself to feel my feelings for 20 minutes every evening – to release the feelings and then go from there. I also began journaling – something I hadn’t done for years. It’s a practice I continue until this day.
Eventually, I found my way to major in science journalism and I got my academic mojo back. But New Years was never the same. I found I couldn’t be alone during the holiday. The thought would make me panic. Maybe it was because I was thinking of Debby being alone then, trying one suicide attempt after another. I had to be with people. Had to have some sort of revelry or activity going on so that I couldn’t think or feel too much.
Debby lived for seventeen more years in a nursing home, unable to walk or to see. I would give my parents a break and visit her weekly during summers when I was home and during holidays. She also had trouble using her arms, so I would feed her lunch or supper during my visits, her mouth opening like a little bird’s.
Despite her disabilities, Debby did have a life of sorts. Her biting sense of humor returned. She enjoyed chatting with her roommate and the other residents. She became a cheerleader of sorts, always trying to buoy the residents’ spirits. She enjoyed listened to books on cassette tape and to music.
Before her “suicide” she had been a beauty. Her vanity remained, although she couldn’t see herself. She’d ask repeatedly (thanks to her memory issues) what her hair looked like. In her older years, the safest thing to say was that she sported “silver highlights.” You could in no way tell her that her hair was gray!
The thing that finally took her at age forty-nine was small, insidious: a germ. Debby died of a urinary tract infection gone wild, her body riddled with sepsis. Even though I was living in town at the time, my parents didn’t tell me Debby was ill until she was already dead. Then they wanted me to go with them to the nursing home to see her. That was another emotional shock I’m still working on forgiving them for, even though both of my parents are dead now.
I raced to the nursing home, but of course, Debby was already lying still and dead in her bed. I had no chance to say goodbye. No chance to tell her I loved her and wished her life had been different. No chance to thank her for the lessons she taught me.
The fact that Debby lived so long after her suicide attempts reinforced my New Year’s phobia. Now, it’s been twenty-three years since she died. Over the course of those years, surviving New Years in a variety of ways, including on my own, I feel like I’ve overcome the trauma.
Time has lessened the pain, but also, thinking of others has helped me shift my focus from myself. I try to make sure the people I’m with on New Year’s Eve feel seen and heard, that they have fun. That nobody thinks about offing themselves. It’s not all about me!
I suspect that focusing on other people is key to overcoming many forms of distress. Sometimes you just need to get out of your own way.
I have Debby to thank for opening my eyes to the pain that suicide, whether successful or not, causes in others and for helping me realize how precious life is, no matter what form it takes.
I can safely say that my New Year’s Eves are happy once again. I look forward to the new year. I make resolutions. I give a toast to Debby. I embrace another year of life.
Pass it along: dial 988 or click here for free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for individuals and professionals in the U.S.
Helping others can help us. Do you know someone or an organization that could use your help?
Happiness Between Tails by da-AL 
[…] Tails da-AL hosts science writer Marie Zhuikov, equipped with data and personal experience to talk about suicide myths. […]
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