What I learned about people who commit suicide after years of judging them

“People who commit suicide are the single most selfish human beings on the planet! Do they even think of the shit they put their family and friends through when they do this?”

For 38 years or as long as I can remember anyway, this was my unwavering mindset. No empathy and no attempt to try and understand the “why” behind the action. Ignorantly, I have always been black and white about the subject. I wasn’t the only one either. Most of my friends were pretty much the same way. I once had an acquaintance in school commit suicide and distinctly remember thinking to myself… “What a piece of shit for not leaving a note or reaching out and getting help.” Then 2 experiences within 4 months completely uprooted my beliefs and has given me a degree of empathy and understanding that I never thought possible. In fact, I am ashamed of how i felt for so long. What really makes this story interesting is that the second experience is one that I am currently dealing with as I write this.

The Awakening:

In 1993 when I was 11 years old, a movie came on randomly that would forever change my life. It was called “The Pit and the Pendulum” starring Lance Henrikson and Rona De Ricci. Rona was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. It was also the first time I had ever seen a nude woman in a movie. I was so moved by this movie because of my love for stories of justice where those who are taken advantage of get the last laugh at the end. (Natalie Portman, if you are judging this article… This is why I loved you in The Professional!) I watched the Edgar Allen Poe adaptation over 100 times and knew every line of dialogue as if I had written the movie myself. Not bad for 11 years old. (Sidenote… I really love movies!) There wasn’t internet back then, or in my house anyway, and so I would have my mom take me to Blockbuster video and I would spend hours looking through the titles to find any other movie with Rona De Ricci. Sadly, I never found one until years later.

As with all movies that move me deeply or have had an impact on my childhood, I make it a habit to get on Google every few years and check on the cast and see what they are up to, what new projects they are working on, and how things are going for them. Some went on to become big stars, some quit acting and got regular jobs, and some traded in the spotlight for roles behind the scenes. I mean who would have thought the little boy in the low budget 2002 film “The Count of Monte Cristo” would become Superman!!

March 15, 2021.

I am up in bed looking at restaurants to take my wife for her birthday which is on March 22nd and she’s fast asleep next to me. I can’t sleep so I just start Googling. Earlier that day, I had listened to a podcast episode with actor/director Viggo Mortensen on how hard it was to raise funding for his passion project that he was directing and starring in called “Falling.” He was speaking about the movie when he mentioned that his father in the movie was Lance Henrikson. Right when I heard his name, a flood of memories came rushing in and I googled the old movie that had shaped my childhood. I really only cared about one person in the movie anyway.. and that was Rona De Ricci. To my disappointment however, I could not find anything about her. She starred in one other movie and then it was as if she fell off the face of the planet. No wikipedia, no websites, no news, nothing. I kept digging as if I was some sort of private detective determined to find answers when I came across an Instagram named @thehumanrevolution2020. At first I thought this could not be hers as there were only 42 followers but to my shock, I later discovered it was in fact hers. There were 71 posts. Most of them pictures she had took, one of a memoir she had just published, and the final pic was a note that haunts me to this day. A Suicide note. I started to cry as I read the unbelievably sad note but immediately shifted my attention to trying to prove it wasn’t true and that someone pretending to be her wrote it. “This can’t be real,” I thought, because there was no obituary online, nothing on all of the internet saying she had died, and no records of anything. I challenge anyone reading this to try and find it. I did, however, confirm that she took her life by reaching out to some of the people who knew her. She intended to do it a year earlier I read, but held on until her memoir was finished.

There is a paragraph in the note that impacted me so deeply, and challenged my long held beliefs so abruptly, that I set myself on a path to gain a deep understanding of the “why” behind those who take their lives. Here is that paragraph…

“For those who don’t comprehend suicide, I offer this: no one wants to die, it is the agony that we want to end. Think that you are in a building engulfed with fire, all exits are shut, and the only escape is to jump out of a window, some do it. After all, what is in the back is as bad, and it is inevitable.”

I ordered her memoir the next morning and read the entire thing in one day. By the end, I understood how she arrived at her decision. For those that are curious and decide to purchase the book, don’t expect an adventure, or some entertaining tale that has sharp dramatic moments. This story is real life. It’s the day to day events of a woman with big dreams of being an actress who gave up those dreams when she realized what powerful men in Hollywood expected of her if she wanted to “make it big.” Let’s just say that the #Metoo movement was one of the most important movements in our lifetime and rightfully so. She quit Hollywood, married a blue collar man, started a family, and the majority of the book are the events that happened as she raised her family. Quite opposite of the American dream in fact. She had two kids, and the entire book is a downward spiral. First financially, then divorce, then a shattered relationship with her kids, then loneliness, then hopelessness, then suicide. She ended her life all alone in Europe and waited to publish the memoir before doing it. I shiver as I write this and not just because it was a tragic and unnecessary end to a beautiful person, but after reading the memoir, I understood how a series of events and decisions could lead a completely normal and put together person to arrive at the outcome where the only logical choice in their mind is “ending it.”

This was my “Awakening.” I like to say that this first experience was my awakening and my second in which I am about to share was my “Understanding.” Never again will I judge or criticize those with suicidal thoughts, and those who aren’t able to see the silver lining in their own lives. As I gained this understanding, I started to actually research some of the great people who have taken their lives such as Robin Williams, Ernest Hemingway, and Avicii, and in that research I realized that there was so much more than meets the eye. The demons they were battling were Hell on Earth to them and the pain was just too much to bear. After Rona’s story, I had an outside understanding of how people can arrive at the fatal choice. What I was still lacking, was a deep internal understanding and to be honest.. I am not sure this can be grasped until you are face to face with it yourself.

That brings me to the second experience. One that I am still battling, although I feel that I will win. However, nothing will take away the memory of the thoughts that came in to my mind in those first 2 weeks. I am forever changed.

Fathers Day 2021. It’s June 19th and my wife gets us a room at the nicest hotel in Nashville. It’s called Opryland Hotel, and a few of our friends also got rooms so we could all celebrate at the massive indoor/outdoor waterpark connected to the hotel since we all have young kids. I have 3 daughters. 2 from my ex-wife who live in Canada, and my 4 year old Mia who I have with my current wife. My first marriage was when I was young and stupid, but we have a great relationship and I see my kids often. On this day however, they were in Canada. It was a warm sunny day and we spent all day at the water park, then had dinner, and then headed to bed.

For reference, I am 38, I eat healthy, I exercise daily, and I don’t have much stress in my life. I have always been a very positive person and extremely logical. I have never suffered from any type of depression or anxiety except one time I once suffered a serious bout of loneliness when I was in the Navy after our first 6 month deployment was announced, but I classified this as just a normal feeling. After all, I was about to leave my family and friends for half a year. Falling to sleep quickly no matter where I am has always been one of my superpowers.

Not tonight. Tonight in that hotel after a fun and fulfilling day, I try to sleep. I am exhausted from the water park. However, every time I doze off, a jolt of adrenaline hits me so hard that my heart starts racing and I feel like I am going to have a panic attack. 15 min go by and I calm down, get sleepy, and the second I doze off, it happens again. After 2 hours of this, I am scared to even try to sleep so I stay up the whole night. The next day I am tired as hell and logically trying to deduce why that happened. I get on Google,(bad idea) and find a million reasons from anxiety to auto-immune disorders and just info all over the place.

The second night it happens again. I don’t sleep for 2 seconds. On the third day I am starting to worry and panic. “What the fuck is going on,” I tell myself. That 3rd night I take everything…. Nyquil, Melatonin, Benadryl, and then tell myself if it happens again, I am going to the doctor. Third night.. happens again. No matter how tired I am, the moment I start to fall asleep, the jolt hits. My heart beats fast, and I am wide awake in panic. I called the doctor the next day, but he was full and could only get me in the following day. Fourth night.. Same thing. On day 5, the “Experience” happens. I haven’t slept in days, I am worried, I am panicking, and I feel all alone. My wife feels bad for me, my family knows of my issues, but nobody really understands because they aren’t going through it. I am scared of the bedroom and the thought of trying to sleep terrifies me. Thoughts enter my head that have never happened before. I am reading forums of people who haven’t slept in years, and they are talking about how their life and family has been ruined because of insomnia and how they feel every day is torture. They are literally begging the world for answers and hope. I can’t even function or think about anything else now. This is the day where a feeling of depression and hopelessness hit me like a ton of bricks. I remember clear as day thinking that “ I can’t continue like this.” It was torture. Midday after my wife comes home, I am just on the couch staring blankly. I have no energy, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t shake the negative thoughts out of my head. It was a mixture of hopelessness, anxiety, exhaustion, and then a feeling of regret. I started to regret all the things that I didn’t do with my life because deep down, I felt like I might die and not have the time to do them. In that moment… and I wish I had the words to describe it.. I understood why and how someone could justify in their mind that the best option moving forward was suicide. This is the moment I realized that it’s not the physical pain that’s the problem. It’s the mental anguish that accompanies it. I wasn’t at that point yet, but what I do know is the thought did briefly cross my mind that if this were to continue for a prolonged period of time like this…. Death would have been a better option.

My mentor once told me…. “Until the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change, we will never change.”

Well now I understood…. If someone concludes that the pain of staying alive is greater than the pain of death, then they will choose death.

It has been over a month since this happened, and I still don’t know what’s going on. The consensus at this point is somehow anxiety over something has manifested itself in a physical way. I have been to several doctors and had tests done, and crazy enough.. I am writing this at Starbucks and have an appt. today with an ex-surgeon turned holistic doctor who is going to run a million tests today. Mold, metals, Cortisol, Allergy, and Testosterone. You name it, I am going to test for it. After those first 5 days of no sleep I finally slept for 4 hours out of sheer and utter mind/body exhaustion. A couple days later, I went to Mexico for a week for a vacation I had planned months ago with my entire family, and thankfully the pharmacies there allow you to get whatever you want without a prescription and so I got some Xanax and it helped. I slept through the night for the first time. When I got back, my doctor prescribed Ambien which has also helped and I experiment days where I don’t take it… and every time I don’t.. I still don’t sleep a min. My mind has come back to me ever since sleeping but I will never EVER forget “The Experience.”

I now sit here writing this with such an empathy for anyone going through any type of pain, whether it be a loss, or a health issue, that I find myself crying for them in my car randomly. I am ashamed of my lack of empathy for so many years and although these 2 experiences have impacted me deeply.. I don’t regret them because I know that if they had not happened, I would still be that selfish asshole who believes that “thinking positive” is the solution to all problems. I am often reminded of the song by “Everlast,” called “What it’s like” where until you have walked a mile in someone’s shoes, don’t for a moment begin to think that you know the solutions to their problem.

Some questions are better left unanswered but now I know the answer to the question I have heard a thousand times by a thousand different people.

“How can someone so smart, or beautiful, or talented, with the whole world ahead of them just commit suicide?”

Not only do I know and feel the answer, but I am now aware of something far more sinister…. We are all closer to madness than we think. We never know what the death of a loved one, a serious health issue, or some devastating unforeseen circumstance can truly do to us even though we believe we may be prepared to handle it. No matter how put together you are or how optimistic, anxiety, and dark thoughts can arrive without warning and can be triggered without notice.

Now I don’t agree with suicide and I never will, but having that devil in my path has moved me in such a way that I wanted to share my experience with you. You may be reading this and can relate. Maybe you can’t. Regardless, I believe the world needs much more of people who can take a little time, and put themselves in the shoes of others before judging or criticizing.

I am going to start with me.