To Each Life Their Own
/By Mia Maysack, PNN Columnist
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a good time to write about a topic that needs more attention, but one that makes many of us uncomfortable: suicide.
I know people who have tried to end their lives. There was one who almost succeeded. I was still in decent enough health at the time to be working in the nursing field and it just so happened to be my hospital they were brought to. I entered the room in time to watch their stomach being pumped with charcoal, which is the process used to rid the body of whatever has been ingested.
After being revived, this person's first words to me were: "Why didn't you let me die?"
My already broken heart shattered once again into a million pieces. Being much younger at the time, I couldn't begin to understand and took the experience personally. Now I’m old enough to know that someone’s choices about their own life have absolutely nothing to do with me.
Fast forward a few years, and I found myself in a clinical support group at a time when my pain ran rampant and dictated every aspect of my existence. That’s what led me to the textbook-based, power-point class that was instructed by low-energy penny counters. I was that desperate for help.
During one session, we broke out into smaller groups. On one side of me, there was someone who'd lived in unmanageable pain for 40 years. They were fed up with prior authorizations, insurance hoops and failed treatment options, and confided to the group that they were making plans to move where medically assisted suicide was legal.
On my other side was someone who claimed they had never felt suicidal and couldn't begin to relate to the other person. In fact, it made them so uncomfortable that they excused themselves from the conversation and went to go tell on the other individual.
It's human nature to avoid discomfort, but we don't always know how to create space for others who are suffering without also judging them.
Between these two extremes, there was me -- literally and figuratively in the middle. After class, I watched as the instructors approached the individual in a hushed whisper and exchanged a slip of paper with a suicide hotline number on it.
I witnessed this person break down -- almost as if they were being scolded -- and couldn't help but think that if it was me standing on the edge and was essentially being told to go away and deal with it elsewhere, that might be the very last thing a person would do. And how that would be such a failure on our part.
It was then that I began my own support group network, which eventually evolved into more of a self-help resource because I personally feel that while support is important, it can only take us so far.
Despite living in agony, I spent many years clinging to my medical career. At one point I was working in hospice, where I was confronted daily by the truest definition of suffering -- seeing patients barely hanging on for the sake of their families, despite their desire to let go.
It was then I contemplated who is being more selfish. Is it the person who no longer wants to remain alive because they are already dead inside or those demanding that they go on living?
There's no right answer to that question. That isn't to belittle how anyone feels on either end of that spectrum, but more a rhetorical point to ponder.
For many reasons, these last couple of years have been the most difficult of my life and I came the closest I've ever been to ending my own life. Lack of hope is one of the most dangerous places to be. The darkness is all consuming.
I'm someone who is known for their positivity. It is noticed when I am not acting like myself or feeling a lower level of energy. People depend upon me to be level headed and focused on the more uplifting aspects of life, but that can be a heavy weight to bear at times.
It's a blessing to be in the position that I'm in and provide the type of counsel that I do. In fact, I now understand on a deeper level why my medical career meant so much to me. Showing up for others during their most trying times and hardest moments helped distract myself from my own inner turmoil.
The same can be said about advocacy. Showing up for others whether or not I feel up to it, guiding them to their own voice and sharing their truth is a way to make something out of my pain. Perhaps I've endured all that I have to gift others with what I've managed to learn. If being human was just about me and what I go through, there’s no way I’d be able to make it.
Mia Maysack lives with chronic migraine, cluster headache and fibromyalgia. Mia is the founder of Keepin’ Our Heads Up, a Facebook advocacy and support group, and Peace & Love, a wellness and life coaching practice for the chronically ill.
