Choices

To live this life we must each make choices.

These decisions can be made actively or passively, verbally or tacitly, but whether we engage in action or inaction, decisions are ultimately made.

This week someone close to my little family attempted suicide.

She was unsuccessful in her bid, but her actions have a not so insignificant impact on my daughters.

Suicide is a choice.

If someone is intent on ending his or her own life, he or she will eventually do so.

There is nothing I or anyone else can say or do to prevent that from happening.

I know there are twenty-four hour suicide watches. I know there are medications and therapy for depression. However, despite the best of intentions, if someone has no desire to live and seeks the darkness of eternity, that person will finally succeed.

Each of us is fundamentally responsible for himself or herself.

No manner of support, intervention, mollycoddling or anything else will make a damn bit of difference. The person in crisis has to discover, then commit to the value of his or her life.

I know and understand the impairment of depression and how it clouds reason and judgment. I am not unsympathetic or uncompassionate regarding the severity of the condition and its impact on an individual.

While willing to render support, love, and aide to someone in need, I do not believe I or anyone else is responsible for another's suicide.

I choose to use the life events which surround us as teaching tools for my children. I shield them as much as I can from a lot of the harshness of reality, but the older they become, the less I actively engage in withholding certain information from them.

I want my children to be children and enjoy the pleasures of an essentially carefree existence where they are not forced to face the often harsh and grim world in which we live; however, they also need to know and understand that reality is not sugarplum fairies, gumdrop trees or rivers of chocolate.

Wee One is far too young to know or understand anything about suicide or what leads a person down that path.

Sweet One is mature for her almost thirteen years. She had been privy to the bits and pieces of the phone calls and discussions regarding the attempt and she exercised restraint in not making inquiry; however, I knew she knew something was going on.

I am also painfully aware that the age-group with the highest rate of suicide is teenagers.

Thus, it was with great thought and consideration I broached the subject with her.

Her first question: Is suicide hereditary?

Her second question: What could be so bad that someone would want to die?

While we briefly touched on the specifics of this one individual's situation, I shifted the focus from there to suicide in general and teenage suicide specifically. I felt I needed to give her the tools to cope with the pain and adversity she might one day face.

I did my homework and gave her the statistics. She was shocked, of course.

Why teenagers?

We covered the usual suspects: the difficulty in dealing with leaving the world of childhood behind and slowing morphing into adulthood; the struggle to find one's place or niche in the fishbowl world of school and other groups; the not so subtle effects of hormones; experimentation with drugs and alcohol; the heartbreak of rejection and first love. We covered a wide variety of topics.

Fortunately, she is accustomed to my matter-of-fact and no-nonsense approach to relaying information, as well as my often questionable humor.

She knows my goal is not to be her absolute bestest friend in the whole wide world, but to be the best mother I can possibly be.

I've outlined more than once for her what my role as mother entails: to provide for her, protect her, teach her, and help mold and guide her into being the very best human she can be.

I try to do all those things with unconditional love, the absolute best and most accurate facts I can provide, and open arms to welcome her home whether she has screwed up or not. Then, there is the never-ending supply of freshly baked cookies and cakes to cheer her up when her day is something less than she wanted it to be.

With all we discussed, she kept coming back to one element running through all the possible causes for one to consider suicide: pain.

She could not fathom a pain so intense and powerful that it would make someone want to die and actively seek death.

I made a choice at that point to share something with my daughter I had hoped I would never have to because I did not want her to ever think less of me. I shared something with her because I felt and believed one day the lesson I learned might actually help her when she is cold, alone, and consumed by some unknown pain of her own, even though I pray for her, I pray she never has to experience any of that first hand.

I told her of a young woman who was newly married and at twenty-four was practicing law with one of the most influential law firms in the country. I described an accomplished young woman who was haunted with grave insecurities of her ability to meet the expectations of everyone around, as well as the too high expectations of her own. The young woman was plagued by guilt and self-doubt which filled her heart with a seemingly ceaseless pain that only appeared to grow with each passing day.

Without going into specific details, I told her the young woman woke up one day and when her husband asked if she was going to work, she replied: "I would rather put a gun to my head than get up and go to work."

Fortunately for the young woman, the husband took her seriously and immediately found someone in whom she trusted to share her load. Through many, many tears the young woman discovered things were not as bleak or dire as she had led herself to believe. With help, she was able to put things into better perspective and she learned that trusting her pain with others made it easier for her to not only carry the burden, but dispose of it.

A week after she uttered the fateful words: "I would rather put a gun to my head ..." the woman learned she was expecting her first child.

The child was Sweet One.