ROBIN Williams’ suicide was really shocking and
heartbreaking. He touched a lot of lives, made a lot of people laugh, even when
he had pretty heavy stuff weighing on his soul. He made us laugh till we cried,
especially in MrsDoubtfire, which my
siblings and I watched ad nauseum. Yet
he felt his life sucked so much that he didn’t even want to breathe anymore. In
our naivety, we usually think rich people have it all, but here was a very rich
person taking his own life because he felt he had nothing to live for. It’s
extremely sad that he made people around the globe laugh, yet he could not make
himself happy.
People all over the world commit
suicide for various reasons, some which stop you in your tracks and ask
yourself why someone would want to kill themselves for a flimsy reason like
that. I found the suicide statistics from South Africa quite daunting. According
to the South African Federation for Mental Health, there are approximately 8
000 suicides a year. Suicide is ranked as the third greatest cause of unnatural
death in the country, with around 230 people trying to kill themselves daily,
while 23 succeeded. For something that takes so many lives, shouldn’t
organizations and governments be making as much noise about suicide as they do
about Ebola, HIV and Aids?
According to the article,
research showed that psycho-social factors such as untreated mental illness,
substance abuse, family problems, trauma, rape, and poverty could contribute to
suicidal feelings. The World Health Organisation found that despite the high
number of suicides across the globe, help for people thinking of committing
suicide was not prioritised in the public health system.
I know a good number of people
whose loved ones took their own lives. It leaves people in pieces. My friend Alex’s
brother committed suicide by taking rat poison. Alex said this left the family
in a very bad emotional space:
“It’s a very
painful experience and it leaves you with a lot of questions like why, how
come, where did it go wrong? The saddest thing is you keep blaming yourself…’I
could have done this or that, maybe it could have been a different outcome.’
You always wonder and sometimes you just try not to think or talk about it”, he
said.
The brother had expressed his
suicidal thoughts, and the family had tried to support him. He appeared to have changed
his mind after the talk, so it came as a surprise when he killed himself
anyway.
“I wish he had given me or the
family more time to help him because we were trying to talk and help him as
soon as we realized we had a problem. The problem is such issues don’t give you
time,” said Alex.
I just wish people would talk to
those close to them, and accept help, when they feel they are hitting brick
wall after brick wall in their lives. There are solutions to most problems we
encounter in the walk of life. And when there aren’t, then we need to accept
that there are some crosses that we carry throughout our lives without ever
putting them down. Everybody has them, some have worse. They are burdensome,
but we can figure out how to make life beautiful, or at least passable while
carrying those crosses.
For me, suicide can range from
deliberately killing oneself using a method of one’s choice like hanging,
throwing oneself in front of a moving train, taking rat poison, slitting one’s
wrists, whatever. The most popular weapon of choice in Swaziland appears to be
weevil tablets.
Suicide can also involve living
life on self-destructive mode, making a chain of reckless choices, until one
loses it. People who live like this are the kind of people, who when they die,
are referred to as having dug their own graves. One might feel so overwhelmed
by life’s problems and start drinking or abusing drugs so much that they become
a worthless individual who loses possessions like phones, jobs, wife or
partner, and eventually life itself. This loss of life can be a result of
driving under the influence, brawls, or some other irresponsible behavior.
Others might get so rash that they get promiscuous and end up contracting HIV
and be so embarrassed or depressed that they won’t take medication. They will
die a slow and very painful death.
When people commit any form of
suicide, they feel worthless and that nobody cares or can help them. But these
are not just their lives. Every time somebody dies, there are people who suffer
massive heartbreaks; family members who have precious memories of the dead
person, friends who grew up with the person, or people from the person’s past
who would have hoped to reconnect at some point. There are a lot more people
involved in our lives than we know. Nobody is a “nobody”. Everyone has people that care about them.
They might be few but they are there. And help is there all around us, if we
look in the right places. I think people just shouldn’t get hysterical in
crises, so that they can have the presence of mind to
look for healthier options, not suicide.
My friend Peace Mwelase aptly put
it when he said, “I wish we could read our obituaries before we died”. That
would surely make us realise that there are people who regard us in high esteem
in this world and love us very much, regardless of our status in society. Our lives are so intertwined with other
people’s, so much that we can’t really claim that our lives, in all entirety,
are ours. When people commit suicide, whether quickly or slowly, they die
together with bits of other people’s hearts, those who value them regardless of
how little they thought of themselves. So essentially they would have murdered
themselves and other people's souls.
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