Every single one of us knows someone who lives with anxiety, depression or another form of mental illness. Your best friend, your coworker, your professor. Any one of them could be experiencing thoughts of suicide. Conrad Roy was, too.
Eighteen-year-old Michelle Carter’s defense attorney claimed in a Bristol County Juvenile Court on Wednesday that text messages between her and Roy, her boyfriend, allegedly urging him to commit suicide are protected speech under the First Amendment, The Boston Globe reported. Judge Bettina Borders “refused to dismiss an involuntary manslaughter charge” against Carter, after the messages allegedly drove her boyfriend to filling the cabin of his truck with engine fumes.
“Like, why am I so hesitant lately. Like two weeks ago I was willing to try everything and now I’m worse, really bad and I’m LOL not following through. It’s eating me inside,” one message from Roy read, according to MassLive.
“There is a point that comes where there isn’t anything anyone can do to save you, not even yourself,” a message from Carter read, according to the Globe.
The morning of Roy’s suicide, he drove his car to a Kmart parking lot and waited for the carbon monoxide to take hold. At one point, the Globe reported, he exited the vehicle “because (the carbon monoxide poisoning) was working and he got scared.” He then spoke with Carter on the phone for about 40 minutes, then got back into the car. His body was found the next day.
What’s so horrific about this is that it would seem Carter knew exactly what she was doing. She told him she loved him. She toyed with his emotions. “I would never leave you. You’re the love of my life, my boyfriend. You are my heart. I’d never leave you,” she said, according to MassLive. And she coerced him into killing himself even when he expressed doubt. She is, to put it frankly, culpable in his death. But of course, that’s for a judge to decide.
Roy’s case is an extreme one — the one person he thought he could turn to for help was the one who hurt him in the end. It’s difficult to think that Roy could’ve been saved, had someone who had truly cared about him realized his pain. If that’s a possibility we all face, then it’s one we should all be prepared for.
Where do our responsibilities lie in helping our friends who experience thoughts of suicide? It seems imperative that the second someone comes to you, you’re entrusted with that information. In the case of suicide, there’s no such thing as an innocent bystander — the minute you suspect, you are a participant.
Failing to act, then, is a crime in its own right, a moral offense if not a legal one. Feigning ignorance gets you nowhere in other extreme cases of danger — if one were to hear word of a potential bomb threat and not immediately tell authorities, he or she would be subject to investigation and prosecution if the bomb went off.
But how much can we insert ourselves into someone else’s life? We would like to imagine that those close to us would be comfortable enough to have a conversation about their mental state. And part of us wants them to reach out first. But this isn’t reality. Many people won’t talk about their thoughts. The stigma surrounding mental health in the United States prevents us from starting these conversations with our friends because it’s awkward, and we don’t want the comfort within our friendships to be lost. But at what point is it time to say something? And what do we say? It may be best to just offer our hands. To ask our friends if everything is alright. To make sure we validate what they are feeling. Idle threats are calls for help — maybe we can even see the signs ourselves without being directly told that something is wrong.
After all, those of us who haven’t experienced thoughts of suicide can’t claim in any way, shape or form to understand those thoughts. Many of us can’t understand the rationality. But what’s important to realize is that these thoughts don’t actually come from a rational place. Whether it is due to a lack of education or the way we regard mental illness in our country, we often grossly misunderstand what people are going through.
This passage from the novel “Infinite Jest” gives us a clue: “The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view … when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really.”
Twelve years after publishing that, author David Foster Wallace, too, committed suicide.
In other words, those who consider killing themselves believe that they are taking a path to the lesser of two horrid, taunting evils. It is a sickness that festers into deciding that ending everything is your best option.
Understanding that, we can’t simply stand by and hope that someone else will take care of the situation. We can’t walk by a fire and hope that someone else will report it — chances are, they won’t. The same goes for protecting our friends.
Reach out. Try to understand. Break down the walls that surround mental illness. And, if need be instead, ask for help.
