The Agony, Loss, Suffering, Sadness, Emptiness & Perhaps Peace of Suicide
Recently, two of my business peers suicided in the same week.
My main source of income comes through Internet Marketing and specifically helping my brother and his wife with their real estate business in San Ramon, CA. It was a sad day when I heard that a friend and real estate colleague who I admired and liked had committed suicide. It took me aback as he always seemed so positive and he did so much to help others. According to friends, he had a history of depression and had recently broken up with a woman he was madly in love with. He went to his storage shed and put a gun to his head.
A few days later, I heard that another Realtor and colleague had also committed suicide. It seems his financial challenges brought him to a point of despair and hopelessness that led to suicide.
These aren’t my first intersections with suicide or death. In my family, suicide has always been frowned upon and carried a stigma of cowardice and personal deficiency. I think my father contributed most to this attitude, which isn’t surprising being the military man he was – heavy on judgment and short on compassion and empathy.
As I reflected on the loss of these two friends, the lives and circumstances they left, and the shock felt in the local communities, I recalled the times I had felt so despondent and hopeless that thoughts of suicide entered my brain. As a teen, I think I had more than a few thoughts of suicide as I went through periods of inadequacy and feeling like nobody gave a damn about me and that my presence would not be missed. Those moments of angst were imbued with a distorted sense of martyrdom.
As an adult, I once followed a stream of suicidal thought into a very dark place. It was that exploration that helped me to see the value of deep psychological and emotional exploration. That inquiry has served me well as I have encountered other times when depression, emptiness and hopelessness seemed all-consuming.
What I notice with these two recent suicides is loss, sadness, love and appreciation for two very different, but the same, friends. I notice that my everyday separating boundaries become porous and the experience is more we than me and them. I am blessed to recognize no sense of judgment from my past conditioning.
There’s a lot of sweetness and appreciation for us all.
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