Dear Suicide

For years you stalked my son’s brain, took it hostage, lied to him and made him feel worthless and undeserving of life. At first he was frightened and confused but unwilling to tell us how much he hurt.

Because when you deposit pain you inject shame.

Charles didn’t understand because he didn’t know who you were, how unrelenting and convincing you could be, or how you’d come back over and over to torture him. Over time, you wore him down until he was desperate for solutions. He thought he found it when he first started using — marijuana and alcohol at first, graduating to stronger drugs and finally heroin.

He took that first hit and felt good for the first time in ages. How could something that made him feel that good be wrong?

You were quick to endorse that logic and he was able to escape for a short while. You were patient and knew it would make him even more vulnerable to your lies. You salivated at the opportunity–your recent success at taking young lives having fed your greedy ego.

You are not a solution but you made Charles think you were. He put pictures up of family on every wall of every bed he slept in to remind him why he needed to stay. He didn’t want to die. But when he went through withdrawal that last time, the walls wouldn’t hold hope, and his resolve frayed at the edges when I failed to recognize obvious signs of suicide.

I know now. I didn’t know then. But then shock and surprise are your specialty and stigma enables you to slide in and take over.

You are often invisible, covered by the mask of a clown. Charles wore that disguise and few saw the pain behind it including me. And in an ugly twist of fate, you finally got your way. And I hate you for it.

Is my story is too ugly?