ALICIA V PERRY

AN ANGEL WHO WENT HOME ALICA V PERRY

YESTERDAY I RECEIVED A PHONE call from my brother to tell me that my cousin had taken her own life. You think it’ll not happen to you until the day comes and that door closes never to open again. It’s so unfortunate that my cousin joins friends of mine who have also died by suicide. When someone leaves us in this way it is like a brain-bomb exploding in your head, unanswered questions piercing your mind like shrapnel. But how can do better?

I believe we need to look inwards and then make changes in our lives to reconnect with each other. We also need to change the conversation around suicide, in particular the terminology we use. We need to truly grasp the unnerving truth around suicide and better our compassion for those who lose their lengthy scrap with life. People commit crimes, a deliberate act, but people don’t commit suicide (a good point brought to me by a Twitter follower). Rather, people die by suicide or lose their battle with life, like my dear cousin who was a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, a niece, a cousin, a friend; an angel who just wanted to go home.

Mental health and suicide have become the new social media trend to display elaborate posts or tweets about how we need to ask for help, talk, speak up but yet the very same people don’t answer their phone when you call. Instead, replying with a text of their whereabouts and what they are doing. So busy living an enhanced life that they can’t talk but ‘is everything ok.’ There are only three ways to answer that, yes, no, or the truth and quite often you’ll get back yes when they really mean no. There is no other issue like suicide that research and understanding is limited within the capacity of suicide itself. Moreover, we can never go back and fully understand the concept of suicide however much we know it is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. We can’t go back and ask the person how they were feeling and how we could do better because they are angels now; they have gone home.

As a society, spearheaded by politicians, we are so separated and removed from the brutal reality of mental health and suicide but yet it is blatantly staring us in the face. We need to understand that if we really want to help the community in relation to this shocking epidemic then we need to go into that community to better appreciate their intrinsic tribulations, reassure firm commitment and inspire human connectivity to these delicate issues. We all know there is help there and readily available but we need to stop expecting vulnerable people to put themselves first when they do not possess the mental frame of mind to do just that. We are losing too many of our loved ones and we need urgent action NOW!

I said this back in 2017 and I will say it again, I believe Social Media is one of the greatest threats to mental health in a generation and it is responsible for a lot of the psychological pain and mental trauma we experience today. It is estimated that within just one minute over 350’000 tweets are sent and 2’460’000 posts are uploaded onto Facebook yet the more connected we are the lonelier we can feel. In a recent study of over 1’700 young adults, scientists from the University of Pittsburgh in the US found that only two hours of social media use per day doubles our chances of experiencing social isolation. Conversely, the increasing amount of time we spend on social media, decreases the time we would spend on real-world interactions in our quest for meaningful relationships. Undeniably loneliness can be the hardest thing to communicate to someone, even with the existing plethora of social media apps and that is because technology has taken the place of human interaction in our lives. It seems apparent that we have come to expect more from our social media and less from each other but remember, when angels go home they don’t come back. People who die by suicide don’t want to end their life; they simply want to end their pain. But suicide itself doesn’t eradicate pain and sorrow, it just passes it on to your loved ones ten-fold. More often than not suicide is a solitary occurrence and yet it has devastating repercussions for so, so many others. Imagine dropping a pebble into a pond, the impact sends circular ripples far and wide sweeping over anything in its path. That’s what happens when someone dies by suicide, they are the pebble and the ripples are a tsunami of heartache overwhelming those loved ones left behind. This needs to stop. Things need to change. We need to do better.

Life is too short. Respect, cherish and value each other. Be more kind, considerate and generous with each other because the saddest moments in life come when the person who gave you the best memories becomes a memory themselves.

Dedicated to Charlene – our Angel who went home.

This is an opinion piece from the columnist/contributor and not the opinion of GNI MAG / Romeo & Julian Publications Ltd.