Letter from an Unfilled Grave

Today, I had the profoundly odd experience of reading someone else's suicide note. The person in question chose a particularly non-lethal method, and is chilling out on my inpatient unit. However, he left a three-page note to his family, which we found in the back of his chart. Reading it, even in a well-lit unit with lots of noise, is an eerie experience. We all, like Walter Mitty, walk around with a screenplay in our heads. Sometime today, you've daydreamed about the conversation you might have with a friend, or partner, or co-worker, if only there were no tomorrow and no consequences.

This note is one man's personal drama, poured out on the page. Without going into too much detail, it is the last lament of a bright, but nerdy man who was socially awkward in high school, never got the hang of this "dating" thing, and found himself approaching middle age without any hope of having the relationship he'd wanted for decades. On one level, it's heart-breaking, because this whole mess could have been prevented if only one person had reached out along the way. I think I respond to it in particular because I can see aspects of my own teens-to-twenties in his life, and realize how close I might have come to being this guy. On another level, it makes me want to strangle the patient. He deliberately kept all of this, including a suicide plan in place for years, carefully concealed from his family, friends, and everyone around him. One single "help me", and he'd have been in a much healthier place, years ago. In that sense, the note reads like a paean of self-pity and misplaced pride. Of course, that's depression for you. It distorts your world to the point that killing yourself seems like a more rational option than calling your parent or sibling. And, for all we try, our lovely society continues to attach such stigma to it that people would rather die than admit they're depressed.

This guy got lucky, or perhaps he finally managed to find a way to ask for help while preserving his ego. Either way, he's got a solid chance. I went to college and grad school with a LOT of people who aren't too far away from being him. Chances are, you know someone like this. Shy, nervous, a little geeky, but nice. You wouldn't date him, but he'd be good material if he just cleaned up a little and got over his fear of rejection. Or, maybe his problem isn't romance, it's jobs. Or research. Or any other failure-prone endeavour. Take a moment to think of whoever you know fits that description, and see if you maybe couldn't do one thing to get his head screwed on a bit more tightly. You might save his life.