Content Note: Suicide

By Amber Butts

come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed. – Lucille Clifton

I remember the first time one of my friends told me they were experiencing suicidal ideation. She didn’t use those words. We were in the sixth grade and left the classroom during recess because our friends were playing with Ouija boards. I contacted the school counselor, who had already shown herself to be ill-equipped to handle my period coming for the first time. I said, “My friend is saying some weird things and she needs help.” The counselor called my friend and me into the office. I waited for 25 minutes outside. She contacted my friend’s parents and the friend claimed I made the whole thing up. She lived.

Black childrens experiences with suicide are not new, just newly “documented.” This documentation comes with specific standards and expectations, almost always includes interference from the state, and uses certain descriptors. Black children have been experiencing suicidal ideation for centuries. And why not? Black children often bear the brunt of this anti-Black world. They are bullied, surveilled, handcuffed, slammed to the ground and sat on. They are experiencing depression, homophobia, anxiety. It is not out of line with these realities that the rate of Black children committing suicide has tripled.

Ten years ago, another friend got into it with their white partner. Their partner called the police and got them “voluntarily” admitted into John George. I was unable to contact them for 18 days. When they were released, I picked them up and they said they didn’t want to talk about it. I remember being thankful because I didn’t like the way the place smelled and I didn’t like imagining them there. My aunt used to work at John George and I remember the horror stories, the men that groped without her permission. One day I waited in her car while she went in to grab some items and when she came out, one of the orderlies had just bound a man who tried to stab her.

My friend got back with their partner, who continued to call the police and/or encourage them to self-admit, claiming they were just trying to help. I wanted to help my friend too. I wanted to save them from the relationship with their white partner who didn’t (or worse, did) understand the physical and psychological trauma of a Black person experiencing suicidal ideation and having a white police officer show up at the door.

Black folks are often psychically and emotionally tortured in psych wards. Is it fair to assume help always means being forced into a place where Black folks are then and again treated as inhuman? Is support witnessing their pain in these sterile, anti-Black environments? Are we really saviors or are we mirroring the actions of the state and whiteness?

When my friend left the hospital after being pressured by their partner the next time, I wanted them to promise to never attempt to harm themselves again. I asked them to promise me. And they did. They moved into a new apartment and started going to school. We went to parties, brunch and went on walks as if nothing had happened.

And then it happened again. This time without the white partner and without the voluntary-ness of it all. I called a mutual friend to come over and “watch” our friend while I searched for options. I knew not to call their parent.

After urging my friend to call the emergency suicide prevention hotline, they became comatose. They wouldn’t respond to anything. I went outside to get some air and when I came back in, the mutual friend “let them” go to the restroom. My friend locked themself in the restroom and wouldn’t respond to any of our questions. I panicked. I imagined all the things in that restroom that could kill them quickly and easily. At one point, they begged through the door to be left alone. They said, “Leave me here please. Just be quiet for a minute. Be quiet!”

I tried to break the door open. I called their name out, tried everything to get them to respond. Instead of leaving them alone, I called psychiatric emergency responders, who eventually called the police. My friend was taken to a psychiatric hospital in Berkeley that was known for “treating their patients like people and not like patients.” They were not treated like a person.

It occurred to me to ask what my friend wanted to happen, but I didn’t because then that would confirm I deliberately went against what they wanted. I didn’t ask if what I was doing felt like love. I didn’t think of anything but keeping them alive. I didn’t ask because I didn’t really care if they consented into it. I just wanted it to look like I did. I would make them live, even if they didn’t want to.

Are the ones we “love” able to choose death, or is our relationship with them about ownership, possession and obligation? If it is, we are not allowed living or dying as our full selves.

Right before my grandma would whup us with her cowhide, she would say, “Don’t you disrespect me. I brought you into this world, I can take you out.” My aunts and uncles and I would line up and she would give us the opportunity to tell on each other. We usually didn’t and she’d say, “Well I guess everybody is getting it. You brought this on yourselves.” My uncle Travis would hide underneath the same bunk bed every night. My grandma would then push him out and chase him around the house. He’d eventually get tired and give in. Sometimes she gave up, other times she had a renewed anger.

When we’d get these whuppins, I always wondered why she called it a cowhide. Why she was drawn to switches and wet tiny branches that sliced the earth, the ground, our butts? One time I told her she didn’t bring me into this world. That that was what my mama did and she said she brought my mama into it, so it was basically the same thing. What I was really asking was why she wanted to remind me/us so thoroughly of our place of non-agency in this world? I wanted to ask why our lives weren’t our own. I wanted to know why we had so little control and decision making in our trajectories and endings. I wanted to tell her that we didn’t deserve that. I didn’t have those words then.

Hospitals have a history of ignoring Black patients’ pain. Often times, these patients die and/or are diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses afterwards. I was not the friend my friend needed me to be. I allowed my inability to imagine life without them to cloud my judgement and ignore their pain. They became my project, my patient, my marker. I moved this fear and imagined loss by placing it on someone who was already dying. Someone who trusted me to help them in whichever way they needed. I didn’t do that.

Some of our elders are tired. Some of them have told us they are tired and want to be done. And still, we push them to fight for their lives with machines not made for their bodies and spirits. With doctors who have ignored their requests and suggestions. We encourage the poking and prodding if it means we can visit them another day. We are unwilling to recognize that we are also watching them wither away.

Has someone ever told you they were done and you listened? Will you?

I imagine (and recognize the luxury in imagining) the special kind of despair that causes folks to not only distrust the psychotherapists and psychiatrists but also the friendships, support systems, familial ties that are supposed to sustain us.

Much of our identity is tied around surviving, resilience and getting through, but what does this mean for those of us who do not want to live?

We hear:

“Stop suffering alone and call somebody.”

We don’t hear:

“Does this feel like love? Does this feel like help? Do you even want this?”

We have not prepared for these conversations:

“How do I honor you when you are in crisis? How will you honor me?”

Care and selfishness become intertwined somehow in these situations, but our lives and deaths deserve to be sustained without our obligations to others. How can we show love to friends with suicidal ideation without asking them? Without honoring their autonomy?

We may never be able to reconcile our friends’ lives and their deaths, their smiles and laughter. Some of us feel guilty because we didn’t “notice” our friends cries for help. Maybe they weren’t asking for any in the first place.

Is pushing Black folks to live, anti-Black?

If sanity is clarity about how the world operates, some of the most sane people are those who experience suicidal ideation, because they realize that there’s nothing that can “fix” them. Or at least that this world and its pharmaceutical companies are a part of what folks need to be fixed.

In this world, we are championed for our resilience. We are celebrated for the getting through, especially when we almost die. I am trying to be the friend who recognizes the tired in others. Who listens and reminds folks that they have options. I never ever want to be the friend who decides and/or guilt trips the other for deciding whether it is their time to live or die.

For those who no longer want to fight, I believe in you. You get to decide for yourself. I pray that when you are tired, you are not expected to weigh your obligations against what you need for yourself. I pray that you do not spend your life, a life you no longer want, preparing your family and friends for your death and never being able to because something else comes up. I pray that your peace be the priority. I pray that you do not experience violence if/when/with whatever you decide.

The app Safe Place is a Mental Health App geared towards the Black Community. If you are seeking help, you could research this app.

We need to acknowledge and examine when we place heavier burdens on our folks. We are not in any position to decide someone else’s life (and death) trajectory. Debt, family obligations, children, relationships and fear impact the majority of the decisions we make in our lives. It’s a colonial, patriarchal, capitalistic thing to have to weigh your obligations and figure out if now is a good time to die. To have to weigh if your friends and family are ready when you’ve been ready for a long time. How can survival be celebration for some folks and torment for others? No one is obligated to remain.

Suggested Readings:

Akudo Mex, Lauren Ash, “Rachel Ricketts: Certified Grief + Loss Professional, Intuitive Wellness Coach, Death Doula“, Black Girl In Om, 2018

Allison Inserro, “Racial Disparities Seen for Black Children Age 5-12 in Youth Suicide“,  JAMA Pediatrics, 2018

Alicia Dietrich, “UT Scholar Tells Forgotten Story of African-American Psychiatric Patients“, Alcade, 2014

Shervin Assari, Frederick X. Gibbons, and Ronald Simons, “Depression among Black Youth; Interaction of Class and Place“, US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, 2018

---

Amber Butts is a writer, educator and tenants rights organizer from Oakland, CA. Her work has appeared in Blaqueerflow, KPFA’s Women’s Magazine Radio and 6×8 Press. She is currently at work on an afro-futurist novel focused on themes of intergenerational trauma, imagination, Black survival and environmental racism. Amber’s writing challenges multiple systems of oppression through the use of queer and womanist frameworks. She works to amplify the stories of poor Black folks, with an emphasis on mamas, children and elders. She believes in asking big and small questions that lead to tangible expressions of freedom and liberation.

Amber likes cheese and comic books and sings louder than she needs to.

Comments