An Open Letter To The Men Who Are Offended I Write About Suicide

Hello there,
You do not know me, but you definitely feel enough a part of my life to leave strongly opinionated comments on my posts about suicide. I cannot imagine what you have experienced in your own life to feel so justified to slap someone on the wrist for openly sharing their tragic experience with a sister committing suicide. I do not know what it feels like to think that you can deny someone’s right to grieve, to share their authentic story, to write about facts. I spent a year being angry at you, but now that anger has transformed itself into pity. I pity you. I pity the fact that you cannot step into another’s shoes and empathize, understand, learn from their experience, because that means you are missing out on so much of life and what it is all about.

I will continue to write about my sister’s death, and I will continue to reach out to those who need help and resources to survive another day. If you continue to be offended by this, I recommend that you block me. I also recommend that you look deep within yourself to find out why something like suicide strikes such a hostile cord in you. Are you afraid of it? Do you harshly judge those you have taken their own lives? Do you believe it is a sin and should never be spoken of? Are you angry at someone in your own life who chose this path?

I will not pretend to understand your reasoning. You have a right to decide what that word means for yourself, just as I have a right to freely express my own opinions and share my own interactions with this word you find so taboo.

However, I will tell you what I find taboo >> The inconsiderate, incomprehensible ignorance it takes to write a snarky comment to someone who received a phone call when she was all alone in an empty apartment in NYC that her sister took her life in a hospital bathroom. The audacity of condemning a post that beautifully elaborates on how my sister’s suicide inspired my own career in writing. The self-loathing it must take to hate a stranger so much that you insist on writing an entire paragraph about why she should not share a post on two suicides that are the reason she now has ‘RE;’ tattooed on her wrist.

On that note, I would like you to know that I pray for you every night. I hope that you never have to experience the force of negative feelings that consume a person when they find out their life will never be the same, and they will never, ever see the sister that they spent twenty-three years of their life with. I hope you never have to learn to live with a new scar that will always be ugly. I hope you never find out how cold and hostile the world can be when you have a scar visibly mangling your chest.

I hope that you find a peace that fills the void in you, so you no longer feel the need to attack strangers online.

Lastly, I hope you know how much stronger your comments made me and how much they inspired me to write even more about the need for society to talk about suicide and face it right where it’s at. Until we acknowledge what a huge issue it is in this world, we will never be able to save lives. Until we can safely speak about every nasty twist and turn suicide scars leave, we will never be able to see those hurting enough to pull them out of the dark and into the light.

 

Sending you love and light,

Marji J. Sherman