Teenage Suicide (Don't Do It): Part I
The opening salvo on a topic that we will never resolve.
Editor’s note: September is National Suicide Prevention Month.
His name was Kevin. It was October 1994. I was 17.
I dropped my backpack by the door. It was a Friday afternoon and I wanted to change clothes quickly so I could head to the football game at my high school1. When I got downstairs to put my bag away, my mother and father were waiting for me in the kitchen. Naturally I was suspicious. I hadn’t done anything wrong at school and it was too early in the year for my grades to stink, so I couldn’t figure out why they asked me to sit down.
I don’t want to characterize suicide as normalized2 in 2023, but if you read obituaries, it is something people now admit. What was coded as “died suddenly” or “died at home,” now makes mention of “dying after a struggle with mental health and is now at peace” or, plainly, “died by suicide.”
The pandemic-triggered conversation around mental health brought suicide front and center, especially among young people. All that closing schools and quarantining did was bring these issues to the forefront and hasten an existing, long-ignored problem that was roaming the hallways of schools across America.3
I’d never seen my parents that concerned and that serious at the same time. My sister and I were largely good kids who lived in a quiet suburban neighborhood and attended decent public schools. My mother wasn’t crying, so I knew it wasn’t a family death. Still, I remember sitting at the kitchen table, leaning on our dog’s crate, wondering what the hell was going on.
I used to have a deeply held belief that people who committed suicide were selfish. They couldn’t hack the world and, rather than fight back, they took the easy way out. They had no regard for the people who loved them or depended on them, so they grabbed a bottle of pills or a gun, or started the car without putting up the garage door.
They told me my friend Jason’s mom called and that Kevin had killed himself the night before. I fell to the floor. Kevin and I were friends but not particularly close. It was the first time someone I knew that was my age died, let alone killed themselves. I got up and walked around the house for a few minutes to collect my thoughts. I called Jason’s house and talked to his mom for a few minutes because I had to hear it from her. I went to my football game and shot some of the worst game film ever because my mind was nowhere near the press box in Liverpool.
My opinion changed when I started dealing with my own demons, anxieties and dark thoughts. They were never suicidal, but sometimes just the level above it — despair, worthlessness, listlessness. Depression is a rough neighborhood to live in and even more difficult to escape. Anyhow, I don’t excuse it or believe it’s the right option, but I know that sometimes the demons win. It’s when I hear that a person’s own selfishness — refusing help, ignoring treatment programs and therapy, refusing meds, and/or surrounding themselves with enablers — influenced the suicide that I have a hard time being sympathetic.4
I know it’s tough to ask for help, to get help out of the hole. But, you have to yell for help…scream for help…because you can’t get out of it alone. That’s the fight, right? Life is about fighting back, and not rolling over and admitting defeat. I used to think people who committed suicide just gave up and took the easy way out. Some of them do and others just lose the fight.
The next day, I went to Jason’s house, which was down the street from Kevin’s. I hung out with him and his little sister before some of Jason’s other friends came over. We spent the afternoon as 16- and 17-year-olds did then; beating the shit out of each other playing tackle football. At some point, we took a break and visited Kevin’s parents as a group. It was my first Shiva. Kevin’s father is/was a prominent physician in town, so it wasn’t particularly surprising to see the head coach of Syracuse University’s football team and some of his assistants there to pay their respects. We offered as much sympathy as teenage boys were capable and took Kevin’s brothers back across the street with us for more football and the impending arrival of pizza.
No one knows why anyone chooses to commit suicide or what triggers them to go down the path of no return. Focus on the Family knows as much as the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, which is to say notagoddamnedthing.
My parents let me stay home from school for the services. Those who commit suicide cannot be celebrated in Jewish ceremonies, but the family buried him following as many customs as allowed. I sat with Jason’s family. His sister sat between the two of us at the services and wept.
Much has been written about social media and its correlation with suicide. High-profile suicides have been traced back to cyberbullying, but everything else is just a very educated guess: standards of beauty or performance driving one’s self-worth, sacrificing sleep or exercise to remain plugged in, and the lack of genuine human interactions5. These are all leading drivers of depression in this age group6, which is regarded as a primary cause of suicide among teens7.
It’s an ugly world out there for 13-year-olds, as we learned this year when we started reading our daughter’s text messages8. It was startling to find her and her friends as aggressors with someone, including the suggestion of suicide as a throwaway item in a fight.9 10 Apparently, as I would come to learn, telling another person they should go and kill themselves is the new insult of the day. “Hey, asshole, why don’t you do us all a favor and kill yourself?” is the 2020s version of how 90s me would say, “God, why are you being so gay?”11
It’s great to see how we’ve evolved as people.
I would find out later what happened. Kevin got made fun of a lot because he was an odd duck. It apparently got the best of him. He ordered a rifle from a magazine12. On that Thursday night, he put the song Loser by Beck on repeat, cranked up the volume, and ended it.
I don’t have any answers. I don’t understand the moment that a person makes the decision, though I can see how some could get there.
I don’t understand the cruelty of today’s kids telling each other to kill themselves in passing conversation, especially not with the tens of thousands of dollars school districts spend on character education and positivity programs.
But, I want to find the people who do and I want to continue this conversation, so you have my promise that this is not the last time we’re going to talk about suicide and teens as part of this newsletter.
A side note…
As previously stated, Dirt Nap does not endorse death in any form, though we will write about it. Under no circumstances do we believe that suicide is an answer to anything, which is why you may notice the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline logo at the bottom of our emails. Frankly, I think the 988 logo should be required by law to be posted in or on every textbook, classroom, McDonalds, restroom, stop sign, CVS receipt and pizza box. But, they got it down from a 10-digit toll-free number to three digits. It’s a start.
Another side note…
Do you have a grief story you want to share? I want to encourage a little crosstalk here, so if you’re interested in sharing send me an email to jaredpaventi at gmail dot com. You can write an essay, contribute a poem, or participate in a Q&A with me. You dictate the tone and form, and I’ll be your vehicle.
A parental resource…
Parents (and since many of you are teachers, this might help you as well): I used to contribute to Offspring, the parenting subsite of Lifehacker.com. They published a guide to “The Big Talks” and one of them is about how to talk to your kids about self-harm and suicide, as well as lower their risks. I share because I care.
Final thoughts on finality
Thus, the next time I glimpse death...well, I'm not going over and introducing myself. I'm not giving the grim reaper fist daps. But I'll remind myself to try, at least, to thank God for death. And then I'll thank God, with all my heart, for whiskey.
— P.J. O'Rourke
I was the video guy. It involved less running and I got paid.
I never want suicide normalized, but discussing it openly should be.
I want to be Swarovski fucking crystal clear here: I’m not blaming teachers, guidance counselors, social workers, school psychologists, principals, janitors or secretaries for anything. In-school mental health services have long been underfunded from the top. The crushing wave of need that has fallen on those school social workers is due to chronic underfunding of public schools and misplaced spending priorities by school districts.
Opinions are like nipples. Everyone has at least one. These are mine and you’re entitled to your own.
Do boys even play backyard football anymore?
See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6278213/
See: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9735611/
A condition of her getting a cell phone was that we would perform random checks of her texts.
You may or may not know my wife, but she’s a pretty levelheaded person. This was not one of those moments and, boys and girls, it’s never a good situation when I’m the more even-keeled one.
Go ahead and read your kid’s texts, snaps, IG DMs, Tiktok messages or whatever they use. I bet it’s been done to them and/or they have done it.
I am not endorsing the shit we did as kids. I did it. My friends did it. It was wrong and stupid and unacceptable, but I did it and own it.
Sigh.
Man this is such a hard topic, especially now as a parent to teenagers. Colleen said the now ubiquitous “kill yourself” in conversation not that long ago, not to me, but about a conversation with friends. I don’t restrict her speech anymore but that was a hard no. I don’t care if it’s the norm it’s just not acceptable.