Trigger Warning: I talk about suicide attempts, and talk of suicide. No one dies.
When I had only had my Twitter account for a month or two, I was up late one night, and just about to go to bed, when I decided to check just one more time.
What I saw was kind of confusing to me. A lady whom I followed had uploaded a rather dark poem about how death was beautiful. That was a little weird. Two minutes later, another one, about fading into oblivion in a warm bathtub. She had commented, "Yummy pills!"
"Are you okay?" I asked, "Do you need someone to talk to?"
Then I saw that someone else had said, "Please don't do this! We can talk about it!"
I couldn't believe what I was reading. Was she really...? Was this really what that was about?
I wondered what I could say. If someone was at this point already, was there even anything I could do?
"We need you to live," I said to her, doing a little research with the words "suicide hotline."
"Here is a number you can call, if you want to talk to anyone other than us: 1-800-273-8255."
She then tweeted a picture of her hand, holding a handful of pills. "Goodbye and see you on the other side of nowhere."
Someone else said, "You better be alive when I get up tomorrow, cunt!"
How could he go to bed? I wondered. Sure, he may have work tomorrow, but still...
I knew that I wasn't going to bed. I couldn't, anyway.
Now I knew this was serious. I had read before that all major social media sites have places where you can report disturbing and self-harmful stuff, so I did, though going through the steps seemed so slow and confusing.
"Please do something quickly!" I commented, repeating what she had said, "I am afraid for her safety!"
Someone else tweeted the police department in her city. "PD please respond." I was not sure if they had the resources to track her down, but I hoped so.
After I reported her, the disturbing tweets mysteriously vanished. Is this how they deal with this problem?! I wondered. Just pretend it never happened, while people's lives are on the line?!
There was nothing more I could do. I asked my followers if anyone knew anything of her, but got no response. I don't know how long I sat there, wondering, Did she do it yet? Did she do it yet? and unable to stop picturing the horrible scene taking place right at that very moment. It was almost 3 a.m. now.
"Hey, everyone," she finally came back on after a while. "I am fine now. Thank you for your concern. Can someone please tell me who called the police to my house? I want to thank them personally. I don't really want to die, it's just the depression that tells me to do it. I appreciate your concern, but I may take a few days off Twitter and find other support."
I didn't know whether my reporting her to Twitter (if I was the only one) or someone else tweeting the police, was what got them to her house. I just told her that we all loved her and wanted her to be well. She favorited my tweet.
I stayed up until around four or five in the morning, just winding down from that. It had been a very harrowing ordeal, one of the worst in my life.
The next day somebody else private-messaged me and said that I had possibly saved a life, and "good on you." I told her that that made me feel good, and she told me that I had earned it.
I don't know if what I did made the difference, but I didn't really feel like I had a choice. I wasn't going to sleep that night, anyway, with what was happening. I felt like I would always have the Suicide Hotline number burned into my brain.
Almost a year later, I saw on Facebook where a friend of mine had written about an ex-boyfriend. "He always used to say that if I did this or that, or if I did many things, that I was dead to him, and I actually wanted that. I think that there is an inexplicable freedom in death."
Hmmm....death. An "inexplicable freedom in death." Surely he meant only being dead to his boyfriend? Figurative death?
He was a very well-adjusted person, I thought. I didn't think he was likely to be depressed and suicidal because of being gay, or another reason that I didn't know of.
I private messaged him. "You meant figurative death, right? This may sound crazy, but I've seen some pretty disturbing stuff."
"Figurative," he replied tersely. I thanked him and told him that I wouldn't bother him again.
I'm pretty sure I irritated him. He got over it, apparently, though, because we're still friends. And if I hadn't irritated him, I would have wondered about him, and felt guilty, for a long time afterwards--even if nothing had happened.
Another friend, a few months later, shared someone else's poem about "dying inside" and having invisible pain. I private-messaged her, and said that I thought I knew what that was like, and that if she needed to talk or vent to anyone, she could message me, and that I would get back to her even if I wasn't on Facebook at the time.
I had better luck with her; she thanked me and said that it was so nice to have someone on her side. I wondered why she didn't just take it for granted that I was on her side, though we didn't know each that well, I suppose. I had thought that she would be irritated, too.
I have come to accept the fact that I MUST be myself, and that sometimes being myself involves irritating the shit out of people. When someone posts disturbing stuff, I am all over that shit. I've learned that, yes, it IS real, and what you see is often not simply a disturbing, punky attempt to be edgy.
And I would rather be overly paranoid, get people mad at me, and go through a few "fake" episodes that people do just to get attention, than have to live with myself, and wonder if I should have or could have done something.
The moral of the story is this: Yes, you ARE seeing what you think you are seeing. And even if you're not, be the person whom everyone gets mad at, but only because they care too much.
Here is a number if you or someone else needs someone to listen to them: 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Don't let your loved ones, and the world, lose another person--there is way too much loss already.
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