My father killed himself when I was five and a half. I have also been suicidal, or -ish.
Things that make me want to run away to the bathroom stall where I used to hide in high school:
--the other day when someone told me her dad was researching a used car for her "as only a dad can"
--the ads a brewery near me runs every Fathers Day for dads to come get a free beer (I'm also a full-time single mom. Every year after I get over the initial trigger I go down there and tell them I want my dad beer. Then I cry all over again)
--A children's book called When the Wind Blew (which is about an old woman and a kitten and has nothing to do with fathers or suicide at all)
--Anytime someone says "there's really only a five-minute window in which someone will kill themselves" or "most suicides are preventable" or whatever.
So basically (with the exception of the last one) really no story that comes with a suicide trigger warning--like the listener in the episode, it's only the stuff no one could predict.
I do use content warnings in communities where I post things and that's the norm--I don't think their ineffectiveness or inability to cover all the things is a reason for me to be a jerk about it--but I appreciate this episode for identifying and validating some of my feelings in ways that haven't happened before.
I don't know that I have any advice, except that maybe I should have taken the trip to some hot springs that I thought would save my life in January, because it can't have been more expensive than my $6205.07 inpatient stay a month later and it would have been a lot nicer. But who knows.
Thank you for a beautiful episode. I personally find trigger warnings (suicide warnings in particular) to be very useful, not because I want to avoid content, but because I want to choose where and with whom I get to share my personal grief.
My father killed himself when I was 19 and I still, 26 years later, involuntarily tear up when I think about it, or think about how I felt in the months after his death. Listening the accounts of people who have lost loved ones to suicide often make me cry, hearing the sister at the start of the episode made me tear up. I don’t mind having these feelings, but I am glad I listened to this episode at home and not in the grocery store. When I hear a trigger warning on a podcast, I save it for a time when I can listen to it without having to show (and occasionally talk to) random strangers about my old wounds.
I am teacher, and suicide is something that, sadly, teachers need to discuss quite a lot. It is not useful or helpful for me to start crying during a faculty meeting where important work needs to happen. A trigger warning allows me to move towards that back of the room and brace myself so I can be present but not interrupt the meeting.
Sometimes I wish I could be more stoic and not let my emotions play out on my face, but until that happens trigger warnings do help me.
I came here to say the same thing. Ironically, I had to stop listening to this episode at the beginning (suicide being a "triggering" topic for me). I came back to it on the next day, when my mood was better, I was less tired and I was in fact mentally prepared to be more detached. So... I'm into trigger warnings.
This was *very* informative, thank you! Also, the amazing quote at the end made me skip back several times (a first in my years of listening to podcasts!) so that I could write it down word for word: Everything human is mentionable ❤️
Loved this episode! Both vulnerable and insightful. One thing I will say in mild defense of trigger warnings is that, when it is not purely perfunctory, it can be a signal that someone cares about the issue that concerns me. For example, I'm a fat person, and if I'm watching something that might discuss fat people or their treatment, seeing a creator put a fatphobia trigger warning before it doesn't make me avoid the content or perceive the fatphobia they're discussing differently when it comes up, but it does let me relax a little throughout the rest of the video because I know I'm in good hands, that the creator themself is not someone who's going to randomly pop off and rail against fat people and how ugly or shameful they are or how we're all going to die before the video ends or whatever. I'm not personally trans, but something like transphobia trigger warnings kind of strike the same chord for me; after all, transphobes are not the ones putting transphobia trigger warnings before their posts. I don't love this framing but for lack of a better way to put it, it lets me know that they're on "the same side" as me. I think that's why I'm skeptical of a lot of people who argue against trigger warnings on principle; I'm not that strongly in favor of them, but people who have that much of an issue with them are probably exactly the people who I wish would come with a warning label.
That being said, I don't think that's a good reason to keep using them if they're not otherwise effective—both because I'm *literally* just describing virtue signaling and because I'm sure there are better ways to accomplish that same goal.
actually also, another question did arise for me while listening: is it bad (for the suicide community or i suppose for people in general) to make jokes about suicide? friends have gently pointed out to me that it's maybe it's not so great to encourage that sort of humor in myself—or at least, that's what I read into them kindly suggesting that when i make fewer suicide/self-harm jokes, i seem to feel better. i tend to think they have causality wrong: when i'm feeling better, i'm less inclined to make those sorts of jokes. although i'm not sure that's better? it also does rankle me in a sort of, "if i had to see the inside of a psych ward then i at least deserve to make a few jokes about it," kind of way. but i do also recognize that a large part of why my friends say that is perhaps they're just uncomfortable with those sorts of jokes, and being a person who generally tries to not be a jerk to my friends, i do try to take that into consideration.
I find that the most dangerous thing about suicidal ideation is that it feels impossible to talk about. IMO, if joking about it makes it possible to talk about then that is a good thing. If you are suppressing those darker thoughts and feelings for the sake of the comfort of those around you, then that is very dangerous. And I'm guessing the people made uncomfortable by those jokes are less likely to experience suicidal ideation than the people making the jokes. Most people that have those thoughts are so familiar with them that they can joke about it. The least that those not in the "suicide community" can do is be a bit uncomfortable if it allows someone to speak their feelings.
One of my coping strategies is to listen Bo Burnham's Problem Solving Song, which jokes about suicide in a way that would make most people gasp. But it gives me such intense relief to hear someone say all the fucked up things in my head out loud. And in saying them out loud in such an unabashed way make me realise they are fucked up and I shouldn't listen to them.
Thanks for letting me rant. Hope you're doing well.
I'm not an easily offended person, and I can appreciate a clever or well-constructed suicide joke done by a comedian. But I'm comfortable asking my friends not to speak flippantly about it. For instance, if a friend makes a joke like "that movie was so bad I could kill myself," I ask kindly if they can avoid joking about that around me. The reason is that it's trivializing a very traumatic thing that actually happened in my family (and it's not a good or clever joke anyway). I feel okay asking people to be more careful with their words.
But I understand everyone copes differently. I think if I was your friend, it'd be stressful for me to hear you make those jokes because I wouldn't quite be sure if you were okay or in danger. Like, "do I need to be checking on Shanti?" Maybe it's because I don't have the experience to find humor in it that you've been able to find because you've been through the wringer. I do agree with you that the ability to joke about dark things is important and often well-earned.
I don't have a good answer to your question, and I think it's a great one to ask. I've usually figured that if I've been through something, I can joke about it. But I realize it's complicated when the audience includes people who _haven't_ also been through said thing. I feel as though humor is such an important coping mechanism that you should be able to joke at least sometimes about suicide or self-harm if you've been close to or through those experiences.
This one struck a nerve. Partly because at least once this week, I considered calling a hotline. But I'm still here so I'm feeling better. The discussion about trigger warnings was so interesting and my experience has been that I tend to ignore them. When i was a suicidal teenager, I sought out books about teenagers dying from all sort of reasons including suicides but books generally don't come with trigger warnings and no one could tell why I was reading them. I remember signing up for Netflix specifically to watch "13 reasons why" based on the discourse around it at the time but i still haven't watched the show, all these years later partly because I was recovering from depression and i didn't know how the show would trigger me. I already read the book years before the show launched. Though, if i do come across things that are triggering, I can skip or pause it and return to it at a later date. On triggers more generally, a friend of mine lost her father years before i met her and I often wonder if talking about my dad with her is triggering.
Loved the episode, thanks so much PJ. As someone that has dealt with suicidal ideation for a long time, I've never found content warnings to be noticeably positive or negative. As a parent, I do appreciate them if I'm listening to a podcast and want to judge if it's appropriate for my kids before listening. I feel for the last speaker who's daughter died. Maybe there is harm done by people avoiding uncomfortable conversations.
The hardest thing to measure is the cost/benefit of content warnings to people that use them to avoid content. Like, you can show someone something then measure their response to it, but how do you measure someone's response to not seeing something? Could you isolate people that avoided an article about suicide because of the content warning. Then measure the benefit of them avoiding the content against what is lost. i.e. maybe that person would have gained insights about suicide had they read it and the larger social impact of more people hearing conversations about suicide even if they weren't seeking it out?
Thank you for the thoughtful and sensitive episode! I'm grateful to hear on this issue from this perspective.
A minor point that I think about is how content warnings are accommodations that benefit many people in many ways, and not just a few people in specific ways. They can provide context for media one is about to view that might be difficult to establish in other ways. Especially on the Internet, we see all kinds of media offered adjacent to each other, ripped out of its original context and re-presented in a medium where re-establishing that context is difficult. I'm often viewing that media in a place, at a time, on a device, in a mood where I don't want to see just everything. A simple dispassionate notice that I'm about to see something of a particular category gives me an opportunity to put myself in a position and posture where I can most effectively engage without being distracted by an unintended strong reaction.
As a mild example, one time someone recommended a TV show to me, and I decided to watch the first episode without reading anything about it. The TV show opened in a genre-bending way that masked the fact that it was a horror show until a sudden gruesome incident. Clearly, I was meant to know that it was a horror show in advance, and I missed that context by skipping straight from the recommendation to playback of the episode. I reacted poorly and never went back, when I might have enjoyed it more if I knew in advance what to expect.
I'm too old to have been shown a content warning in a classroom, but I like the idea. It doesn't just give students an opportunity to opt out of assigned reading and discussion in extreme cases, it also establishes context for the reading and discussion that is to follow. Of course, a good teacher would establish this context anyway, but I've had all manner of teachers in my life and I can see how a small amount of rigor could go a long way toward including more people and more perspectives in a classroom experience about difficult material. It's the people who discourage content warnings that I trust least to include those perspectives.
Super interesting episode! I had a stillborn baby two years ago, and relate to feeling hurt that other people may need a warning / want to avoid hearing what happened to me. It’s already so hard in our culture to talk about grief, and the culture of trigger warnings can make it feel like we are being rude or inconsiderate by sharing our pain.
I’m in a discord for people who’ve experienced baby loss, and one way I’ve seen trigger warnings be useful is warning others of content about good things that may be hurtful for those particular people to see - IE living children, current pregnancies, or new babies born after our losses. It doesn’t feel bad to warn about a mention of my new son, it feels considerate to the women who so desperately want a successful pregnancy and live baby. But, I wonder how often people actually heed the warnings, I usually clicked to see what the content was, even when seeing a pregnant woman on the street made me want to die.
Wow; I did not expect to be brought to tears. From an anxious-depressed mom who's raising an anxious teen, desperately hoping to help her avoid some of what I've gone through, I just want to say thank you, PJ
"For the act itself to occur, everything has to go wrong at the same time." With all due respect, that's not always the case. Many years ago a very close friend hanged himself, on Christmas day. He had been going through a mental health crisis for a while but after a long rough patch, appeared to be doing better. Our own friendship had been tested as well, but when we had a meal on Xmas eve to talk things out, it seemed like we'd cleared the air and were primed for a reboot. When I got the news next the next day, I realized that meal was actually a goodbye. The more I learned over the following months, the more I came to realize that his act was in no way spontaneous, but had been long premeditated. The note he left confirmed this, listing all the methods by which he'd tried to heal himself, and which ended with a simple request: "please let me go." It took me a long time to understand that sometimes people are in so much pain for so long, that the idea of that pain ending begins to look like not just the best option, but the last and only one.
Thank you. It was hard on all of us left behind. I only posted this to illustrate that the motivations for the act of self-negation are far more complex than many realize. In my case, learning this helped me heal and also forgive him; I hope others find it useful as well.
I lost a really close friend to suicide last year and I’ve been trying to learn the things you state here ever since. Thank for sharing your experience and for reinforcing that message. We need to not only forgive the friends we’ve lost, but also forgive ourselves that we couldn’t save them.
My dad said the exact same thing, over and over, in his note. "Please just let me go." To us he'd seemed to be doing okay, better even, during that time, but his note listed many ongoing things as his reasoning, showing that it wasn't really a spontaneous thing.
Reading his note for the first time 20 years after his death was one of the most wrenching experiences of my life. Oddly, watching the graphic and disturbing suicide scene at the beginning of the movie Midsomar had prepared me better for reading it than anything else could. I might have skipped that movie if I'd been warned that scene was in there, but I'm glad I saw it. I'm glad the scene doesn't flinch away from the horror of it.
I remember when Robin Williams died, the Academy tweeted a controversial message, saying, "Genie, you're free." It was criticized for sounding like suicide is a good thing, but for Robin Williams in the midst of a terrifying brain disease, and maybe for your friend and for my dad, suicide was the freedom they desperately longed for. I wish they could still be here. But for my dad, I understand why, and I accept what he chose.
My father killed himself when I was five and a half. I have also been suicidal, or -ish.
Things that make me want to run away to the bathroom stall where I used to hide in high school:
--the other day when someone told me her dad was researching a used car for her "as only a dad can"
--the ads a brewery near me runs every Fathers Day for dads to come get a free beer (I'm also a full-time single mom. Every year after I get over the initial trigger I go down there and tell them I want my dad beer. Then I cry all over again)
--A children's book called When the Wind Blew (which is about an old woman and a kitten and has nothing to do with fathers or suicide at all)
--Anytime someone says "there's really only a five-minute window in which someone will kill themselves" or "most suicides are preventable" or whatever.
So basically (with the exception of the last one) really no story that comes with a suicide trigger warning--like the listener in the episode, it's only the stuff no one could predict.
I do use content warnings in communities where I post things and that's the norm--I don't think their ineffectiveness or inability to cover all the things is a reason for me to be a jerk about it--but I appreciate this episode for identifying and validating some of my feelings in ways that haven't happened before.
I don't know that I have any advice, except that maybe I should have taken the trip to some hot springs that I thought would save my life in January, because it can't have been more expensive than my $6205.07 inpatient stay a month later and it would have been a lot nicer. But who knows.
Great episode. It was very interesting produced with such care.
Thank you for a beautiful episode. I personally find trigger warnings (suicide warnings in particular) to be very useful, not because I want to avoid content, but because I want to choose where and with whom I get to share my personal grief.
My father killed himself when I was 19 and I still, 26 years later, involuntarily tear up when I think about it, or think about how I felt in the months after his death. Listening the accounts of people who have lost loved ones to suicide often make me cry, hearing the sister at the start of the episode made me tear up. I don’t mind having these feelings, but I am glad I listened to this episode at home and not in the grocery store. When I hear a trigger warning on a podcast, I save it for a time when I can listen to it without having to show (and occasionally talk to) random strangers about my old wounds.
I am teacher, and suicide is something that, sadly, teachers need to discuss quite a lot. It is not useful or helpful for me to start crying during a faculty meeting where important work needs to happen. A trigger warning allows me to move towards that back of the room and brace myself so I can be present but not interrupt the meeting.
Sometimes I wish I could be more stoic and not let my emotions play out on my face, but until that happens trigger warnings do help me.
I came here to say the same thing. Ironically, I had to stop listening to this episode at the beginning (suicide being a "triggering" topic for me). I came back to it on the next day, when my mood was better, I was less tired and I was in fact mentally prepared to be more detached. So... I'm into trigger warnings.
This was *very* informative, thank you! Also, the amazing quote at the end made me skip back several times (a first in my years of listening to podcasts!) so that I could write it down word for word: Everything human is mentionable ❤️
Loved this episode! Both vulnerable and insightful. One thing I will say in mild defense of trigger warnings is that, when it is not purely perfunctory, it can be a signal that someone cares about the issue that concerns me. For example, I'm a fat person, and if I'm watching something that might discuss fat people or their treatment, seeing a creator put a fatphobia trigger warning before it doesn't make me avoid the content or perceive the fatphobia they're discussing differently when it comes up, but it does let me relax a little throughout the rest of the video because I know I'm in good hands, that the creator themself is not someone who's going to randomly pop off and rail against fat people and how ugly or shameful they are or how we're all going to die before the video ends or whatever. I'm not personally trans, but something like transphobia trigger warnings kind of strike the same chord for me; after all, transphobes are not the ones putting transphobia trigger warnings before their posts. I don't love this framing but for lack of a better way to put it, it lets me know that they're on "the same side" as me. I think that's why I'm skeptical of a lot of people who argue against trigger warnings on principle; I'm not that strongly in favor of them, but people who have that much of an issue with them are probably exactly the people who I wish would come with a warning label.
That being said, I don't think that's a good reason to keep using them if they're not otherwise effective—both because I'm *literally* just describing virtue signaling and because I'm sure there are better ways to accomplish that same goal.
just wanted to say how excited i am to begin self-identifying as a member of the "suicide community." really appreciated this episode, thank you!
actually also, another question did arise for me while listening: is it bad (for the suicide community or i suppose for people in general) to make jokes about suicide? friends have gently pointed out to me that it's maybe it's not so great to encourage that sort of humor in myself—or at least, that's what I read into them kindly suggesting that when i make fewer suicide/self-harm jokes, i seem to feel better. i tend to think they have causality wrong: when i'm feeling better, i'm less inclined to make those sorts of jokes. although i'm not sure that's better? it also does rankle me in a sort of, "if i had to see the inside of a psych ward then i at least deserve to make a few jokes about it," kind of way. but i do also recognize that a large part of why my friends say that is perhaps they're just uncomfortable with those sorts of jokes, and being a person who generally tries to not be a jerk to my friends, i do try to take that into consideration.
I find that the most dangerous thing about suicidal ideation is that it feels impossible to talk about. IMO, if joking about it makes it possible to talk about then that is a good thing. If you are suppressing those darker thoughts and feelings for the sake of the comfort of those around you, then that is very dangerous. And I'm guessing the people made uncomfortable by those jokes are less likely to experience suicidal ideation than the people making the jokes. Most people that have those thoughts are so familiar with them that they can joke about it. The least that those not in the "suicide community" can do is be a bit uncomfortable if it allows someone to speak their feelings.
One of my coping strategies is to listen Bo Burnham's Problem Solving Song, which jokes about suicide in a way that would make most people gasp. But it gives me such intense relief to hear someone say all the fucked up things in my head out loud. And in saying them out loud in such an unabashed way make me realise they are fucked up and I shouldn't listen to them.
Thanks for letting me rant. Hope you're doing well.
I'm not an easily offended person, and I can appreciate a clever or well-constructed suicide joke done by a comedian. But I'm comfortable asking my friends not to speak flippantly about it. For instance, if a friend makes a joke like "that movie was so bad I could kill myself," I ask kindly if they can avoid joking about that around me. The reason is that it's trivializing a very traumatic thing that actually happened in my family (and it's not a good or clever joke anyway). I feel okay asking people to be more careful with their words.
But I understand everyone copes differently. I think if I was your friend, it'd be stressful for me to hear you make those jokes because I wouldn't quite be sure if you were okay or in danger. Like, "do I need to be checking on Shanti?" Maybe it's because I don't have the experience to find humor in it that you've been able to find because you've been through the wringer. I do agree with you that the ability to joke about dark things is important and often well-earned.
I don't have a good answer to your question, and I think it's a great one to ask. I've usually figured that if I've been through something, I can joke about it. But I realize it's complicated when the audience includes people who _haven't_ also been through said thing. I feel as though humor is such an important coping mechanism that you should be able to joke at least sometimes about suicide or self-harm if you've been close to or through those experiences.
This one struck a nerve. Partly because at least once this week, I considered calling a hotline. But I'm still here so I'm feeling better. The discussion about trigger warnings was so interesting and my experience has been that I tend to ignore them. When i was a suicidal teenager, I sought out books about teenagers dying from all sort of reasons including suicides but books generally don't come with trigger warnings and no one could tell why I was reading them. I remember signing up for Netflix specifically to watch "13 reasons why" based on the discourse around it at the time but i still haven't watched the show, all these years later partly because I was recovering from depression and i didn't know how the show would trigger me. I already read the book years before the show launched. Though, if i do come across things that are triggering, I can skip or pause it and return to it at a later date. On triggers more generally, a friend of mine lost her father years before i met her and I often wonder if talking about my dad with her is triggering.
Loved the episode, thanks so much PJ. As someone that has dealt with suicidal ideation for a long time, I've never found content warnings to be noticeably positive or negative. As a parent, I do appreciate them if I'm listening to a podcast and want to judge if it's appropriate for my kids before listening. I feel for the last speaker who's daughter died. Maybe there is harm done by people avoiding uncomfortable conversations.
The hardest thing to measure is the cost/benefit of content warnings to people that use them to avoid content. Like, you can show someone something then measure their response to it, but how do you measure someone's response to not seeing something? Could you isolate people that avoided an article about suicide because of the content warning. Then measure the benefit of them avoiding the content against what is lost. i.e. maybe that person would have gained insights about suicide had they read it and the larger social impact of more people hearing conversations about suicide even if they weren't seeking it out?
Thanks, that was a beautiful episode.
Just a fellow traveller in the suicide community, out here managing. Thank you so much for this episode.
I’m looking forward to seeing this email’s click metrics compared to others, consider I clicked the content warning image immediately. Twice.
Thank you for the thoughtful and sensitive episode! I'm grateful to hear on this issue from this perspective.
A minor point that I think about is how content warnings are accommodations that benefit many people in many ways, and not just a few people in specific ways. They can provide context for media one is about to view that might be difficult to establish in other ways. Especially on the Internet, we see all kinds of media offered adjacent to each other, ripped out of its original context and re-presented in a medium where re-establishing that context is difficult. I'm often viewing that media in a place, at a time, on a device, in a mood where I don't want to see just everything. A simple dispassionate notice that I'm about to see something of a particular category gives me an opportunity to put myself in a position and posture where I can most effectively engage without being distracted by an unintended strong reaction.
As a mild example, one time someone recommended a TV show to me, and I decided to watch the first episode without reading anything about it. The TV show opened in a genre-bending way that masked the fact that it was a horror show until a sudden gruesome incident. Clearly, I was meant to know that it was a horror show in advance, and I missed that context by skipping straight from the recommendation to playback of the episode. I reacted poorly and never went back, when I might have enjoyed it more if I knew in advance what to expect.
I'm too old to have been shown a content warning in a classroom, but I like the idea. It doesn't just give students an opportunity to opt out of assigned reading and discussion in extreme cases, it also establishes context for the reading and discussion that is to follow. Of course, a good teacher would establish this context anyway, but I've had all manner of teachers in my life and I can see how a small amount of rigor could go a long way toward including more people and more perspectives in a classroom experience about difficult material. It's the people who discourage content warnings that I trust least to include those perspectives.
This episode was incredible -- you are my new favorite mental health journalist PJ. I'm not even kidding!
Super interesting episode! I had a stillborn baby two years ago, and relate to feeling hurt that other people may need a warning / want to avoid hearing what happened to me. It’s already so hard in our culture to talk about grief, and the culture of trigger warnings can make it feel like we are being rude or inconsiderate by sharing our pain.
I’m in a discord for people who’ve experienced baby loss, and one way I’ve seen trigger warnings be useful is warning others of content about good things that may be hurtful for those particular people to see - IE living children, current pregnancies, or new babies born after our losses. It doesn’t feel bad to warn about a mention of my new son, it feels considerate to the women who so desperately want a successful pregnancy and live baby. But, I wonder how often people actually heed the warnings, I usually clicked to see what the content was, even when seeing a pregnant woman on the street made me want to die.
Wow; I did not expect to be brought to tears. From an anxious-depressed mom who's raising an anxious teen, desperately hoping to help her avoid some of what I've gone through, I just want to say thank you, PJ
"For the act itself to occur, everything has to go wrong at the same time." With all due respect, that's not always the case. Many years ago a very close friend hanged himself, on Christmas day. He had been going through a mental health crisis for a while but after a long rough patch, appeared to be doing better. Our own friendship had been tested as well, but when we had a meal on Xmas eve to talk things out, it seemed like we'd cleared the air and were primed for a reboot. When I got the news next the next day, I realized that meal was actually a goodbye. The more I learned over the following months, the more I came to realize that his act was in no way spontaneous, but had been long premeditated. The note he left confirmed this, listing all the methods by which he'd tried to heal himself, and which ended with a simple request: "please let me go." It took me a long time to understand that sometimes people are in so much pain for so long, that the idea of that pain ending begins to look like not just the best option, but the last and only one.
I’m so sorry about your friend. That’s gutting.
Thank you. It was hard on all of us left behind. I only posted this to illustrate that the motivations for the act of self-negation are far more complex than many realize. In my case, learning this helped me heal and also forgive him; I hope others find it useful as well.
I totally hear you. Thanks for sharing, Jeff.
I lost a really close friend to suicide last year and I’ve been trying to learn the things you state here ever since. Thank for sharing your experience and for reinforcing that message. We need to not only forgive the friends we’ve lost, but also forgive ourselves that we couldn’t save them.
My dad said the exact same thing, over and over, in his note. "Please just let me go." To us he'd seemed to be doing okay, better even, during that time, but his note listed many ongoing things as his reasoning, showing that it wasn't really a spontaneous thing.
Reading his note for the first time 20 years after his death was one of the most wrenching experiences of my life. Oddly, watching the graphic and disturbing suicide scene at the beginning of the movie Midsomar had prepared me better for reading it than anything else could. I might have skipped that movie if I'd been warned that scene was in there, but I'm glad I saw it. I'm glad the scene doesn't flinch away from the horror of it.
I remember when Robin Williams died, the Academy tweeted a controversial message, saying, "Genie, you're free." It was criticized for sounding like suicide is a good thing, but for Robin Williams in the midst of a terrifying brain disease, and maybe for your friend and for my dad, suicide was the freedom they desperately longed for. I wish they could still be here. But for my dad, I understand why, and I accept what he chose.