Died by Suicide. Is Facing Suicide. Fatal Suicide Attempt.
These are some of the “right phrases” to use to talk about suicide. While I agree that people need to be able to take the blame off the person who died by suicide, sometimes those words hurt. Sometimes when you are someone surviving a suicide loss, using the correct terms means talking about suicide is even more of a challenge than it needs to be. When we talk about grief, feelings, or just tell our stories, we are already lifting an insurmountable burden. It is somehow easier to tell a person “my husband was suicidal” rather than to use the term “my husband was facing suicide”.
When I talk about the early dawn of his death, I can avoid the term “successful suicide attempt”, but fatal suicide attempt, just doesn’t have the power of the words “my best friend shot himself.” There is something about the political correct phrasing that makes expressing my own feelings difficult. I want to talk about it with a thorough correctness, since I do not blame Kody for his disease. I do not feel that those who are facing suicide are to be reduced to their symptoms. But the words don’t always work that way.
Sometimes, we have to be free to talk with the terms that we know how to use, so that we don’t have to stumble through the lingo that defines our increasingly correct verbiage. There are moments where we just have to be ourselves and talk the way that we naturally talk. When these phrases become commonplace in our world, perhaps it will be easier. I know at least for me in these blogs, I will not be sticking to perfectly politically correct phrasing.
When you are facing a taboo as huge as the one that currently sits on the United States when it comes to talking openly about suicide, sometimes we have to be willing to let the wrong words stand in place of the right ones. Corrections, micromanagements, and continuing censorship of certain terms, may only serve to quiet those, who already can only speak in a whisper about some of the most painful moments of their lives. We have to be kind and understanding when it comes to talking about suicide and the terminology we accept.