Live Through This

deseraestage — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:00:34 -0400

Jaime Niedermeier is 31 years old, lives in Oakland, and is an artist, teacher, and dog trainer. I...

deseraestage — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:34:00 -0400

Jaime Niedermeier is 31 years old, lives in Oakland, and is an artist, teacher, and dog trainer. I photographed her with her emotional support dog, Beacon. Below, she discusses why she attempted suicide and we talk a little bit about companion animals as an option for those of us who live with mental illness.

I moved to San Francisco about five and a half years ago with my now ex-wife who was in grad school here. And I ended up staying. I totally love it, so that’s been a blessing, but I was with her and then, all of a sudden a year ago, not with her. Then we had to do the legal thing, which was really, really difficult and expensive and really messy and really emotionally draining and I also lost my housing because of the divorce.

I lived in my truck for quite a while—last spring, summer, early fall—and then eventually moved in with friends when they kind of figured out my story was bogus.

My friend Frances was like, “Jaime, this is just awkward, but are you living in your truck right now?”

And I said yes.

She said, “Come home with me.”

So, just a hard year, this last year—financially and emotionally and logistically and basically every other way I can think of. I got sick all the time when I was living in my truck because I wasn’t able to take care of nutrition the way I would normally… not being able to cook, not having a fridge, just not being able to keep stuff, so I didn’t eat a lot of fresh foods and, you know, just a lot of stress, I think, made me often sick and just rundown in general.

And the meds I was on, I think, were not the right ones for me, according to my current psychiatrist. What he’d say?

“Oh yeah, that Paxil, that’s dreadful.”

I had been feeling really depressed, like, kind of extra depressed and hopeless starting last summer and all of a sudden the idea of just dropping out of life occurred to me. Like, ‘Oh, that’s right, people commit suicide. That’s an option. If other people do it, that means I can do it.’ And I felt so relieved and so, kind of just… the pressure was taken off, you know? Like, ‘I don’t have to show up every day and keep trying. I don’t have to be here. I could if I wanted. That’s an option. I can opt out of being here.’

—

Jaime: One great thing that’s come out of my time at the hospital is my social worker encouraged me to get Beacon, not certified exactly, but registered as an emotional support dog, which I did, and it’s fabulous.

So, times when I feel like I almost can’t get through something, like sitting at home and feeling like, ‘God, I don’t know if I can go to the free clinic and sit for seven hours’—which I did last Thursday, waiting to be seen for ten minutes—‘I just don’t think I can get through it, sitting in this waiting room, and I know exactly how the waiting room’s gonna be, and it just feels like torture and I would rather be off meds for a week until I can go to my real appointment.’ Like that kind of thing that’s really, you know, would fuck everything up, but with Beacon with his little vest on, I can get through it. So I think, ‘Okay, well, I’ll bring Beacon. I’ll indulge myself and bring Beacon and then I can get through it.’

Beacon is with Alameda County. He’s my emotional support dog, which is different from a service animal. He’s not legally allowed to come everywhere with me, but I do have a letter that says he can come on planes, I can’t be denied housing because of him, other stuff like that, so it’s kind of a lower level of service animal.

He does get to come in with his vest because no one questions me. He comes most places so he comes to the supermarket, he comes to the bank. I didn’t bring his vest now because I think you mentioned that you guys were sitting outside, but I bring it just in case usually, and it’s been amazing. It’s really changed everything for me to just have him there.

Des: What do you have to do to get a dog registered?

Jaime: They have a certain minimum of training. They just have to be well behaved in general, housebroken, obviously, and, you know, he’s not allowed to go up and initiate play with strangers or beg for food or eat stuff off the floor or be bratty, you know? But, companion dogs— that’s the legal title, companion animal, not service animal—he doesn’t have to be trained to do a specific task for me, so that’s the main difference. Just having him around makes things better for me and makes me able to do things.

Although, since I’m a dog trainer, I’ve been teaching him to wake me up in the morning and remind me to take my pills. I’m hopeful that one day, maybe in a year or so, if I can think of some other stuff that he can do for me that relates to my mental illness, that I could get him reclassified as a service dog. Then he could come everywhere with me legally. I’m working on it.

Des: Is it an option for anybody?

Jaime: Yeah. It’s something I think people just need to talk to their doctors about. You get a letter from your doctor. The ADA website has the specific regulations, so it has the information that would need to go in the letter.

To be licensed by the county, they would need to know that and then what the dog would do for you. Then you just take that to animal control, where you would get your dog licensed normally, and show them the letter and they give you a little tag to put on the collar. Some other animals are also eligible.

Des: I’m getting a companion chinchilla immediately.

[both laugh]

Did it cost anything?

Jaime: No, it’s free.

—

Jaime made an amazing short film about her time living in her truck called girl+truck+dog. Take a look.

—

If you would like to participate in Live Through This, please contact me.
If you would like to donate to Live Through This, click here.
If you’re feeling suicidal, please talk to somebody. You can reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

I met Patty Overland at her home in Berkeley, California. At the age of 19, she became physically...

deseraestage — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:13:00 -0400

I met Patty Overland at her home in Berkeley, California. At the age of 19, she became physically disabled as a result of her suicide attempt. Now 59, she is a LGBTQ and disability rights advocate. Here, she talks about being a survivor and the power and unity to be found in sharing our stories.

And, for the first time (thanks to Kickstarter backers), below Patty’s interview, be sure to check out some video I made of her performing a poem she wrote in 1986 called “Super Crip Girl.”

I decided I’d like to tell my story because… Besides the initial shock of somebody saying, “How’d you get in that wheelchair?” and I tell them, and they go, “Why did you do that?” People think they can just say that. So I’m supposed to do, like I just did, a brief thing about my adolescence, and then somehow they’re gonna understand it? It’s like, “No, no, it’s a very invasive sort of a question…”

I think it’s important for me to tell my story because people survive all kinds of things. People survive rapes. They survive car accidents that are also violent. In a way, my friends born disabled don’t consider this, but to me, I feel like they are survivors too, being born disabled. ‘Cause they’ve had to go through the whole experience of their life as disabled people, and so they’ve had to put up with all the attitudes about that.

I think it’s even more important now, with the suicide bombings back there in New York and then what I’ve seen of people jumping off the Golden Gate out here on the west coast. What I’ve seen coast to coast, if a person is a survivor, it’s important that people should know that.

And people that know me know that, and maybe they’ll know more from your project. But when I’ve hung out at the White Horse Bar, the local gay bar, I’ve met survivors there that are lesbians. It’s mostly a men’s bar but women started going there. The minute I tell them, they’re like, “Oh, I am too.” And somebody else will say, “Oh, I am too.”

—

If you would like to participate in Live Through This, please contact me.
If you would like to donate to Live Through This, click here.
If you’re feeling suicidal, please talk to somebody. You can reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

I spent the entirety of the week before last working on LTT in San Francisco. It was quite the test...

deseraestage — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:00:00 -0400

I spent the entirety of the week before last working on LTT in San Francisco. It was quite the test run, I have to say. I met 19 amazing humans with equally amazing stories (if you’re not following LTT on Facebook yet, you missed my favorite outtake from Patty Overland’s interview, which should be up sometime soon). We met in coffee shops, bakeries, in the sunlight outside a Vietnamese sandwich shop, in Dolores Park (where I got half a sunburn). I worked with Wendi Koble of Swoon Films for two days. I even traveled to Oakland and Berkeley. I streamlined my process, learned more about my limits and the importance of self-care, and experimented with a tiny ethnographic-esque survey (thanks to my friends at the Neurocognition of Language Lab at Columbia University’s Teachers College).

In the evenings, I drank bloody Marys, spent too much money in bookstores, and drooled on things at Amoeba. The Meet & Greet was a pretty wonderful experience, too. It was the perfect mix of old friends and new friends. My only regret is that I didn’t get to have longer conversations with everyone, which was a running theme for the week. On the last day, I rested. At the beach. And it was good. Except for the part where we happened upon a pair of geese who were distressed because one of their goslings had gotten swept away by the water. By the time I realized the nature of their calls and made a rescue attempt, the gosling was no longer with us. I’m still sad about this.

I can’t wait to start sharing these stories with you. For now, here are snaps of two of the aforementioned amazing humans, Rose and Rochelle.

The next few weeks will be a whirlwind of organization (I collected ~30 hours of footage in San Francisco), my 30th birthday celebration (I get to drag my mom around NYC!), the wedding of one of my best friends, travel, and maybe, eventually, a nap. I’m thinking I’ll keep the next stop for LTT relatively close to home: a quick trip to DC in June, maybe.

Just a couple of press updates before I shut my trap:

1. David Crary of the Associated Press wrote an amazing piece about suicide attempt survivors and how we can be quite the resource when it comes to suicide prevention: Suicide Survivors Help to Shape Prevention Efforts.

2. HuffPost Live contacted me yesterday to pose a question to Mariel Hemingway (Ernest Hemingway’s granddaughter) re: her film, “Running from Crazy,” about her family’s history with mental illness & suicide. My question and her answer run from about 16:25-18:30: Mariel Hemingway’s ‘Running from Crazy.’

3. A couple of weeks ago, I met up with Sahar Sarshar to film a segment for ZirZameen, a Persian and English series about underground artists and activists. I even got to help with filming some of the b-roll! Take a look.

As always, thank you for your support. I’m so grateful. Words fail me. I hope you’re all well, especially in light of recent events.

PS: If you’re reading this and you emailed me recently, I want to let you know that I’m not ignoring you. I’m a little bogged down and a lot slow, but I swear, I will reply. Even if it’s in August.

Elsa Sjunneson-Henry is a rogue feminist scholar and a burlesque performer who also happens to be...

deseraestage — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:29:00 -0400

Elsa Sjunneson-Henry is a rogue feminist scholar and a burlesque performer who also happens to be blind in one eye and deaf in one ear. We met at a bar in Bushwick. She told me her story over a beer.

She wrote to me before we met: “I am willing to bet that there are a lot of people with disabilities who [attempt] suicide, or who have the kind of suicidal thoughts that will lead to it. What pushed me over the edge wasn’t my mental health issues, but my peers.”

I was sexually assaulted when I was 14 and I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t tell anybody for five years, so that was kind of in the back of my brain for the next two years. I moved to Seattle from New York shortly after that happened in an emergency move to take care of family, and sort of tried to reset my life in a new place, and I was 14 or 15 so it was kind of a rough time.

I’d gone to a middle school where they teased me for being the blind and deaf kid. The difference between being teased in middle school and being teased in high school and being the disabled kid is that, in middle school, they just think it’s a weird thing that you have. In middle school they don’t really understand what it’s like to be blind or deaf. They just kind of go, “Oh, you have a hearing aid, let me whistle into it,” or, you know, people will trip you down the stairs or they’ll make fun of you for looking like a witch, but they don’t say things like, “If I couldn’t see, I would kill myself.” They wouldn’t say things like, “If my father had died of AIDS, I would kill myself.” They wouldn’t say things like that.

I had people who were my peers saying that they couldn’t live how I did and that if they were like me they would have [killed themselves] already. So I started thinking about suicide. I didn’t really have any friends. I didn’t feel like there was anybody I could talk to about it and I was living with my grandparents who were not exactly warm and fuzzy. They’re good people and I love them, but I couldn’t have said to my grandmother, “I feel like a weirdo and I don’t want to be here.”

So it just kind of started cycling in the back of my head, and then in April of that year my sort of surrogate brother [killed himself], and I found out. It was very sudden. We didn’t see it coming, but we think he was probably bipolar and undiagnosed. It was like, “Oh my god, somebody actually did that.”

About three weeks later I was in a really bad place. Most of my friends were online people and I would do chat rooms and that kind of thing, so I made friends with people all over the country who were my age and depressed, and one day I came home because somebody had said the usual: “You’re blind and I wouldn’t want to be you.” Somebody else had said that my dad was in hell because he was gay.

It was just like a bunch of stuff spiraled together, and then [someone in the chat room] said to me “Well, you should just kill yourself, then” and I looked at it and I went “You know what… That actually sounds like a perfectly good idea.” Literally, the last thing I said to her was, “Fine, maybe I will just go do that” and her response was “Great.”

—

If you would like to participate in Live Through This, please contact me.
If you’re feeling suicidal, please talk to somebody. You can reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

The Kickstarter campaign ends at 11 AM EST tomorrow, and we’re so very close to reaching the...

deseraestage — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:42:00 -0400

The Kickstarter campaign ends at 11 AM EST tomorrow, and we’re so very close to reaching the first stretch goal (filmmakers in every city)! Thanks again to everyone who contributed financially or behind the scenes, who shared and shared and shared on social media, who shared in my inbox, and who cared about helping me make this thing a reality. I am full-up with gratitude.

I can’t wait to get to work. The first stop on the Live Through This tour is San Francisco. I’ll be there from 4/14-4/20, so if you would like to participate in the project, be sure to email me at des@livethroughthis.org.

Now, I have another story for you. Davey Davis is a talented filmmaker and activist living in Brooklyn. He’s also a suicide attempt survivor. Below, he tells me about what might have stopped him from making his attempt.

I think the only thing that could have stopped me would be—‘cause I was a thoughtful boy, and I was smart—the only thing that could have stopped me would be somebody recognizing that this was a potential of mine and really patiently and clearly and lyrically and, you know, in the form of literature, explaining to me what the repercussions of this act would be for myself and for my parents and my family.

I mean, you live so many lifetimes and the 25 year old version of me still doesn’t have his shit figured out and still hasn’t lived every aspect of life. I’ve never had kids, I’ve never had some huge successful project that makes me feel like a validated human in terms of artistic output.

I’ve not lived through many historical things that humans are faced with. Like, what if when I’m 38, the American economy collapses and suddenly we have to like reform our notion of civilization? The anarchistic 16 year old version of myself would want to see that, but he wouldn’t even have conceived of it as a possibility.

On a much more fundamental and goofy level, I was still a virgin. I hadn’t had any adult relationships. If the 25 year old version of me could have just been like, ‘You have lived a great life, it’s true. You’ve had a great 16 years, but from this point onward it’s only potential and it’s only things that you can make up and you can put the reality into, you know? You’ll go here, you’ll learn this language, you’ll meet this girl, you’ll meet these great people, you’ll make this project. You’ll live here, you’ll live here, and everything changes so many times in a lifetime.’

So, that potential and also somebody just being like, ‘Look, no one that you love deserves to be hurt as much as you’re about to hurt them and they don’t deserve it at all. It doesn’t make sense. Why would you do that?’

—

If you would like to participate in Live Through This, please contact me.
If you’re feeling suicidal, please talk to somebody. You can reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

WE DID IT! At about 7pm Tuesday night, as I sat in a bar sipping a beer and reading a book (I like...

deseraestage — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:21:00 -0400

WE DID IT! At about 7pm Tuesday night, as I sat in a bar sipping a beer and reading a book (I like to call this “location scouting”), I got the email informing me that we’d reached the 100% mark. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. I still don’t. What I do know is that Live Through This will officially be funded!

Thank you so much to everyone who contributed financially or behind the scenes, who shared and shared and shared, and who cared about helping me make this thing a reality. My mind is blown. I’m ecstatic and so grateful. I want to hug all of you. Sadly, I will only get to hug some of you.

Now that we’ve reached the initial funding goal, we can work toward the stretch goals! Stretch goals, for those not familiar with Kickstarter terminology, are goals the project creator sets in excess of the original funding goal that, if met, will allow the creator to further expand the project. I have two in mind:

1. If we reach $22,683, I can bring in a filmmaker for one day of footage in each city I visit. This will work two different kinds of magic:

a). I can keep you all updated with a short video from every city! It’s like postcards from the road, but with less mailbox! I love the idea of collaborating with different filmmakers to bring you some behind the scenes action.

b). I’ll be accumulating footage along the way, which will [eventually] help me put together the documentary I occasionally reference wanting to make (always in the hushiest of hushed tones).

2. If we reach $25,000, I can have the website redesigned! With a more responsive design (optimized for all browsers and mobile devices), I can start to incorporate larger images and multi-media content, like video and audio in a more user-friendly, visually appealing way.

Truth be told, even if the stretch goals aren’t reached, I’m going to find a way to make them happen—eventually. It’s just how I roll, but it would be a lot easier (and speedy) if the funds were there to begin with.

If you haven’t donated yet and would still like to, you can do that until 3/21 at 10:59 AM EST.

A few things have happened on the press front, if you’re trying to keep up:

Lillian Cohen-Moore interviewed me, wherein I talk a lot about the origins of the project, my ‘technique,’ and why it was important to share my own story, among other things: Learning to Live Through This
We got some love from Upworthy: This Unique Attempt At Suicide Prevention Is Also Totally Beautiful
LTT made HEAVY’s list of 10 Kickstarter Projects That Deserve Your Money
LTT gets a mention in the Suicide Prevention Resource Center’s Director’s Blog
Cara Anna, editor of the American Association of Suicidology’s Attempt Survivors Blog, writes beautifully about the fundraising event at TUFFET, in case you missed it.

If you happen to be in Brooklyn on Sunday and want to avoid the disaster that is St. Patrick’s Day in NYC, you should stop by the BatHaus Coworking Space (279 Starr Street, off the Jefferson L Stop), where I’ll be talking about LTT at Presentation Party Night. PPN is a monthly lecture series founded on the idea that everyone has something to teach. BONUS: free beer by Brooklyn Brewery, free snacks from the Brooklyn Salsa Company. Doors at 7, Presentations at 8.

** If you’re around right now, Live Through This will be featured on HuffPost Live in just a few minutes as part of a segment called Living Life After Trying to End It.

No matter what happens, I’m just so thrilled about this, and I can’t wait to get to work. I’ll see some of you as soon as 4/14 in San Francisco!

Thank you all so much.

A LTT supporter sent this link along last week, and it seemed worth sharing. It’s a Thrash...

deseraestage — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 14:26:17 -0500

A LTT supporter sent this link along last week, and it seemed worth sharing. It’s a Thrash Lab short on Patton Oswalt and the secret life of the comic. It starts to get interesting between 5:00-7:00, when he discusses depression and suicide.

This little gem is particularly insightful: “It’s okay to be depressed sometimes. It’s okay to just be gloomy. It is kind of funny that the one thing that makes you maybe more perceptive—and maybe more funny—also makes you a much more vulnerable, and thus, not as successful human being in a lot of ways.”

In other news, the Kickstarter campaign is still going strong! Click to share on Facebook and/or Twitter.

One week into the Live Through This Kickstarter campaign, and we’re already nearing the...

deseraestage — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 14:58:00 -0500

One week into the Live Through This Kickstarter campaign, and we’re already nearing the $10,000 mark! I’m shocked and amazed by the outpouring of support. It’s nice to see that suicide awareness means so much to others out there—sometimes it’s hard to hear questions like, “but why do you want to focus on something so dark?”

We’re in the midst of last minute preparations for the fundraising party at TUFFET, which goes down Thursday night, 2/28, at 7:30pm. TUFFET is located off the L train at 286 Graham Avenue in Brooklyn. Large-scale prints of the portraits will be on display, the amazing DJ Ashleigh will be spinning tunes, we’ve got drink specials, and several of the attempt survivors who’ve shared their stories will be on-hand. We’ve also got some really cool raffle prizes: CDs signed by Henry Rollins; jewelry by Nina Loren; mini-portrait sessions from Danfredo Photography; a 10 minute phone conversation with Charlotte Martin; a signed book by Neil Gaiman; art by Jason Sho Green; a signed Backstreet Boys canvas; swag from The Watson Twins; vegan skincare products from Level Naturals; and prints by me. Everyone who donates $10 or more at the event will get a super cute, super-secret LTT trinket (sponsored in part by Brooklyn Charm). You can RSVP on Facebook here.

The project has gotten a little love around the web in the past week, and it’s only right for me to link to that stuff here: Resource Magazine, the improvised life, Rose Runs Wild, and Snailbird. Bam!

Just yesterday, I booked tickets for my first LTT-related trip! I’ll be in San Francisco from 4/14-4/19. If you want to be a part of the project and haven’t contacted me yet, email me. I’ll start scheduling interviews/shoots in the coming weeks.

Our success so far has been due mainly to getting the word out via social media, namely Facebook and Twitter (click either of these links to share). The sensitive nature of the the project seems to be making it too cumbersome for the media to pick up, which means we have more work to do! We’re $5,942 short of the funding goal, so share the link (http://bit.ly/livethroughthis) everywhere you can (GOOD, Reddit, StumbleUpon, on forums, in comments on related blogs—anything you can think of). Every single dollar helps!

Quick update: 1. We’ve raised over $6k in the first two days of the campaign! If things keep...

deseraestage — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 20:34:54 -0500

Quick update:

1. We’ve raised over $6k in the first two days of the campaign! If things keep moving along at this pace, we should be fully funded in no time. If we manage to exceed the funding goal, I’ll be able to collect stories and portraits in more places that aren’t currently on my list (I have my eye on Wyoming and Montana—there are some incredible people I’d like to meet out there). All that said, please continue to share the link as much as you possibly can, especially on Facebook. Here it is: http://livethroughthis.org/ks

2. I’ll be speaking about Live Through This at the spring benefit for the Brooklyn College chapter of TWLOHA tomorrow night. If you would like to attend, tickets are $5. It’s at the Macalulay Honors College, 35 W 67th St, at 6pm. (I’m terrified. Wish me luck?)

3. We’re having a Live Through This fundraising party at TUFFET next Thursday night, 2/28, at 7:30pm. TUFFET is located at 286 Graham Avenue in Brooklyn. There will be large-scale prints of the portraits on display, and several of the people who have been so brave as to share their stories will be on-hand for you to meet. You can RSVP on Facebook here. I would love it if you’d come out and support the project, but I also have incentives!

DJ Ashleigh Walker will be spinning amazing tunes from the 50s to the present!
Drink specials! $6 glasses of red wine, white wine, and seasonal sangria (I recall having a rosemary pear sangria last time I was out there—it was delicious).
Raffle prizes include: CDs signed by Henry Rollins; jewelry by Nina Loren (runner up on Season 1 of Project Accessory & childhood friend); mini-portrait sessions from Danfredo Photography; a 10 minute phone conversation with Charlotte Martin; a signed book by Neil Gaiman; art by Jason Sho Green; a signed Backstreet Boys canvas; and prints made and signed by yours truly. If you’re an artist or a business owner and you’d like to donate something for the event, please contact Felicidad Garcia at info@livethroughthis.org.
Everyone who donates $10 or more at the event will get a super cute, super-secret LTT trinket (sponsored in part by Brooklyn Charm).

And there you have it. I’m going to shut up now. Thank you so much for your support. I can’t tell you how amazing it is to see this project coming to life the way it has over the past couple of days.

Live Through This is officially LIVE on Kickstarter! We successfully raised $2k in the first hour!...

deseraestage — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 12:30:00 -0500

Live Through This is officially LIVE on Kickstarter!

We successfully raised $2k in the first hour! I’m overwhelmed, excited, and nervous. It’s a solid start, but there’s much more work to do.

Please take a look at the video, click and share this link (http://livethroughthis.org/ks). Anything you can do to help is incredibly appreciated–even if all you’ve got is a dollar!

Thank you so much for your support, and stay tuned for updates!

PS: HUGE thanks for Kiera & Josh at Jakfoto Films for the beautiful video; Froilan Tam for his amazing animation work; Charlotte Martin for allowing me to use one of my favorite songs in the video; Aleksandar Cosic for his images; and everyone else who has helped in the project so far.

BIG NEWS: The Kickstarter campaign launches tomorrow morning at 11 AM EST. I’m so excited to...

deseraestage — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 14:38:00 -0500

BIG NEWS: The Kickstarter campaign launches tomorrow morning at 11 AM EST. I’m so excited to share it with you guys! Last night, I posted a Pinterest exclusive preview of the LTT video made by Jakfoto Films. Take a look (and re-pin, if you’re into that sort of thing)!

In the meantime, I’ve got another portrait to share with you…

Caitlin Coleman’s suicide attempt and subsequent coma resulted in nodes on her vocal chords and nerve damage to her arm–a hard way to go for a vocalist/pianist. Below, we discuss the way we use language in the context of suicide:

Caitlin: Now I feel like I’m at a really good, functional point in my life. Are there things I would change? Yes. Are there things that I’m still fearful of? Yes. But I want to speak to people, and I Googled suicide survivors, thinking I would talk to people like me, and that’s not [what I found]. It’s people whose families have been affected by it, which I think is still really important, but I just think people have so many averse reactions to it. They blame themselves but they also blame the victim, which is interesting. I think the use of the word ‘commit’ is also interesting, because it’s not like you do a suicide or you have a suicide. You have to commit suicide and it’s like you’ve committed a crime or a murder or a robbery.

Dese’Rae: That’s what the prevention community is trying to change. That’s the [societally] accepted terminology. Now they say that you ‘attempt’ and you ‘complete.’ And even for me, it’s ingrained. I say, “Oh, so and so committed suicide,” and it’s like, wait, you know?

—

If you would like to participate in Live Through This, please contact me.
LTT is on Facebook and Twitter. Follow and share, please. The more people who see this website, the better!
LTT runs mainly on my personal financial resources, but donations are welcome! If you would like to help fund the project, click here.
If you’re feeling suicidal, please talk to somebody. You can reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

The point here is that there are certain behavioral traits that can be talked about, but unless...

deseraestage — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 21:33:00 -0500

The point here is that there are certain behavioral traits that can be talked about, but unless you’ve experienced the impulse behind them, they remain theoretical. Most of the time, this is for the best. After my brush with the suicidal impulse, I listen with new ears to others when they speak on the subject. I think there are people who were born with that little door open, and they have to go through life knowing that they might jump through it at any moment. – Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus! (pg. 221)

Researchers using data from suicide victims' Facebook profiles to identify warning signs

deseraestage — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 16:11:00 -0500

Researchers using data from suicide victims' Facebook profiles to identify warning signs :

I spent the entirety of this week redesigning the site to give it a). better functionality, and b). more information. Each drop down menu is packed with information about the project (including stats on suicide with citations), and there’s even a Survivors page where you can see every single portrait that I’ve made for Live Through This thus far, in the order they were made. I’m really proud of how it came out, and now I can use the blog differently, too. Look out for big changes in the near future (and maybe even an announcement regarding the Kickstarter campaign).

That said, what do you think of the announcement that Facebook is pairing up with SAVE to gather data about suicide warning signs?

More and more, I get these beautiful, terrible, sad emails from surviving family members and friends...

deseraestage — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 15:58:00 -0500

More and more, I get these beautiful, terrible, sad emails from surviving family members and friends of people who completed suicide. Recently, I happened upon one that had been misdirected to my spam inbox. It was from Kevin Clark, a friend of a friend who’d lost his sister, Lisa, to suicide just a couple of days earlier. He detailed her struggles and his own. He expressed regret—the idea that even though he knew he wasn’t to blame, he felt he’d failed as a big brother for not trying harder to talk to her, for not, somehow, being able to convince her that life was worth living. More and more, I wonder what to do with these emails, outside of bearing virtual witness to the pain of the stories within.

One solution I’ve come up with is to add a section to the LTT website to memorialize those losses. I think being able to see the names of those who lost their lives to suicide will help to further ground the issue in reality—these are people we loved dearly, who are lost to us forever.

Lisa Clark is pictured above. She was 25 when she died. Live Through This continues on in memory of Lisa.

If you’ve lost someone to suicide and you’d like to honor them in this way, email me. Please also consider making a donation to the project in their name. There are people all over the country who would like to tell their stories, and I’d like to be able to make that happen. Any amount, large or small, will help to document these powerful tales of survival.

If you can’t spare a dime, share this link. Spread the word to help promote suicide awareness. You never know, you might just save a life.

I met Chris Benedetto in a lively park on the Upper East Side of Manhattan—such an interesting...

deseraestage — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:45:32 -0500

I met Chris Benedetto in a lively park on the Upper East Side of Manhattan—such an interesting juxtaposition for the story he told me that day. Here is a man who has fought addiction and homelessness, who strives every single day. Below, he talks about external validation and tests of faith. Take a look.

There were times when I just felt like such a misfit. I remember—I’ve been in and out of
therapy for a few decades now—there’d be times in group therapy when people would be looking at me like I had a head sprouting out of my shoulder and I’m thinking, ‘Wow, I don’t even fit in with these people?’ You know, so there was, I guess, just this resounding kind of alienation. So, those were, I guess, triggers.

I think a lot of it too was, for years, I always sought validation outside of myself and I let
too much of my happiness be contingent on the external. And when I gradually learned
to get past that, I think that’s one of the things that messed me up, like, ‘Wow, you know, I’m not drinking, I’m not drugging, I’m not pissing my rent money away. Why is this happening? I’ve been on time every month with my rent. I’ve tried harder with this girl than I have with anyone ever in my life…’

I guess everyone kinda has to take their turn at it, and I guess it was my turn this year.
The last big pot hole I hit was probably when my brother died two years ago, so I guess
I was kinda overdue for something big. I think too, you know, we get tested on our faith, or if you’ve decided to quit drinking or drugging or gambling, you’ll get those tests. So I think this was probably a mid-term or an SAT.

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If you would like to participate in Live Through This, please contact me.
LTT is on Facebook and Twitter. Follow and share, please. The more people who see this website, the better!
LTT runs mainly on my personal financial resources, but donations are welcome! If you would like to help fund the project, click here.
If you’re feeling suicidal, please talk to somebody. You can reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

Frankie Barretto left a troubled home life to join the U.S. Army and fell into a deep depression...

deseraestage — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 14:47:00 -0400

Frankie Barretto left a troubled home life to join the U.S. Army and fell into a deep depression after being discharged for a knee injury. Suicide is the second most common cause of death in the U.S. military. Below, Frankie discusses some of the issues we face with reintegrating soldiers into society.

I was in the Army with so many people and I got out right out before everything happened.

…I know people, I’ve lost friends that went over to Iraq and Afghanistan. I know people that have gone over and come back and they are not the same. The Veterans Administration, they are doing, in my opinion, they are doing a hell of a job to address these issues, and I’m seeing it firsthand just by the way that they’re treating me. They actually care.

A lot of the soldiers that come back that I speak to, they’re involved in so many different programs to not only help them acclimate back into society, but to help them deal with these emotions and deal with the PTSD and the ticking time bomb syndrome and all of the other things, ‘cause they saw a lot of things over there that the public is not privy to at all, and that stuff will definitely scar you for life. So, being a soldier and knowing people that went through that and losing people that were really close to me because of all of that, that’s something that I’m very passionate about…

I think the biggest problem is the disconnect between society and the soldiers. Society does not understand what these soldiers go through. That’s why you have former Marines and former Army servicemen getting shot and killed by police and getting locked up, and you hear it more and more every day because they’re labeled as crazy.

They’re like, “Oh, these crazy soldiers are coming back.”

The thing is, a lot of them don’t know that there’s help available for them. They just come back and they just try to live their life and they’re dealing with so many things. So I think, like I said, there’s a huge disconnect between how society sees it and what it really is…

They see what they see on TV and they’re thankful that the soldiers go over there and give their lives for our freedom, but when the soldiers come back, they’re stigmatized and they’re labeled as crazy and it’s not fair. It’s not fair to them at all…

A lot of them, they just internalize it. They have that soldier mentality. Like, ‘I’m a soldier, I can survive anything.’

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If you would like to participate in Live Through This, please contact me.
LTT is now on Facebook, as well as Twitter. Follow and share, please. The more people who see this website, the better!
LTT runs mainly on my personal financial resources, but donations are welcome! If you would like to help fund the project, click here.
If you’re feeling suicidal, please talk to somebody. You can reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day.Six years ago, I tried to kill myself. That same year, I lost...

deseraestage — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 17:39:49 -0400

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day.

Six years ago, I tried to kill myself. That same year, I lost one of my best friends to suicide. In some way or another, I think we’ve all been touched by suicide: we’ve attempted, we know someone who’s attempted, we’ve lost a family member or friend, or we’ve watched someone we know go through that staggering brand of loss. The sad part is that it’s a topic we, as a society, tend to only speak about in hushed tones.

Instead of ignoring it because it’s not a thing most of us can easily wrap our heads around, what we should be doing is educating ourselves on the warning signs, on what to do when we fear someone we love is suicidal, on what our resources are. With that in mind, if there’s one thing I want you to know today, it’s that all you need to save a life is a little bit of empathy and a little bit of fearlessness. If you’re worried that someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, just ask them point-blank, “are you considering suicide?” The myth is that asking will plant the seed of an idea; the reality is that, if you’re thinking it, they already have. If the answer is yes and they’re seriously thinking suicide is an option, your directness may help them to get the load off that lets them see the light at the end of the tunnel, or it may open the door to finding them the professional help they need.

The night I attempted suicide was one of the scariest nights of my life, and it’s due to the care of a couple of fearless friends and my fearless mother that I made it through. Since suicide is likely an issue you’ll have to face at some point (if you haven’t already), why not take a few minutes to check out the National Council infographic below? It’s chock full of factoids on suicide, including demographic breakdowns, risk factors, and helpful resources. You never know, it might equip you with just the tools you need to save a life someday.

I make it a point not to divulge methods here because it can be triggering for some, but Kevin Hines...

deseraestage — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 15:05:00 -0400

I make it a point not to divulge methods here because it can be triggering for some, but Kevin Hines has an incredible (and incredibly well-documented) story. He attempted suicide twelve years ago and has since become a nationally recognized suicide prevention advocate. Below, he discusses the phenomenon of celebrities who have attempted suicide and the power they have but, in most cases, choose not to wield in order to maintain their image for the cannibalistic Hollywood machine. I’ve had quite a bit of experience with this in the development of the project and feel as strongly about it as Kevin does.

I’m saying we, as human beings, are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, and if we don’t wake up and realize it’s not just us in this world—that old adage ‘we’re not alone’—we’re not alone! And no person in a fight for their life is alone. There are millions of people out there fighting just as you are. Find that network. Talk about the issues.

There was a time when I first started speaking that I would talk in a very low voice in public places, because of my paranoia but also because I didn’t want people hear me talk about my mental illness. Today I’ll probably shout it in a coffee shop, in a library… hell, because if people ask me questions and I answer them, they’re going to get the information they so desire. They’re also going to get the fact that, you know, let’s stop hiding. Let’s all come out and talk about this.

Look what happened to [NAME REDACTED]. He attempted, was on the news for half a second, his managerial team shut it down, and he never spoke about it again. [He] is in a position to save way more lives than me. I’m not saying he has to do that, I’m saying he has the opportunity—had the opportunity at that particular moment—to say, ‘Hey kids, I made a mistake. I’m so glad I’m here, you should be here too.’ He just had to do it one time and the whole world would see it. As opposed to what did happen: the managerial team said, ‘If you don’t be quiet, we’re not going to hire you. And we have to know you’re healed, and now we have to have an insurance policy on you, but we have to know you’re healed.’ Movies are more important to him than helping other people.

I’m not trying to judge [him]. There’s millions of [famous people] out there who have these issues with their mental health, don’t address them, get sick publicly, and don’t address them publicly. And I think there’s a failure in the system with that going on, because… how many lives could they save with a campaign for suicide prevention? Way more than any other people [sic] in the suicide prevention world right now. They have that power, but they are crushed by their managers and their talent agents that say, ‘No, shut up.’ It makes me sad.

Read more about Kevin at kevinhinesstory.com

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If you would like to participate in Live Through This, please contact me.
LTT is now on Facebook, as well as Twitter. Follow and share, please. The more people who see this website, the better!
LTT runs mainly on my personal financial resources, but donations are welcome! If you would like to help fund the project, click here.
If you want to buy a LTT logo t-shirt, you can do that here. We have one Large shirt left for sale.
If you’re feeling suicidal, please talk to somebody. You can reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

Though I share a hometown with Krista Andrews, we managed to lead lives wholly ignorant of the...

deseraestage — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 15:38:00 -0400

Though I share a hometown with Krista Andrews, we managed to lead lives wholly ignorant of the other’s existence until we moved to New York in our mid-twenties and met through a mutual friend. Hearing her story affected me so deeply that I went home and made my own portrait for Live Through This immediately after making hers.

Below, she discusses America’s pharmaceutical culture and symptom-based treatment system and asks, again, why do we have such a hard time talking about mental illness and suicidal thoughts?

I think so many people will casually mention stuff like, ‘I’m on Xanax and it’s making me fat,’ or ‘I’m on Zoloft and I have no sex drive anymore,’ but people never talk about why they’re on medication. I feel like it’s such a common thing to be medicated, but no one wants to really talk about the serious stuff, like, ‘Why am I like this?’ I think that that’s something that you don’t need to tell everyone in the whole world, but it’s something that you need to talk about, because if you don’t, you can end up where I ended up, and so many other people ended up.

Talking is so therapeutic. I think that being able to talk about it, for me, helps me. It helps people who are going through the same thing not feel by themselves. For me, the most important part of all of this and any of this is—because my little sister is the same age now as I was when I tried to kill myself—I think that I just want her to know that, God forbid she ever feels the way I felt, that she can talk about it, she can feel okay telling me… because I didn’t have that. I didn’t feel comfortable, I didn’t want to be judged. I thought nobody understood and I think that, if she knows, she’ll never reach the point that I reached.

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If you would like to participate in Live Through This, please contact me.

If the project resonates with you, please share a link everywhere you see fit. The more eyes that see this, the better. I get the most inquiries about participation from shared links, for what it’s worth.

If you would like to help fund the project, click here. Every dollar helps.

If you want to follow LTT on Twitter, you can do that here.

If you want to buy a LTT logo t-shirt, you can do that here. We have one Large shirt left for sale.