“The Way Out is Through” by Kimberle Taitano

We want to thank Kimberle Taitano for sharing her personal journey through not only her own suicide attempt, but the loss of multiple loved ones to suicide.  It is not easy to openly talk about your own experience with suicide; fear of judgement often stands in the way.  Thank you Kimberle for giving a voice to those who have been where you have been.

“The Way Out Is Through”

My first suicide attempt was at eight years old; my last would be thirty years later. A product of a traumatic childhood left unresolved, free to shape and create a tainted perspective which would govern everything about me, life, and the world I lived in. that perspective would remain until a series of suicide attempts combined with four heartbreaking suicide losses would alter not only my perspective but my entire life.

My personal experience with suicide is one of both attempt and one of heartbreaking loss granting me a unique scope on one of the leading causes of death in this country.

No one suspected that at eight years old the helpful, smiling, outgoing little girl hid such secrets that left her thinking her only way out was to end her life. No one close to me ever could have guessed the silent shameful secret too ugly too unthinkable to be true that she, that I had been sexually abused by four intimate family members from infancy through my preteen years.

Back then there were no widely known signs to look for, no toll free numbers, hotlines, or public campaigns of awareness. Therefore, like so many others I lived in silence and shame.

In 1984, I lost my first friend to suicide. Mia was beautiful, talented, and popular and seemed to have everything a senior in high school could possibly want. However, no one asked the question leaving Mia to think her only option was to end her life jumping off my hometowns Coronado Bay bridge ending her life at eighteen.

Mia’s passing shocked the small community her and I resided in high school. With Mia the news of her death announced on a brief written notice on my first period class chalkboard. Gasps, blank stares, and the silence of no one speaking her name Only later in the day and days that followed soft whispering conversations of “what problems could she possibly have had? She had everything how bad could things be?”

There it begins, it starts with words like, “He or she had everything…. He had it all how bad…” you can fill in the blank. Even back then, I knew it was not anything as people were saying it had nothing to do with lacking or wanting. Mia did not jump of that bridge because she was not elected prom queen or did not win the lead in the school play. The question begging to be asked, “What happened to you Mia that has you thinking taking your life was your only way out?”

That is the question I wanted someone to ask me. To have someone ask and see things are not as they appeared to be.

Suicide is not the ultimate “temper tantrum” or rebellious response to not getting what someone wants. It is not the act of a spoiled individual looking for attention. No, it is the result of something unseen at a first glance and most often missed, hidden behind a façade of “He or she has it all” appearance.

Mia’s passing was my first experience of suicide loss the other side of suicide only those left behind gets to know. It was also my first glimpse at what might be if one of my attempts actually became the end result intended.

I cannot honestly state as fact that even thirty plus years after losing Mia I have fully grasped her death perhaps those of us who know suicide loss never really do. I do not know.

Following Mia’s death, I managed to keep my own inner crisis creatively hidden from outside view, or so I thought. Shortly after Mia while living in Los Angeles working as a professional actress I lost a second friend Jodi. Jodi was beautiful, talented and working her way to becoming a truly incredible actress. Until walking into rehearsal one day of a play, she and I were doing the cast and crew found a brief written notice that Jodi had taken an overdose of pills ending her life at twenty-two years old.

And just as with Mia’s passing that uncomfortable silence consumed the theater, no one spoke her name or asked the question only the familiar words and whispering conversations of stigma presumed to be fact swirled around my ears. No one asked the question not even me.

Jodi’s was the first funeral I attended well briefly anyway. The first time I saw the pain of suicide loss permanently scarred on the faces of her parents and younger sister, all of fifteen minutes was I able to stay the revelation of the other side of suicide too difficult to bear. Jodi’s passing halted my episodes of attempts replaced with the increase of self-harm.

My perspective in the years leading up to my late twenties and early thirties were cloudy at best, images, and thoughts so confusing and convoluted reality had become a faint existence. I began to lose time, unknowing of what was or had occurred, snapping out of a self-imposed stupor to find myself unfamiliar of what or where I was or had been. Unknowing that these hints were flashes of an undiagnosed mental illness drastically trying to break free.

Then I met Annie. Beauty personified inside and out a mirror image me complete with a carbon copy of childhood trauma experiences of an instant bond formed one, which only two similar shattered souls recognize. We became the most intimate of confidents sharing our deepest shameful secrets, fears, good and bad days only another survivor of sexual abuse can understand. We talked each other through the times when the other was in crisis or having “one of those days” cheering each other through the dark times always ending with a hug, a I love you and a pinky swear.

It was one those dark days that Annie showed up at my door in the early afternoon surprised to see her I of course put my work day on hold ushered her in and we sat cross legged on my sofa for hours her venting pain, me listening and playing hostess as we shared a bottle of wine. As the afternoon turned into early evening she seemed better so as we always did, we hugged, said I love you and pinky swore we would get each other through. As I watched her soul sister walk down my path and disappear around the corner, I never could have guessed it would be the last time I would see her.

Unknown and unasked I did not know what recently had happened to cause her to thinking taking her life was the only way out. It was not until several days later two days before my thirty -fourth birthday did I lose my dear Annie. Deep in crisis with the belief the only way out was to take her life Annie put a 357 magnum to her temple and pulled the trigger ending her life at thirty-three years old. Annie’s loss would hit me like a freight train bringing me to inconsolable grief and endless sobs for months. When my tears eased the tidal waves of guilt and self-persecution came, I finally saw and experienced the totality of suicide loss!

Countless hours tormented by the realizations of ‘why didn’t I see it, how could I have missed it, why didn’t I ask the question? Why Why Why! I literally left my life checked out disappearing into my “perception of reality” my mental health dangerously clinging to survive.

Only to be lost with the loss of my cousin Anthony Closer than a brother, my most intimate family connection, my touchstone, the one constant I could always count on secretly struggling with his own unseen pain hung him ending his life at thirty-one years old.

The shock. The Grief. The Anger. The unanswered questions breaking the barrier between what I perceived as reality and reality itself broke releasing a cyclone of shattered glass, which once made up my perception of the real world.

November eleventh two thousand and two one thirty three am I found myself bolt upright in bed sobbing uncontrollably. I do not recall what set me off or how I found myself in that place. That place where suicide attempt rapidly becomes suicide completion. The memories of going to my kitchen and retrieving the butcher knife are cloudy what I clearly remember is sobbing so hard I was brought to my knees. Holding the blade to my wrist, I looked up choking and hearing myself beg,

“Please I can’t do this anymore, I’ll do anything just make the pain stop.”

I do not know how long I sat there the blade to my wrist pressing against my skin, seeing red begin to appear. I looked up once more and heard myself say clearly,

“I surrender!”

And like a shot from a canon, I got it. The tears stopped, the knife fell away, and my mind was clear with the knowing I needed help.

So that morning as I emerged from my bedroom I directly sat across from my mother who lived with me and said for the first time in my life,

“I need Help”

And help is exactly what I got.

What I know now about Suicide loss is a vast mix of emotions, all which come together and create a pain so indescribable, so powerful it forever changes everything about you and alters every fiber of your being. Nothing will ever be as it once was.

Each person I lost to suicide changed me they are forever imprinted on my soul, gone are feelings of shock, and the beginnings of grief. But what remains and perhaps always will are random out of left field bursts of guilt, flashes of anger when they are no longer around to share successes, celebrate special life events, or worse yet when they are exactly who I want to pick up the phone and talk too, those are the times I feel the pain the most.

I credit Mia, Jodi, Annie, and Anthony with changing my perception by showing me the other side of suicide the loss. As a well-known quote says,

“Suicide doesn’t end the pain; it simply passes it on to those you love.” I do not believe I would fully understand how true this is if it were not for the experience of losing four of the most beautiful souls I was blessed to share a part of my life with as brief as it was.

This is how I choose to see my experiences of the other side of suicide loss. And I say their names as often as I can, I tell their stories as I do my own because as my cousin Anthony would say,

“Say what you feel, say it from love because you never know who might be listening?”

 

Kimberle Taitano 

Survivor