‘They want the pain to stop, but they don’t want to die’
Mary Esther Rohman, 69, turned back from suicide five years ago when a friend — who had lost a daughter to suicide — bluntly asked her if she was thinking of ending her life. The question helped Rohman unburden herself of pent-up depression. Rohman, who spoke with Herald reporter Brian Dowling, called Boston’s suicide prevention initiative “an excellent idea” that could give people under the weight of suicidal thoughts a new glimpse at hope.
“I volunteer for a crisis hotline where people who are suicidal or have emotional problems call when they want to talk to somebody. It’s really important to be able to talk to people who say, ‘I can’t hope to live anymore, I can’t deal with this anymore, it’s getting really hard,’ and just come out and ask them, ‘Have you thought about suicide?’ …
It really can be a sense of relief for the person to be able to talk about it because a lot of people think about suicide, but maybe don’t really want to do it. Nobody really wants to die. They want the pain to stop, but they don’t want to die. You can give them another way for the pain to stop. You can get them to some kind of help. You can listen to the problems themselves, or get them hooked up with a counselor or get them to an emergency room. Suicides are preventable. …
Five years ago, I was talking to a friend and he thought something was wrong. He had a daughter who had taken her own life. He came right out and asked me, and it shocked me. …
It was strange because it was the medication I was taking. The side effects happened really fast. I didn’t know that. I couldn’t tell what was wrong with me. I just knew that I was feeling driven to take my own life. I didn’t want to tell anybody because I wanted to do it and I thought they would probably try to stop me. There was something about the way he approached me and asked me straight out, and that’s how I answered him. He asked me if something was wrong and if I was feeling suicidal and then he told me about his daughter.
You are living with something that’s really kind of killing you. It’s a heavy feeling. It was a relief to know that somebody understood me, somebody cared about it and would talk to me. When he talked about losing his daughter, I thought about the impact it would have on my husband, and I hadn’t thought about that.”