Our Job As Survivors
The shoes paralyze me. I can’t decide on a pair and so can’t leave my tiny closet. White Stan Smiths, sleek leather boots, gray UGGs. Sweat dampens my armpits, even though it’s February and we’ve opened two windows to counter the radiator’s intensity. Every minuscule decision feels consequential. My new therapist tells me to trust my gut. But what’s speaking?
The spleen, according to ancient medicine, holds worry. My acupuncturist, another addition to my lineup of healers, is concerned with mine. “You’re an earth person. Earth people are tied to their spleens,” she said during our last session, as she pushed tiny needles into my flesh. “But your tongue is too purple, and your fingers are cold.”
“I’m a Capricorn,” I responded. “That’s earth, right?”
She told me that the liver holds bitterness, anger, and depression. Kidneys, fear. The stomach, if in balance, is a good one to trust — power and confidence. But if not, their opposites might whisper to you. Trusting your gut isn’t that simple.
I disregard mine and listen to my brain, which says the shoes don’t matter. When the only attendance requirement is losing a loved one to suicide, no one cares about your shoes.
This support group asks people to wait at least six months after a loss — their preferred word — to attend a meeting, but I called for an exception.
“I’m in therapy. I’m back at work,” I told them. It’s been two months since my sister died; I have my shit together. I don’t, but I put on makeup and go to the gym and post vulnerable, yet inspirational, messages on my social media accounts. You are so strong, acquaintances comment. The group lets me join.
I’ve been in enough therapy to understand that I need the shoes to help me reclaim my old self, understand who I am now, and fuse these identities. I grab the Stan Smiths and exit the closet. The white sneakers and I wait on the subway platform, Harlem buzzing below.
If you walk by, you’d see me standing on wet concrete, highlighted blonde hair, lightly freckled skin, long legs in dark jeans. You might not envy me, but you wouldn’t pity me.
You wouldn’t see my blazing brain, the thoughts and images like fireworks, exploding behind my eyes and sending shock waves through my bones down to my unbalanced spleen. Not the slide that swoops me down in those hours between bedtime and actual sleep. Not the magnifying glass emphasizing each point of shame.
The train’s seat is a slick plastic, unbothered by the thousands of people who’ve occupied it. I slide in and stare at the other passengers as if my eyes can bore past their time-worn skin, synthetic fabrics, thick glasses. Who are they? What’s going on inside? Before my sister died, I’d occasionally wonder about strangers’ histories. But empathy is difficult when you haven’t experienced hard-core loss. I want to look at a stranger and know they’re like me. If they’ve been through pain so intense they thought they might die, then felt simultaneous disdain and reverence for their bodies when they didn’t.
Which, I suppose, is why support groups exist.
I get off the train and walk three blocks. I nearly miss the stone church’s side entrance, the white sheet of paper taped to the door. I come down the staircase into a low-ceilinged basement. A man looks up with watery eyes in puffy sockets.
“Hi,” he says, and the syllable weighs a hundred pounds. He looks strikingly like Steve Buscemi.
I should leave, I think as our eyes connect. I should go back up the stairs, away from Steve and his sad eyes, and get dinner in Hell’s Kitchen. Order a heavy Cabernet and a bowl of spicy hot ramen, silence my thoughts with a true-crime podcast. This group concept isn’t me — I’m a dweller, not a sharer.
But more people have noticed me. My people-pleasing, empath side takes over and I walk down the stairs into the basement. It is now vividly, excruciatingly real. By entering this room, I announce I am a suicide loss survivor.
I hang up my coat and fill out the first-time attendee form. There are cups on a table, but no coffee or water. Someone’s dumped mini-Oreos and cherry cough drops on paper plates. I reach past these second-thought snacks and grab a nametag, scrawl my first name in black sharpie, and stick the tag on my shirt.
“Let’s move to the circle,” says Almost Steve Buscemi, ostensibly the leader, and people drift to folding chairs that have been carefully arranged. There are about twenty of us, including two facilitators, and boxes of Kleenex are on the floor between every three chairs. I imagine the shopping that preceded this event, Steve filling a basket as he walked down fluorescent-lit aisles. One package of nametags, two bags of mini-Oreos, four sharpies, five tissue boxes. Cough drops impulsively tossed in at the register, or maybe grabbed from his medicine cabinet at home. Did he spend the day in anticipation of tonight’s discussion?
There’s a girl around my age in distressed jeans and a Zara sweater. A few seats down, a well-coiffed older woman hugs a Chanel purse like a teddy bear. They both reassure me. At a different time, I might chide myself for such appearance-based judgments, but I’m looking for anchors, cradling assumptions like the woman does her Chanel.
Steve leans forward, interlaces his hands, and says, “Welcome, everyone.” He lets the words hang as if testing whether we can handle more. “To begin, we will go around the circle, say our names, the name of the person we lost, and when we lost them.”
Death, I’ve come to find, is always watered down in conversations. There’s an unspoken rule that since death is a tremendous, terrifying concept, we must reduce the spices to make it palatable. Passed, lost, crossed over, loved one. She will be missed. Even saying who will be doing the missing seems like too much.
“Just a reminder — please say the name of the person you lost and the date you lost them,” says Steve. I tune back in time to hear that word again: lost. As if they’ve been misplaced, as if they don’t pop up in our brains in banal moments, like when we’re washing our hair or waiting for an oil change.
An older man with a walker stares at the floor. A mellow-looking guy next to me with glasses and puffy hair keeps smiling, and I realize that’s his natural resting expression.
Suddenly it’s my turn. “My name is Mary. I lost my sister a month ago.” I instantly go from a detached observer to crying. Fast and sloppy, as if I’ve broken a barrier. Steve nods sadly, and then all eyes shift over. We’re not supposed to converse yet. The girl in Zara stares at me for a few extra seconds. She also lost her sister, she shared just a few minutes ago. But she, unlike me, has another one.
There’s a loud slurping sound, coming from the twitchy man three seats down from me. In stained clothes and too-big boots, he can’t weigh more than 120 pounds. His sun-aged left hand clutches a pint of strawberry Haagen-Dazs and his other hand grips a silver spoon. He dunks the spoon in the pint, then raises a gooey pink scoop and sucks it down. Of all the snacks to eat in a church basement at five pm on a freezing day while talking about suicide, strawberry ice cream seems far down on the list.
“My wife,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Two years ago. Sick for a long time. I think I knew she was going to do it, at some point. She mentioned it here and there. I’m not surprised. Just sad.” Another slurp of ice cream. We stay silent.
Steve leans in. “Let’s open up the circle for conversation now. If you start to go too far down a path, or if you give advice or speculations that might not be welcomed, we, the facilitators, will gently bring you back.”
Though all the stories are different, the teller’s tone either revolves around shaky disbelief or worn acceptance — sometimes both. Some even seem like they can touch peace with the tip of their finger.
“I had lunch with her the day before.” Chanel hugs her purse tighter. “She seemed fine, distant perhaps, but fine. We ate niçoise salads and drank iced tea. We discussed plans to host our annual Christmas party. I was shocked when I got the call. She was so very excited about the party.”
“I was in the car yesterday, and a song came on that my daughter loved,” says the man with the walker. “She would always play it when we drove together, and I’d gripe and groan. When it came through the radio, I cried. But then I laughed because I think she was playing a little joke.”
“He was depressed. Man, we all knew it. We tried to help, but kept telling us he was fine, had it under control, had a therapist, meds, all that. And we had to believe him because what else could we do? I found out while I was on vacation. Now I keep thinking, what if I hadn’t gone?”
I know the talk track. I will defend the talk track. Suicide is not a selfish act. Many have altered perceptions, thinking that the world is better without them. An article my therapist sent me compared it to an anorexic looking in the mirror at a warped reflection, fat where none exists. Some survivors report complete detachment at the time of their attempt, or the notion that they were sparing others pain. It’s desperation, hopelessness, mental illness — not selfishness.
But as Häagen-Dazs finishes his pint and sinks his small body deeper into the folding chair, as Chanel stares into the depths of her purse, as the father with the walker wipes tears with a cloth handkerchief, that conviction slips through my fingers like dry sand. That familiar ping pong between heartache and anger, compassion and resentment. How, I want to scream at everyone there, does it stop?
On the way home, I order sushi and pick it up before heading to my apartment, justifying it as a reward for enduring the evening, for taking another step forward. Anything that brings an ounce of happiness, a shot of pleasure, even momentarily, is worth it. If tonight that is salmon nigiri and a spicy tuna roll, I’ll welcome it. It’s temporary happiness, minor and shallow, but perhaps that’s what healing is: little patches here and there that prevent the dam from bursting while the structural work is completed. Maybe Häagen-Dazs is onto something.
Sushi in hand, I enter my warm apartment. I kick off my shoes, light my good candles, and settle barefoot on the couch. The rolls have the perfect ratio of rice to fish. With my bra off and feet bare, I’m comfortable, at ease, connected to myself. The ping-pong ball stops bouncing. I know it will start again, but for right now, I have peace.
Maybe that’s also what healing is: moments of peace, created by shoes or therapy or support groups or sushi or a quiet evening, where we can realign. With ourselves, the universal, God, whatever you want to call it. That’s our job as survivors, I think — to collect these moments wherever we can, knit a blanket, and wrap ourselves, each other, in it.
