August 20, 2020
A celebrity aborted a suicide attempt in 2007. Afterwards, she said she thought of her mother finding her body. She decided that her mother had sacrificed too much to have this happen.
Thomas Joiner states that there are differences between the near suicidal mind and the suicidal mind. One of those differences is “ties that bind”. The celebrity had as Joiner states, “ties that she could not ignore”. For Elliot, one aspect of his sickness was that he could not see the ties. He was in an emotional crisis. It was so steep that he could only see his death as a release of a burden for his friends and family. The thought in his head may have been, “they are sacrificing too much on me, and I am dragging them down. If I die, I will no longer be a burden.”
There are those climatic scenes in the movies when someone is holding on to the hand of another as they dangle off a cliff. When the rescuer begins to slip themselves their loved one decides to let go, so they won’t cause the death of another. Elliot thought he was dragging the rest of us down. He thought letting go would have us spring up to safety and happiness.
This was a mistake. I wish he would have been able to see the ties. His life on this earth has been severed, but the “ties that bind” have not. They pull at our hearts every day.
