10 things you should know
before you kill yourself
Editor’s note: Michael Bizzarro, Ph.D., LCSW, clinical director for Princeton House First Responder Treatment Services, shares this arti-
cle written by Katie Paul with permission from the author.
There’s a hell of a lot of information out there about suicide,
but I wanted to tell you a few things you should know before you
kill yourself.
First of all, I know you are probably a guy. That’s because 78
percent of people who take their own lives are male. There are
lots of reasons for that, but the main one is that you keep every-
thing bottled up inside because you’re trying to “be there” for
everyone else. You don’t have to, you know. Talking about how
you’re feeling is the bravest thing a man can ever do. But that’s
not why I’m here.
I’m here to tell you what happens next–after you decide to
end your pain.
1. The person who finds your bodywill probably be your
wife or one of your kids. You will have chosen a method
that is violent, and the image of your dead body with the
noose, the gun or the plastic bag will be forever etched
in the mind of that person who finds you. It will be the
last thing she sees before she goes to sleep and the first
image she sees upon waking. It will flash into her mind
at random moments and leave her completely trauma-
tized. She will forever associate colors, smells, shapes
and noises with that moment when her life was fractured
into pieces.
2. When the police arrive, they will treat your wife as a
suspect. Your death will be deemed “suspicious,” and the
house will be cordoned off as a crime scene. Ambulanc-
es, fire engines and police cars will line the street. People
will crane their necks to see what is going on. Your private
decision will become the subject of public speculation.
The room where you died will never be able to be used
again. There will be stains on the chair, on the carpet, on
the walls. Most likely, your family will have to move.
3. Your private life will be raked over by the police. They’ll
go through your wallet, your phone and your comput-
er, looking for someone to blame for your death. All the
while, your wife will be unable to eat or sleep, and her
tears will make her beautiful eyes haunted and lost.
4. There will be an autopsy to determine how you died.
There will be questions about your relationship, your job,
your finances, your health and your drug and alcohol
consumption. If you’ve managed to destroy your body in
your final act, your wife will have to formally identify you.
She will no longer remember you as alive and breathing;
she will only remember you lying still, battered and vio-
lated on the cold slab of a mortuary. And all the time, the
voice in her head will scream “Why?” That voice never
stops.
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NEW JERSEY COPS
■ JANUARY 2019
5. Your wife won’t be able to work for a long while, and
the money will run out. It will take months, maybe even
years for her to get any sort of payout. And if you haven’t
left a will, she will have to prove to the courts that she is
entitled to your money. Lawyers will ask if there was an-
other woman, other children, another life. She will have
to prove over and over again that she was your wife.
6. Your friends and family will find it difficult to believe
that you did this without provocation. They will search
for someone to blame, and that person will be your wife.
They will whisper that she drove you to it. They will find it
hard to be around her. She will have to survive this thing
on her own.
7. Your wife will blame herself. No matter what the circum-
stances, she will know that she didn’t love you enough or
support you enough to keep you alive. Her sense of fail-
ure will overwhelm her. She will relive the last days and
hours before your death, searching for the moment when
she could have made a difference.
8. The report of your death in the newspaper will be de-
liberately vague. You will join the long list of men who
have been “found dead.” They will never print the word
“suicide,” but everyone will know what happened. Even
your wife and children will rarely mention the word when
telling your story. They will fabricate a lie to cover their
shame and hurt. Saying you died of a heart attack is the
usual thing.
9. Your son won’t have you around to teach him how to
drive. Your daughter will have no one to walk her down
the aisle on her wedding day. Your wife won’t have a safe
place to go when her own pain needs soothing. You will
miss out on their lives.
10. The pain of losing you doesn’t heal. It eventually gets
numbed by the challenge of getting on with life with a
part missing, but the thought of you is always just below
the surface.
When you take your life, you take the life of your wife, your
kids, your parents, your siblings and your friends. There is no
choice for them. They have to live with this burden for the rest
of their lives. No matter what you’ve done, no matter who you
are, no one will be better off without you.
I’m not here to tell you what to do with your life — it’s up to
you. All I want to do is tell you what really happens to those of
us left behind.
Sleep on it. Wait until tomorrow. Call someone. Talk. Stay
alive. We need you. We love you more than you’ll ever know.