When I was 17, my cousin Zeke travelled from Wisconsin to Idaho to stay with my family for two weeks. This was the first time I had met him in person. He was a small, tow-headed 14-year-old boy with too much energy and a smile that stretched all the way across his face. I was busy that summer. I was working at McDonald’s almost every day. The smell of kitchen grease and dirty dish water was imbedded in my skin. For the time Zeke was here, I was expected to entertain him, which I resented. As a 17-year-old girl, I had better things to do than drive around a young boy with whom I seemed to have no common interests. Still, we had fun. At least, it seemed like he was having fun. I took him to the mall (he was bored within 30 minutes) and on errands with me (we went to the local grocery store to pick up ingredients for dinner.) My parents paid for us to go to the water park for the day (again, Zeke was over it in about an hour), and we played board games (Sorry! was Zeke's favorite.) I was a little sad when he went home, even if I wasn’t willing to admit it.
I never saw my cousin in person again, because on September 16, 2015, Zeke loaded his rifle, pointed it as his head and shot himself.
Male suicide is extremely prevalent in the United States. In 2014, it was reported that men are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide than women. Seven out of every 10 suicides were reported to be completed by white males. In Wisconsin in 2015, it was estimated that four out of five completed suicides were male. In Idaho, 78 percent of suicides from 2010 to 2014 were men.
There are very few feelings that really compare to waking up and immediately seeing a slew Facebook posts on a family member’s wall from one of their schoolmates, saying things like, "You seemed so happy the last time I saw you, and I wish I had gotten to know you better."There are even fewer feelings that compare to getting a text from your mom shortly after and finding out that everyone else had known since about 1 a.m. that morning.
My family was shaken up. The news of my Zeke’s death sat on me like a weight. It still does. I went through all the things I should have done and wish I still could, knowing full well none of them would have made an ounce of difference. I remember categorizing everything I was feeling into the stages of grief. This is depression. This is anger. This is bargaining. This is denial. No one in my family would stop talking about it. When someone in the same area as my cousin attempted suicide about a week later, I became very aware that my cousin was not an outlier.
It didn’t take much research to learn that within Zeke’s school, there had already been three other suicides since 2013. The administration avoided moments of silence or remembrance T-shirts, as they were worried that it was romanticizing suicide, and could cause number five. The same administration insisted that Zeke was never bullied. Suicide is something that is extremely prevalent, but people seem more interested in pushing it under the rug. It’s easy to do that until your child, or family member or friend is one of the 117 suicides that occur every day in the United States.
There are several theories behind the disproportionate amount of male suicides. One of the most prominent is the idea of the “Man Box”. The Man Box describes the box that men are expected to, and socially conditioned to, fit into since birth. It includes ideas of not expressing emotions other than anger, always being dominant, always being confident and loving sports. If men do not fit into that box, then they get physically and verbally bullied until they do. Because of a lack of ability to express emotions other than anger due to social conditioning, men often end up completing suicide because they are angry at themselves or angry at others for hurting them.
Zeke didn’t fit into the Man Box, or really any other box. He very much prided himself on individuality. He didn’t play sports, but he rode a unicycle. His favorite color was pink and he wore his hair in a pony tail until he was about twelve. Most of his friends were girls. I mentioned that Zeke was small when I met him. He didn’t grow much since that time. Our entire family, at least the side we share, is very short. I am five feet tall. Zeke was only around five foot one, and he was thin. I have suspicion that he was picked on for his size and possibly for his hobbies. He always seemed angry and ready to fight. It was partly because of this that everyone was so shocked by Zeke’s death. Suicide felt like him giving up. To me, it felt like a personal attack. I felt like I had done something wrong. I thought a lot about how I could have helped, if only he lived a little bit closer. If the circumstances had just been different, I thought, he would still be alive.
I was very perturbed that several of Zeke’s classmates said the same thing in their posts on his Facebook wall— "You seemed so much happier that last day. You said you were doing great." This is one of the most prevalent signs of an impending suicide attempt, and one of the signs people always miss. People, as a whole, do not flip their entire perspective 180 degrees over night. People considering suicide generally do not wake up one morning with a new lease on life, ready to greet the world with optimism and zest. They become happy because they make a plan. They come up with a way that they assume will solve their problem and everyone else’s. People getting ready to attempt suicide are not thinking logically. They have gotten over the innate human fear of mortality. Before they get to this point, they may also give away belongings and develop a sudden interest in talking about death. Talking about death normalizes it. I don’t know if my cousin gave things away, but I do know that several people remember him mentioning suicide or death. He almost attempted it once before. About 40 percent of people who complete suicide made a previous attempt to do so. It is not a feeling that goes away. It sits on your chest. It weighs on your mind. You can only ignore that for so long when everyone else is ignoring you.
The “Man Box” theory is closely related to the idea of social perfectionism, researched by Professor Rory O’Connor, the president of the International Academy of Suicide Research. Social perfectionism comes from identifying closely with the expectations and roles society puts on a person. It is less about what other people actually think of someone, and more about what that person thinks they expect. The Man Box is this, but one step further. Men confined to the Man Box are concerned about what other people think of them and other people are enforcing these concerns through verbal and physical bullying and abuse.
One person dying by suicide is not going to cause a shift in societal perception. The only thing that will shift societal perceptions of suicide and masculinity will be conversations about them. If people don’t stop pushing suicide under the rug and continue to enforce strict “rules” of masculinity, the suicide epidemic will get worse. Education is the only thing anyone can hope to do. There is hope for people battling suicidal thoughts and hope for the families picking up the pieces left behind.
My counsellor gave me a packet for survivors of suicide from the Idaho Suicide Prevention Action Network. It included a package of wildflower seeds. I planted them this month. It seemed appropriate, because wildflowers grow where and how they like. They don’t do well when confined to flower boxes or pots. And people allow them to be as they are, admiring their beauty for what it is.
National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255
