Amy Bleuel: Suicide, Illness, and Advocacy
On March 24th, Amy Bleuel, the thirty-one-year-old founder of Project Semicolon, died from suicide. Project Semicolon is a movement meant to help those who struggle with mental illness, eating disorders, self-injury, and suicide ideation; Bleuel, who suffered from chronic suicide ideation, started Semicolon after her father died from suicide.
In Bleuel’s own words: “The semicolon was chosen because in literature a semicolon is used when an author chooses to not end a sentence. You are the author and the sentence is your life. You are choosing to continue.”
When enduring illness, trauma, abuse, or all three, the struggle to live takes momentous practice and endurance; this endurance often takes at least 95% of one's strength, yet it is this fight that often goes neglected or even becomes a source of ridicule or shame. It's terrible enough struggling to create a healthy identity when your loved ones, friends, or society reinforce the false dichotomy of being either a “functioning contributor” to society or a lazy, pitiful attention-seeker.
This issue hits hardest when someone like Bleuel, who others may see as a guide who's become a “better,” healthier source of hope, ultimately dies after her hard-fought battle. Those who relate to the semicolon and look up to mental health advocates will ask, “If they lost hope to keep going, why shouldn't I?” This reminds me of this HuffPost article where the writer, Alicia Raimundo, admits a time she saved someone from jumping in front of a train came when she was planning to die the same way.
I had just come from sharing my story and the power of recovery with high school kids. I knew the resources, the doctors and communities that could help me. How did it get so bad? I felt — and still feel — addicted to the idea of being “better.”
[...]
I portrayed myself as better and never looked back.
When I first stepped on stage at the University of Waterloo in 2010, I had no idea how much would change for me. That I would become a symbol of how possible recovery was. That I would be thrust into a world of mental health advocacy I was not prepared for. I portrayed myself as better and never looked back. I created a social media presence that made me seem solid in my recovery, and I let the media tell a similar story. I told a story that portrayed recovery as linear and glamourous. I quickly started to feel like a liar. That I was telling people recovery, happiness and a good life was possible even when I didn’t always believe it. I thought recovery only made sense as a linear path, and since my path wasn’t linear — something must be extra wrong with me.
Here's the thing: recovery is nonlinear is never finished. Like perfecting an art, it is a process, and even the masters have days where inspiration dries and all appears hopeless. Furthermore, mental health advocates, despite being voices for the unheard, often grow quietest about themselves when their illnesses flare up because they are expected to be better. They are held to a standard that if they “relapse,” they fear the message it'll send to those who rely on them, and for others, well like, you were fine these past few years. I thought you were over that?
It is repulsive that when we tell those with mental illnesses and disorders to speak up, we add the stipulation that we mustn't do it too loudly. Pity is encouraged when speaking about the "plights" of being chronically disabled, including mental struggles, but tactics when encountering real life mentally ill people involve avoidance instead of learning. The moment to understand, to give patience, and to show compassion should be before someone is gone.
There is no failing at recovery, but recovery is not finite, even when aspects of life do improve at times; the struggle is bit like doing arithmetic after a few shots at tequila. This can be disheartening because the pain seems endless, but at the same time, you are never a failure on the darker days, and meaning can come from many places, but suggesting specific ways is hard when everyone is different and even coping mechanisms can falter when ennui sets in. Rather than being cancer or a broken arm, mental illness is like diabetes. Issues with assuming people with physical disabilities are inherently less susceptible to ableism aside, for the most part, you don't get “cured” of a chronic mental health experience. Indeed, exceptions surely exist, perhaps in situations such as postpartum depression/anxiety/psychosis or thyroid issues, but for many, they will have neurodivergence forever and will learn to exist with it, and learning is a lifelong process.
In fact, for neurotypical individuals to insist on a uniform cure, even from a place of sympathy, is suspect. It is the same logic that sees those with autism as undesirable rather than people who have different ways to live and cope. After all, this tends to lead to “advocacy” that emphasizes the people who “deal” with neurodivergent individuals as the primary survivors, rather than the neurodivergent person. To make matters worse, the unverified claim of vaccines causing autism have shown that many parents would rather their child potentially die from a preventable disease than allegedly become autistic forever.
This has led to questionable parental actions toward “burdensome” children being seen as strong and noble for "putting up" with a “difficult” child. These are the struggles those with divergent minds face: the pressure to be well and to not burden others, and for an advocate, this fight does not disappear. Perversely, the fight to vocalize mental struggles can cause unwillingness to speak about ongoing pain for fear of disappointing others after “making it” and gaining publicity.
“Looks like you've made it.”
No, we are in the making.
My condolences to Amy Bleuel and everyone devastated by her absence. Here is the official Project Semicolon site.
If you need someone to listen, I can be reached at emilydeibler94@gmail.com, though because of my anxiety, I may not be much in the way of helpful advice. I can also be found on Twitter and Facebook if you'd rather send a message. You can also check out Survival is a Talent, a lifestyle blog run by my friend August on living as a queer, neurodivergent millennial; there are some great posts about living while being neurodivergent, as well as a list of resources. To speak with someone about a crisis via phone call, chat, or text, here is a list of resources, and they are also divided by specific life circumstances, such as if you are a survivor of sexual assault, a veteran, or if you need information on reproductive health, eating disorders, or self-injury.
