Attempting Suicide: Case Studies

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DESE'RAE STAGE: Live Through This is a project about life on the other side of suicide. It's a portrait and story project of suicide-attempts survivors who want to tell their story and build awareness because suicide is not a topic that we really discuss in mixed company.

My name is Dese'Rae Stage. I'm a photographer in Brooklyn. And my role within the project is to give people a neutral, non-judgmental space in which to tell their story. I sit down with them. We just chat a little, you know, get a rapport.

And then I interview them, but the interview is actually more of a conversation. I really want it to be their voice, and I think that the fact that they know that they're meeting with somebody who has also been through that experience helps them to open up.

And so after that, I make a portrait right afterwards. I try not to direct them. I just want them to look into my lens and put out there whatever they want to put out there.

JENNIFER HAUSSLER GARING: My name's Jennifer Haussler Garing. I'm 43 years old. I'm an epidemiologist, and I tried to kill myself when I was 13 years old. I took some drugs and basically passed out and woke up the next morning. And no one had noticed.

BRENDA HUGHES: I'm not one of these people who has a story of depression that's lasted, like, their whole life. But when I went into a depression, it just got worse and worse. And I think I had so much guilt over not being able to pull myself out of it. For me, like, this isn't normal. This isn't how I've felt before. Go away. And it didn't. And so I tried—I took—you know, I took pills.

CECELIA MARKOW: The story of it? For Valentine's Day of this year, I was raped by my boyfriend. A few months ago, I was just sitting there, trying not to cut myself, trying not to think of all the bad things, when they all crashed down, horribly.

And I decided I really did not want to handle any more of this. I couldn't. The meds weren't doing it. So I filled up a bath tub, put my head under the water and started trying to breathe in the water.

And right as I did that, everybody I loved, everybody I held so dearly, flashed through my head. And it was their words, their I love yous, their—them being them that I grabbed the edges of the bathtub and pulled myself out.

JENNIFER HAUSSLER GARING: I've been very suicidal a number of times since then. I suffer from bipolar disorder. I don't suffer from it. I live with it.

DESE'RAE STAGE: Mhm.

JENNIFER HAUSSLER GARING: I was in the hospital when I was 22. I spent 13 days in a psychiatric ward, and that saved my life. I think if I hadn't wound up in the hospital, I would have wound up in a grave.

And you know, you get diagnosed with a mental illness, you get told that this is what the rest of your life is going to be like, you get handed a bunch of pills, and they kind of send you on your way. And it's really terrifying. I mean, if I didn't have my family, I don't know where I would be.

DESE'RAE STAGE: Did you continue in therapy or did you—

BRENDA HUGHES: Not as long as maybe other people did, but I did—but I have to admit, there was a lot of stuff I did on my own. You know, research and just a journey that took me where, you know, I am today. And I have to remind myself. Like, I always tell people this term, ride it out. That's what I tell myself. I'm in this place, doesn't mean I'm going to be here permanently, you know, this exact moment where I feel this. Ride it out.

CECELIA MARKOW: I pulled myself above the water. I remember that every single time. No matter how hard it gets, pull yourself above the water.

DESE'RAE STAGE: Is suicide still an option for you?

CECELIA MARKOW: No. Not anymore.

DESE'RAE STAGE: What would you want to say to a broader audience?

CECELIA MARKOW: Remember the good things. Don't think about how far you have to go, look how far you've come already.

DESE'RAE STAGE: Is suicide still an option for you?

BRENDA HUGHES: I don't want it to be. But, I mean, if I'm—and here it is, you know, that honesty. You know, I would sit here and lie because that was—I never thought I'd get there in the first place. So how can I sit here and say that again? I highly doubt it because of what I've learned, and the things that I've put into place, and how I won't believe those lies again.

[SIGHING]

JENNIFER HAUSSLER GARING: God. Not right now, but you could talk to me in six months and I could tell you it looked like a good idea. I think at this point in my life, this disease has taken too much for me that it's not going to get the balance, and that I'm not going to be part of my own demise, that I'm not going to play along. One of my big tenants that I live by is that the only constant in life is change, and I think some of it is for the better.

DESE'RAE STAGE: I've actually managed to convince the American Association of Suicidology that attempt survivors are worth listening to. There are a lot of gains happening in a short period of time with people talking about it, people writing about it, press covering it.

The project is my baby, and it started out just this tiny, little thing that I was trying to get people to pay attention to. And now they are, but it shocks me to hear later that it was cathartic or that it was really helpful with the recovery process or something, because for—I don't know. I just didn't I didn't expect it to affect people in the way that it has really.

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