Two Letters

This is an episode about two letters. One of those is the letter Jim left for his wife, Annie, before he died by suicide. The second is the letter Annie wrote to Jim after his death — and as she dealt with her own mental health issues and suicidality in the wake of it.

When someone dies by suicide, people want it to be someone’s fault, so they can (hopefully) feel less like it’s their fault. But the thing is … it’s never anyone’s fault.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Terrible, Thanks for Asking. Today’s episode is about suicide, so I just want you to know that off the bat. In this episode our guest uses the phrase “commit suicide”. This is how she chooses to talk about her lived experience.
Actually, this whole month of September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness month, so we’ll be talking a lot about suicide.
I have been personally affected by suicide, as have people I love, and I know from experience that it’s a hard topic to listen to, and to talk about, and I get it. I hope this episode gives you comfort if you need it, gives you insight if you need it, and that you know you are not the only person out there who is struggling with this.
So am I, and so is Annie.
OPEN – DUMPSTER
Annie: I had moved into a new apartment. I’d left our house. I wasn’t able to stay there because it was too painful and it was scary for me to stay there. And I was getting it ready to sell. And it needed to be cleaned. So I stopped by the house there were… people who came over and took everything away while I was not there. They donated what they could. They threw everything else out. And they just left little bits and pieces of trash behind and… I gathered all that up, I put it in my trunk… And I remember it was cold. And I drove away. And passed by the Dairy Queen on my way to my new apartment. And… I didn’t want to take those things to my new apartment to throw them away. Because everything from the house scared me in some way… and I didn’t want to bring any bad energy into my new place so I threw… everything away on the way home, standing in the Dairy Queen parking lot at the dumpster in the cold weather just feeling cold and empty inside. That was all I had left. I felt like of my previous life.
ACT 1 – LOVE STORY
When Annie moved to Tucson in 2002, she wasn’t looking for love. She especially wasn’t looking for love with her co-worker’s son, but… Annie was alone that first Thanksgiving. So her co-worker invited Annie over to celebrate with them.
Annie:. And her son Jim came and… my first thought when I saw him was “oh he’s really cute and he’s a slob.” He was dressed… I dressed up I put on makeup… and he was just kind of wearing old shorts and an old shirt. You know just going to his mom’s for the holiday. Nothing fancy.
Nora: He didn’t know like a cute girl was going to be there so he probably got there and was like “ah shit.”
Annie: But we… we talked there we had dinner together and… I had brought a fruit salad. I made this fruit salad myself and… he initially turned it down he didn’t want any fruit but then his mom said “but Annie made it” so he ate some. And as he was eating it there were stickers still in the cut up apples that I had forgotten to take off.
Nora: You’re like “I cooked.”. Annie: That’s about how much I cook.
[MUSICs]
Annie: After that we were in the living room watching TV. I think there were two different couches and we were under blankets one each couch and just watching TV and talking and… and when I left he gave me a piece of paper… with his name and his number on it. And I still have that piece of paper. I kept it all these years.
So, there were some things Annie kept from the Dairy Queen dumpster. Because she didn’t want to forget everything. There were lots of good times. Like her first date with Jim. Because… side note… Thanksgiving dinner at his mom’s invitation DOES NOT COUNT as a first date..
Annie: We went to Tony Romas. I was so nervous that I’d eaten all day without stopping. And then I couldn’t eat anything at dinner when we went for dinner.
Nora: Classic. Classic move.
Annie: Oh but there was… a baby who started crying at the table next to ours at our first date and… I rolled my eyes. And he said “oh me too.” And so we joke that we decided on our first date that we never wanted kids of our own.
Somewhere, there is a mother out there at Tony Roma’s thinking…is my kid turning people off to parenting? And the answer is yes. My children have definitely pushed people in to the “no kids” column at several Noodles & Company family restaurants. I get it. Jim may not have been the best dressed, but he was sweet and kind. And so much of love is in those little kindnesses we show the person we are with. Those little things just add up to the big things. Annie: When we were dating I got really severe food poisoning and… he came over brought me medicine and cleaned up my bathroom which… was not pleasant to ask.
Nora: How long you been dating at that point?
Annie: Oh my goodness. Maybe a month.
Nora: Woo!
Annie: Yeah.
Nora: Yeah. OK that’s that’s pretty… that’s pretty much going to lock it down for me. that’s like– that’s love had you already said you loved each other? Annie: I don’t think so.
Nora: But he showed you that day that he loved you he was like “Look… Annie: Yes.
Nora: … I’m Not afraid of all these bodily functions… Annie: Yes.
Nora: … I’ll Clean this bathroom for you.”
Annie: Yes.
Nora: Love is gross I love it. It really is. What– tell me another story about– Annie: Oh gosh at our wedding. I had gotten a mosquito bite and I had scratched it and my skin got infected. And so I had this really humongous hard lump on my leg. And… I took just a handful of Benadryl before our wedding and I joke that I can’t remember any of it so I don’t know if it counted. But after the wedding we changed clothes and drove to the urgent care… so that I could get antibiotics. And he gave up the usual wedding night festivities… because I had a heating pad wrapped around my leg and was taking antibiotics and not feeling well. So… Nora: You were like better or worse right away.
Annie: Right exactly.
Nora: Let’s just get right into it.
[MUSIC]
Annie (Letter): Dear Jim, where to even start? I feel like I didn’t even know you. I can’t reconcile the kind man you were with the person who put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger 4 months ago. I can’t reconcile the man who said he only wanted me to be happy with the person who blew off the top of his skull with a shotgun. I can’t reconcile me—who catches bugs in the house and puts them outside instead of killing them—being married to a person who could commit this ultimate act of violence on himself. [MUSIC OUT]
Nora: How long were you two married?
Annie: Thirteen years.
Nora: 13 years.
Annie: Mm hmmm.
In 2004, Jim and Annie moved to Indianapolis, Indiana. And… their marriage, for a long time, was good.
Annie: And I remember just being really happy… knowing that someone cared about me and loved me as much as he did. I felt like I had a person in the world. And that felt really good.
Nora: When did it change?
Annie: About five years ago… he started to… struggle with his health and his energy levels and his cognition. He still felt crappy. On weekends, for example, he slept a lot.
Annie: That was lonely for me.
And when he was awake, Jim only had enough energy to watch TV, or maybe play some video games. He USED to be a really active guy. He was a former wrestler, and he liked to lift weights, but he didn’t have the energy. So his gym routine went from every day, to every other day…to every third day…to less and less.
ACT III – SUICIDE ATTEMPT
And then one day… Jim just walked away from his job. Literally. Just got up and went out the door.
Annie: He came home. And I wasn’t there at the time but when I got home he had locked himself in one of the bedrooms. He wouldn’t talk to me. He wouldn’t let me in. And of course I was panicking. And I got the little key that sits above the door jamb and unlocked the door. And he just told me to get out. That if I didn’t stop trying to talk to him he would just go to a hotel because he didn’t want to be around me. And this was so out of character for him. I was frantic. I didn’t know what was going on. The lights were out and I remember… I asked him if he quit his job he said yes and I said I don’t care just let me in. he let me in and… when I turned the lights on there was blood on his mattress. A lot of it. And he’d cut his wrist… just with something that he found in the bathroom. So I believe it was… something he did impulsively. He told me at the time that he stopped himself he said “I could never do that to you.” But I really wonder… he also told me it was much harder to cut his wrist than he thought it would be. And I wonder if that’s the only reason he stopped. I was afraid. just begging him “please don’t hurt yourself ever again.”
[Music]
Annie: So the next day he… seemed to be back to normal. Which sounds strange but… Things seemed normal. The fear stayed with me for a while but then I kind of just forgot about it. If you can believe that. Because everything just went back to the way it had been.
The way it had been… but also not. Things weren’t good again, but they weren’t as dramatically bad. They were operational again. Annie and Jim shared the same space, but not each other.
Jim went to all kinds of doctors and holistic practitioners, but.. Nobody could figure out what was wrong with him, and he tried everything that was recommended to him.
Annie: He was told to… give up certain foods. He tried… sitting in the sauna to release toxins. He did… you know anything he could think of to try to feel better and just nothing really helped. By that point he just would say I’m not going back they’re just telling me the same things… that don’t help.
[MUSIC]
Annie (letter): Let me start with the emotion of fear, one of my strongest emotions since you killed yourself. I am fearful that I was living with a stranger who was hiding his true self and lying to me. I am scared to trust my own judgment now. Annie (Letter): After a while, I got pissed as hell at you, even for small things. You killed yourself sitting in the chair that the cat liked to sleep in during the day. You were the cat’s favorite person, and she is still looking for you. But most of all, I’m angry at what you’ve done to me and to your family. Your mom is devastated.
[MUSIC OUT]
ACT II – MARRIAGE PROBS
Jim’s health problems got even lonelier for Annie: he didn’t want to tell anyone. Not his family, or her family. So Annie just had to keep it to herself. Annie: They didn’t know any of it. He said they wouldn’t understand it’s an invisible illness and… people would think he was just lazy. He didn’t want to tell them. Nora: So if you saw them and they asked about work you just be like yep everything’s the same.
Annie: Yeah. He would yes. Yeah. There were a few of my friends who knew that he wasn’t working… and I could talk to them about it. Nora: Oh my gosh but otherwise like this was just… Annie: Yeah it was isolating for me. I think… I was in a job where I wasn’t really happy in the first place and just felt more pressure that I needed to stay there… to have the funds to try different doctors. To have the health insurance. I started spending more and more time by myself because he wasn’t able to go out and do things with me I got very into yoga… practicing yoga and then doing yoga teacher training… and then teaching yoga. So I think the way I kept myself sane was to just stay busy every single waking moment. Because I was so helpless in the face of what he was going through. In a way I had to separate myself from it. Jim and Annie kept separate rooms because he couldn’t sleep well with another person in bed with him, and for a long time, that was fine. Because their marriage was fine. Sort of. Annie: So I felt like I was living with a roommate. I felt like… this person I’m married to now does the shopping and the cooking. And we watch TV together for a little bit. When I get home from work and that’s… all our marriage had become. The emotional connection that we used to have didn’t feel like it was there anymore to me. So feeling… like he cared about me. Like he was happy to see me when I got home that was gone. Feeling like… we could talk about our lives and the things we wanted… we didn’t do that anymore. So it was very lonely.
We’re going to take a quick break.
{{MIDROLL}}
ACT IV – ANNIE TELLS HIM SHE IS UNHAPPY
We’re back. Annie and Jim’s marriage is… not intimate. It’s like that for a long time like… years. Four and a half years. And… in that time Annie was In therapy unpacking what her own needs were in this relationship. And how to communicate them. And eventually, that’s what she did. Annie: I really regret… not saying it… sooner or more. How can I say that? I almost dropped a bomb on him I think… and he didn’t see it coming. One night I was just in bed. Crying and feeling stuck and unhappy and I went in to his room… and I just said to him “I’m not happy with our marriage. I don’t feel like we communicate with each other anymore. I don’t feel like we have an emotional connection. I told him I felt really guilty because I knew he was struggling with illness whatever it was there was never a diagnosis for it… but I knew he was struggling physically and mentally and… I told him “I’m so sorry… I don’t even know if I should say this to you. Because I know none of that is your fault. I know… I feel like I’m not strong enough and I’m so sorry.” And I was crying and I just kept apologizing.
Nora: What was his reaction?
Annie: He said “I understand.” He said “I can’t imagine how you could not feel that way… I can understand that it’s been hard on you and lonely for you.” And he just seemed to accept it. Like he’d already given up. The two of them went to counseling. But just a couple times. Annie: I remember talking about all of the ways our marriage had been hard… and lonely… and how I was tired. And that therapist asking him… “how does this make you feel?” And he would only answer by saying “well it’s good… good to know… it’s good to know these things and get them out in the open and talk about them.” And he wouldn’t really go deeper than that… in any of his answers. Nora: How did that feel for you?
Annie: I thought he’s not even trying. [MUSIC]
Annie (Letter): Let’s talk about betrayal now. Yes, I was unhappy in our marriage. Yes, we lost our connection and weren’t communicating well. But you betrayed our attempt at marriage counseling by giving non-answers and not talking about your feelings, while I was bluntly honest. You betrayed me by also keeping your intentions (and the shotgun you had bought almost a year prior) well hidden—from me, from your family, and from your psychiatrist, the person in the best position to help you. Any of us would’ve done anything to help you, but you didn’t allow us to. You kept complete control of the situation by withholding information and lying to everyone. You made me feel like my honesty killed you, but it was your deception instead. [MUSIC OUT]
ACT V – JIM DIES
Jim died on October 10, 2017. Annie came home and found him in their house. So… who is at fault for Jim’s suicide?
Annie didn’t see the signs. Jim was tired and depressed. He just walked away from his job. HE TRIED SUICIDE ALREADY. And after that she tells him that she’s unhappy? Did she not see or care about his pain and then push him over the edge?
Or was it the doctors? Jim was clearly in a lot of pain. Something was wrong but he couldn’t get a diagnosis. Would a diagnosis have gotten him care? Or medication? Did the doctors not take him seriously enough and give him what he needed?
Or was it Jim? He tried to hide his pain from everyone. He stopped going to doctors and doing things to take care of himself. He stopped connecting with his Annie, who was just trying to care for both of them. Was he unsaveable?
Here’s the thing. Fuck you for asking. Fuck you so goddam hard. You are an awful person. Who has been thinking this whole time that A MAN IS DEAD… and so someone is at fault. WHERE IS THAT BLAME GOING TO GO? WHO’S GOING TO GET THE BURDEN OF RESPONSIBILITY? WHO KILLED JIM?
This isn’t a goddam Sherlock Holmes mystery. This is a story of pain. And loss. And chronic, invisible, insatiable things that live outside of ANYONE’S control. No one is responsible for Jim’s death. No one should have seen the signs. They all just experienced it in their own way, as people trying to be good to themselves and each other with the DEMON hovering over them.
People want Jim’s death to be someone’s fault so that they can hopefully feel less like it’s their fault. We say that to protect ourselves, not the people in pain. For us. Not the people who think about… who consider… or who follow through with suicide.
Our questions — and whatever answers we think we could possibly get — won’t change the fact that Jim is dead. It won’t change the way Annie feels. Or felt… that day after Jim died.
Annie: I was still shaking. And I got to my brother’s… lay down in bed… and the friend came over with the coloring books… and a bowl of chili… and… I was furious to get coloring books. I just wanted to scream at her “why do you think this will help me? Do you expect me to color right now? Do you think that make things better?” I was so angry. And I let my brother eat the chili because obviously I couldn’t eat anything. I had my phone… my phone was a lifeline and I could text friends. So I texted a friend that day and… I remember saying “I wish I could be somewhere else my brother just doesn’t understand what to do with me and I feel so lonely”… And he said… “I think no matter where you are today you’re going to feel lonely… and you’re going to feel like no one understands.” And he was right. What nobody understood was not JUST that Annie was in shock, and that she was grieving. What nobody understood was that there was way more going on inside of her head and her heart. Finding Jim, the way he died, it triggered an immense amount of fear in her. And the fear was crippling to her.
ACT VI – FEAR/ AGORAPHOBIA
Annie: I remember having the worst fear when I would wake up every morning… because I would realize all over again what had happened… every time I woke up. And… I would want to escape from that. So I would… take a handful of sleeping pills first thing in the morning after I woke up trying to make myself go back to sleep so that I could just forget. And it didn’t really ever work. I would just lie in bed with my heart racing… not able to relax and my body tense… feeling a squeezing pressure in my chest. But afraid to get out of bed because then I’d have to face the world in which this happened. And that felt too overwhelming. And then my bed started to feel like the only safe place for me. I had so much mental confusion that happens with grief I couldn’t stand not knowing where my stuff was not being able to find my toothbrush and my toothpaste and my underwear. So I had to go back to the house just so I would know where everything was. I stayed mostly in my bedroom. I became afraid of the dark… thinking that there is something in the house that would hurt me. I… placed sort of what I imagined to be talismans all around my bed when I slept so… for example a little knickknack that a friend had given me I placed on the bedside table. I placed a necklace that was a gift from a friend at the foot of the bed. I had different things in bed with me like that. In my mind they were protecting me. I think when someone you love dies by suicide. All of your assumptions about the safety of the world get stripped away. And so the outside world felt completely unsafe as well. I didn’t really want to see anyone. Part of that was my own shame. Shame about what had happened. Part of it was… thinking they’re going to give me coloring books or bath salts and I just won’t be able to handle that. Thinking that nobody could understand what I’m going through. Annie spent two months like this. Struggling alone… with PTSD and grief and shame. Annie: I told a friend you know I’ve been thinking… I don’t really want to be here anymore. I’m having suicidal thoughts and cutting myself. So for those who have never cut themselves that… is a way to control emotional pain by creating physical pain. And this friend begged me to look for places where I could go to get more help. So this was after a couple months. This was in December and at the end of December I went into a residential treatment for trauma and PTSD.
ACT VII – HEALING
Annie ended up in central Florida, at a residential facility designed to help people through grief, PTSD and trauma. She had group therapy, and individual therapy. They stayed in beautiful cabins. They wrote a lot, and were given homework assignments. One was for Annie to write letters.
Annie: I wrote letters to my shame and my guilt. I wrote a letter to myself five years ago… when Jim first attempted suicide. Really forgiving myself for not doing more at that time.
And then… she was told to write a letter to Jim.
Annie: For me it was to really say to him that things that were left unsaid are that I wanted to say to him…
[MUSIC]
I was traumatized by finding your body in the state that it was in. I eventually developed PTSD. My feelings and emotions were so strong, they felt like they could literally kill me. You knew I was suffering from anxiety and depression already. I have to assume you didn’t give much thought to how much worse those would become, I guess your brain was fucked up and not working right, and I’m supposed to have compassion for you because of that. People tell me that will come in time. Right now, I’m just struggling to get out of this deep dark hole I’ve found myself in since you set off an atomic bomb in my life. I had dreams for my life, and now nothing seems to matter, nothing feels important.
I guess some things for which I’m grateful have come out of this too. I’m much closer to your family, including our nephews and niece. Obviously you thought our time together was over, but there are a few things I want to say. I’m afraid that you died thinking I didn’t love you, and that’s not true, despite our struggles. If you could see my grief, you would know that’s not true. Thank you for your kindness throughout our relationship (despite your final act). That kindness is not something I’d felt from a partner before. Thank you for accepting me as I was, without needing me to be perfect. There were times I didn’t communicate well, and I’m sorry for that. Most of all, I love you, and I hope you found the peace you were looking for. I’m going to go on now, on my own, and say goodbye to you, and hopefully try to make this all mean something someday. Love, Annie”
[MUSIC OUT]
Nora: What was it like to read that? The first time to read it in… in front of all these other people that you know are trying to heal from different things? Annie: Yeah. It’s interesting that it’s changed over time… the way I feel because at that time I was certain that I would never… be anything close to OK ever again. That the fear I felt at that time and the pain would never change. And they have changed over time and…
And there was another part to this assignment…
Annie: So the second part of the assignment was to write a letter… from Jim to myself putting myself in his mind and thinking about what he would probably say to me about the situation. There was a screened porch on the back of our cabin so after my sessions for the day I would go there with my notebook… and a bottle of water and a pen and sit down and… people there jokingly called it word vomit. So just put on to paper whatever words came out without really thinking about it and… that’s how I feel these letters came out of me. They just poured out of me without really any thought going into them.
ACT VIII – JIM’S LETTER
[MUSIC]
Annie: Hey babe, I’m so sorry our marriage was so hard for so long I meant it when I said that, if I had known everything I’d put you through, I never would’ve married you for your own sake. When I attempted suicide five years ago but stopped and said that I could never do that to you, I really did mean it at the time. It wasn’t a lie. Still, five years of chronic fatigue, seeing doctor after doctor who couldn’t help, and the effects of the fatigue on my thinking and energy levels, was a lot to take. You are a beautiful caretaker because that’s what you do best. I love you more than anything for that, loving me despite my physical limitations. Still I know it was a lot for you. You gave up so much being with me, from going out, to traveling, to having a sex life. I didn’t want to see the psychiatrist, but I did it because you insisted. But five years of loss of a connection and loss of communication is a lot to deal with, I get it. I started feeling better, and that’s when I feel like you saw your chance for freedom from all the burden you’d been carrying and your deep loneliness that had developed over time. For me, it was like waking up from a five-year-long bad dream. I told you if we split, I wanted to make it as amicable as possible, that I only wanted you to be happy. I told you I might go back to Arizona to be with my family for a while. This time, I was lying. I saw you crumbling, struggling with your own anxiety and depression, and I didn’t want to burden you anymore. You must remember Thanksgiving of 2016, when I said to my brother John, ‘if I die, you don’t have to do anything special, like have a ceremony for me.’ You overheard this comment, and John and you were both confused. It seemed like such a non-sequitur to you, but you shrugged it off as me being me. Here’s the truth: five days after we got home from that trip, I bought a Mossburg shotgun at Walmart. I know that you found the receipt later, when you were cleaning out the house. There was no waiting period, and you didn’t notice anything unusual on our credit card statement. This is just what I wanted, to hide this from you. Having a shotgun give me a sense of relief, a feeling that I had some control over my life and I could take action if I couldn’t bear my life anymore. I hid my suicidal thoughts from you, my mom, my brother, even my psychiatrist and our marriage counselor, when we resorted to that. I know we still had an appointment scheduled for marriage counseling, but I could tell your heart really wasn’t in it. We both agreed to keep the appointment, but of course you know I never made it there. You had to call and tell our marriage counselor and my psychiatrist that I was dead from suicide instead. To tell the truth, I was planning to wait a little longer to commit suicide. I had just created a reminder in my email, which I know you found later, that said ‘LETTERS!!!’ You are still wondering if this meant that I was planning to write suicide notes. I never did. I went to the gym the day before my suicide. I bought ingredients to make a pot of soup, and I had left the soup pot sitting on the stove. I had thawed the hamburger and had written a note to remind myself to grill burgers. On Tuesday morning, the day of my suicide, I laid out my Tuesday evening pills, just as if I planned to still be around on Tuesday evening. I know these things confused you a lot. Something just came over me that day, and I found the courage to end it, all of my suffering and, with it, all of your suffering. I never wanted you to find my body — that’s why I left two notes saying not to go into the room, to just call 911 instead, not thinking you would be compelled to go in anyway, to try to help me. I didn’t think you would still have hope that I’d be alive, since I hadn’t gone through with it last time. Remember when you first told me you were unhappy in our marriage, and you said that you’d put off telling me because you were afraid I’d hurt myself again? I want you to remember what I said then: ‘you shouldn’t worry about that, because you can’t control what other people do.’ I know you would’ve done anything to help me or stop me from doing what I did, but our whole marriage was about you helping me. I wanted this to be my choice, and it was. In my mind, I was protecting you by not letting you see it coming. I wasn’t really thinking about the aftermath for you or our families. In that moment, nothing could’ve stopped me. I never believed in the afterlife, but my spirit is looking at you now and I see what a fuck-up it was, and I would never have intentionally hurt you so much in this way. Still, what’s done is done, and I don’t get a do-over, so please live a beautiful, meaningful, happy life.
Love, Jim”
[MUSIC OUT]
ACT IX – CONCLUSION
After she left the residential treatment facility, Annie went home and moved out of the house that she lived in with Jim. Annie: I feel like I’ve died and been reborn. And that’s scary. And I’ve gone kicking and screaming the whole way.
She had professionals pack it up and donate stuff and when she did the final walk-through, you know, they always leave random stuff behind. You’re like, WHY DID YOU LEAVE ONE HANGER HERE??? Why did you think I needed this broken comb? So she gathered up all that little stuff, and went to the dairy queen parking lot to throw it all away. Annie: Because I have started completely over with my life. And… I don’t know… the fear never really goes away. It’s changed over time. It’s just focused on different things now.
This doesn’t end with a letter. It never actually ends. Grief, as I have said before so just let me plagiarize myself, is a chronic condition. And it’s one that Annie will live with. Annie: Standing in the Dairy Queen parking lot at the dumpster in the cold weather just feeling cold and empty inside. That was all I had left. I felt like of my previous life. The only thing I’m taking with me is my story. My story is that… suicide really is a death like no other. My story is that even though I felt so alone I was never alone. And my story is that I’m a warrior. I have more courage than I ever imagined. I wish I didn’t have to know that but I do. And I want people to know that they can survive.