Article October 8, 2012 Issue

'Love is the answer'

Holly Safronoff

The idea of belonging has always had significance in my life. My deepest desire is to see everyone around me as family, and I think that everyone deserves a sense of belonging and love.

My focus on belonging deepened in college when I learned my younger sister had committed suicide. Her passing was startling, but I had been aware of her pain and also struggled with the idea of killing myself. Suicide suggested itself as a way to end the misery I was living and to lift the burden I felt I was to others. I was often taunted and teased in elementary school, even by adults, so I learned to minimize the pain I suffered by reading people and figuring out what they wanted from me. I reasoned that if I was able to give people what they wanted (within limits), they would like me and treat me better. Sometimes other students would copy my tests or otherwise use me, but I didn’t care. Any positive attention, even fake, was accepted.

Church was my refuge. I looked forward to attending Sunday School and seeing all the wonderful, loving people there. What I learned in Sunday School likely saved my life. At one point, in late elementary or early middle school, I became serious about ending it all and even started to plan how I might do it. One Sunday, my teacher, not knowing what I was planning, brought up the verse in the Bible that says, “In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be” (Ecclesiastes 11:3). He explained that it had to do with death: that after we pass out of this plane of existence, we still have the same challenges and opportunities that we had before. Mary Baker Eddy expands on this reasoning, writing: “Every mortal at some period, here or hereafter, must grapple with and overcome the mortal belief in a power opposed to God” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 569). This strong realization hit me and made me see that suicide was not a way out. This did not immediately end the temptations, but for years it always prevented me from following through.