Each week, I write-up a weekly wrap linking to the food news that my peers have reported, but after waking up this morning, I just can’t. Yes, there was lots of news—some good, and some downright ugly—but the news of Anthony Bourdain’s suicide this morning has, at least for me, eclipsed all that.
I’ve never read his books and I’d never even watched his TV show until I was holed up in a hotel on Thanksgiving Day a couple of years ago while on assignment in Eugene. But I became a follower of his after accidentally stumbling across a 2007 talk he gave at the City Club in Boise, which I heard on public radio. He was so smart and funny and such a good storyteller that I literally remember where I was and what I was doing when I first heard his voice.
This one stings. The kind of pain and sense of hopelessness that makes someone choose to take their own life—especially the kind of life that takes you to Vietnam where you eat lunch with the president—seems unimaginable.
It isn’t.
Just yesterday, the Washington Post reported that suicides in 49 of the 50 states are up this year. The only state where the rate dropped was in Nevada, and by just one percentage point.
And following the suicide of designer Kate Spade earlier this week—and now, sadly, Bourdain’s—I’m grateful to see national and local publications running the phone and text numbers of the National Suicide Prevention Hotline (800-273-8255) and the Crisis Text Line (741-741).
But I want to offer up another piece of advice. If you’re feeling suicidal, please try to talk to someone you know.
If you’re depressed and feel like you’ve lost all your hope, talk to your people. I promise you that some of them see what you’re going through and they’re just waiting for you to ask for help. Ask them. Be vulnerable. Be brave. Struggling with mental health is nothing to be ashamed of. All of this is, sadly, shockingly normal.
Remember: You have value. Remember, somebody somewhere loves you. And most importantly, even if it feels like it, remember that you are not alone.
I am so sad and so angry and so sad and so angry and so sad and so angry and so sad and so angry. Suicide does not end pain, it only transfers it from one person to a host of others. I also fail to understand why articles on his killing himself state he is survived by his girlfriend and his daughter. He is also survived by his mother and his brother and former wife, lover, friend, mother of his child, partner, etc. Anthony once said that his daughter gave him a reason to live. I wish he had kept his word.