Promise Me You'll Survive

Welcome to What’s Helping Today, a newsletter about the everyday work of staying alive on earth, by author and journalist Sandy Ernest Allen.

I was rewatching Titanic the other week, first I’d watched it in years, though I’ve seen it countless times before. I was struck by how Titanic is really a meditation on suicide itself. I hadn’t consciously noticed before how much of the movie is about peoples’ will to live — or lack thereof — even before the boat hits the iceberg.

Towards the beginning, Rose rushes to kill herself. She climbs over a railing and clings to the back of the ship. Jack has noticed her and seems to understand exactly what she intends to do. “I’m involved now,” he says, unlacing his boots.

I was nine when I saw Titanic and had already for some years contemplated suicide. The reasons for me contemplating suicide are now more apparent — being a closeted lonely trans kid, and being raised in a home plagued by alcoholism and unending pain.

At nine, I wouldn’t have really known the word suicide, probably not anyway. But I would have spent lots time contemplating killing myself in various ways. I knew already this was a bad thing to contemplate, and so I did so privately in the quiet of my dark bedroom, during endless-feeling nights that echoed with screams.

When Rose said “and all the while I feel I'm standing in the middle of a crowded room screaming at the top of my lungs and no one even looks up,” I felt that so hard. That was me.

Once the iceberg hits, we watch all sorts of people decide to fight to live or to give into death. We watch people treat themselves, and others, as however disposable, however sacred. We see their true characters — all of them. The rich, the poor. The shitty and selfish. The selfless, the silly, the grand.

The movie shows many suicides: People leaping, people deciding to no longer run from the sea’s advance. There’s the wealthy passenger dressed in his finest, saying he’ll go down like a gentleman, requesting a brandy. There’s the employee who guiltily shoots himself in the temple after he’s murdered a passenger during a brawl. There’s the ashamed captain, standing silently at the helm as the water takes him. Rose even references her ex-fiancée Cal later “putting a pistol in his mouth” after losing his fortune in the crash of ‘29.

As I watched Titanic this time, I thought about it as a metaphor for human life itself — because what is life but a slowly sinking ship. A demise, however brutal or quick. I’m always struck by that line of Rose’s narration about those passengers who did make it onto the lifeboats, those who’d survived and let so many others perish, their stifling shame — them waiting to live, waiting to die.

I have written before about my own history with contemplating suicide, like in this essay about my childhood for Esquire. Also in a passage towards the end of my piece for The Believer:

Candidly it’s always sorta scary to be honest about my history or present with ‘suicidal ideation,’ as mental health professionals might term it. Though in my opinion, such a phrase undersells the horror of what’s happening when my thoughts drift, however powerfully, in the direction of feeling that my life is no longer worth living, and I should end it.

Even though I’m me, Mr. Self Care Guy, I still have moments — hours, even days — when my thoughts can become darkened with such despair. Indeed I do all this caring for myself, fastidiously, everyday, because I know how bad things can get, in my world or in my head, if not both.

These days such thoughts arrive but they aren’t very persuasive, is the truth. I am much stronger now than I was a kid or even a few years ago. Many reasons why this is the case and the full story will be in the book I’m slowly writing about the future of mental health care. But I am someone who is, in brief, nowadays far too in love with life to actually want to die.

What saved Rose? Well, literally Jack — him insisting to her that she live, him showing her how that’s done. But really, it’s her promising him she will live that saves her. Her keeping that promise.

We sense she’s gone on to live some fantastic life — rode a horse like a man and everything. We sense that her decision to live was worth it. But her choice to climb back over the railing was already made worth it by meeting Jack, by allowing herself that profound if brief experience of falling utterly in love.

Those of us who’ve lived life proximate to even profound pain often choose to stick around anyway. Often because of what — and who — we love.

What a giant fuck you it is to suicide itself, that Rose ultimately lived to be so very goddamn old.

If you want information about suicide and what to do about it — and what not not to do about it! — I recommended this article, written with an understanding of what trans people particularly are up against right now. (Which, if you’re not paying attention, is already very bad.)

Here are some additional potential helpful phone numbers that won’t call the police on you, just if case you ever want somewhere to safely talk:

I especially appreciated seeing the Wildflower Alliance being included above; I have spent much time reporting on their organization (initially for my Pop-Up Magazine story way back in 2017). The Wildflower Alliance is based in Western Massachusetts but facilitates meetings online. I’ve also attended their meetings myself — not as a journalist, just as a person, during a moment of great need.

If it helps, here again is a newsletter I wrote recently with advice for how to manage during really shitty times.

And hey, talking directly to whoever needs to read this:

I hope you’ll stick around, even if life is (very) hard right now. Might not be easily done I realize, sticking around. I’m nonetheless letting you know: That’s my hope. If you’re trans especially, that’s my hope.

If you’re trans especially, always feel free to reach out, perhaps tell me what’s helping you, today.

Love,
Sandy

p.s. I was pleased that my last newsletter (offering cis people feeling powerless some concrete advice) was featured in Today in Tabs. I have a bunch of new subscribers as a result, welcome! If you like, here’s a recent introduction I wrote to What’s Helping Today and the ideas behind it. Here’s my website to learn more about me or to read my work. If you want you can follow me on Bluesky.

p.p.s. Highly recommend this Teen Vogue feature about Nex Benedict.

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