I'm writing this post based on very much my personal experience, but what else can I do except use the things that happen in my life as a reference tool, to help get certain messages across...
I'm talking about suicide in this post and I can understand how being in certain moods this can be triggering for people. So please refrain from reading any further until you feel mentally prepared to read a personal story about how I wanted to give up... but didn't.
I've been surrounded in some capacity or another with suicide since I was 9, I myself wanted to seriously take my own life at that age and that desire escalated and deescalated throughout the next 12 years of my life... I had numerous moments of attempts and almost follow throughs... I also remember laying on the floor begging "god" to just take me then and there... I would sob and sob for hours through the nights just begging to die... begging for him just to end it all for me.. because I couldn't seem do it! Reality is thats what a person really wants when they are wanting to commit suicide, they just want the pain to end.. not to actually die... but at that point you just feel thats the only way to stop it! Anyway, for me I could never seem to completely follow through, even when I did start cutting I would stop or not go too deep... and it's funny how in my teens I still turned that around as another way of harshly judging myself by thinking things like I couldn't even kill myself properly! Never mind do anything else properly! Low self worth can be a dangerous thing!
In some ways it was luckily at the age of 17 that I met my first husband (we didn't get married for some years after this) but, I somehow got stuck in a situation in which his mother was battling suicide almost daily, (I say luckily because I got distracted from my own pain) however, she was very manipulative and used it as a tool to control her children and in extension her children's partners, and because I lived with her for two and half years I was just as much in the firing line as her children. My then boyfriend also tried to take his life when I was 18, primarily because of her treatment and abuse.
I remember that day breaking into the door of the bathroom and taking the knife off of him and telling him that if he did it, so would I... He obviously wouldn't let me! I ended up convincing him to go talk to her about what she was causing him to feel... I still to this day will never forget how it absolutely brought me to my knees in despair, when she made it about her and called him selfish! When she threw a crystal ashtray at him and yelled about how she was the sick one.. not him! He buried that part of his pain for many years after and it just added to the very messy dynamics of our unhealthy relationship...
I remember after the birth of my first child I got post natal depression, I was 21, she was 3 months old and I was starting to consider suicide again, more what they call fleeting suicidal thoughts... At this stage in my life I didn't have the use of drugs! I had used drugs heavily in my teenage years to cope with my depression and trauma, I had quit when I was 19 and now at the age of 21 I didn't have that as an escape from stress or depression. I was trying to manage an extremely controlling mother in-law, a cousin who was also suicidal, going through an extremely traumatic situation and she was just 12 (one that I had experienced myself, so it was triggering what I had been supressing), a new born baby with sleepless nights, an always at that time strained relationship with my mother and father, also an angry trauma looped husband and my anxiety and depression was through the roof! However, here's the two things I was EXTREMELY clear on! 1. My mum had gotten postnatal depression from my birth and went undiagnosed until I was 9, and because of that she had caused most of my pain as a child, and I was NOT about to do that to my child... and 2. I refused to use ANY type of drugs to fix myself, I had been addicted to drugs in my teens and I was not about to go back to that... I had a strong belief that any drug, prescription or recreational only masked and cover up symptoms.. they never actually fixed anything! Don't get me wrong here and I want to be clear this is my personal opinion. There is a very necessary space for medication, they can enable you to get to a space of being mentally stable enough to handle doing the necessary work that needs to be done in order to heal the wounds that cause the depression in the first place. Ultimately though they are a bandaid! Doing the work can be traumatic in itself, but the only way to heal the pain is to go into the pain.
So I decided to call a councillor, I ended up seeing that beautiful women every week for two and a half years! It was the best thing I ever did and I can guarantee you, that had I never made that phone call on that day as I laid in bed in a dark room staring at the most beautiful creation in history up until that point, as she stared into my eye's with pure unconditional love and joy... I know I would not be here today.. and I damn well wouldn't have been given the tools and abilities I have now that allow me to be in a state of pure peace and joy with my life regardless of what it looks like to others. Regardless of what I've been through, or how broken I've been, or whatever I may go through... I KNOW I am okay, I will be okay and that there is ALWAYS a way to heal and fix a "problem" aka a challenge in my vocabulary... I don't really like to use the word problem anymore.. I consciously choose to make my reality a moving transitional process of experiences...
Anyway, I digress... it's been 16 years since I finished doing that counselling stint and no matter the trauma, the loss, the ups and downs since then I have never again contemplated suicide. Strangely every death that has touched my life personally has been because of suicide or cancer... I've believe that I am one of the strongest people for never following through, for finding one reason or another to not give up when I so desperately wanted to all those times... I know now why "god" didn't just kill me during those years... I know that I have personally and intentionally saved 17 peoples lives, through my experiences alone... I even lived and raised children whose lives have been closely touched my suicidal loss for 8.5 years... All that pain and all its done is save and help peoples lives... how could it have been a bad thing that I went through everything I did!? This is not through a professional capacity either... it just seems to happen that way that people are either brought to me or come to me in their darkest hours... and somehow I seem to find the right memories or words that help that person hold on for even just one more day.... and longer because they are all still here!
Because here's the thing about suicide... it's always happens in a moment, an out of control moment of dark hopeless pain... however that dark pain, the pain that develops when your thoughts have followed a very specific path of despair and self abandonment and self loathing, can sometimes only last a minute, sometimes 5 minutes and max a few hours... And if you act on those thoughts, in those heightened moments of pain you can make a decision that there is no coming back from...
The key when you or someone you know is in that space, is to try and ride it out... even if it just means telling yourself to lay there on the floor and not move or do anything until the morning... acknowledge that at this moment it would be very easy to choose an unhealthy 'easy" option but to find even just one thing to hold onto to get you through until the mood ebbs away... because it will, it will! Believe me 100% the intensity of that moment WILL PASS.
Nothing and I mean NOTHING good or bad lasts forever, especially a mood... and its usually the next morning that even if your not happy, you at least have some will to carry on with the daily grind... Please note that even though the intense moods may come and go, it is extremely important to face yourself and do something about it. Talk to a friend, family member, parent, school councillor, doctor... anyone really! Call Lifeline, I'll include details below in this post... I used them twice in my teens and they got me through the night...
More and more society is shining a light on suicide and how common it is.. It scares me how common and almost cool it seems to be to "be suicidal" but suicide is no joke... it's not something to played with... Even if you think people are doing it for attention, it doesn't matter... for someone to be that desperate to try and get attention that way denotes that there is some deep emotional imbalances that need to be addressed in some way... This has been very hard for me to share strangely... even though I can speak quite freely about it usually, its the first time in a public space that I have shared this angle of my life...
Lifeline Australia
Hours: Available 24 hours
13 11 14
Hope this can help someone feel less alone
Crestina D
Comments