What does it feel like?
Desperate? Yes.
Selfish? Yes, but not in the way you think.
Painful? Fuck yes.
Stupid? No. Never.
An end to a means?.....
Always.
Over the years, we have always heard the good old analogy "They're so selfish to commit suicide, they never think of their family, their kids..."
Selfish? Sure.
But it's also a selfless act. You're wanting to end your pain, you don't want your brain to be constantly thinking of how it feels to die, how to do it, and so on. It's a selfless act for YOU. Sorry, but we aren't thinking of you, our family, our kids. We are too focused on the overwhelming pain and hurt, it's a visceral physiological being enveloping us with all its blackness, like a heavy cloak. And yes, it can happen without warning. We can be smiling, laughing, bantering with family and friends, just hours before trying to take our own lives. The human brain itself is such a mysterious being. It can break in half just like that, and everything floods out, and we have no power over it except to let it come, and think of a way out of it.
Some achieve what they set out to try. Others fail. Like me. And we end up with overworked mental health social workers and psychs who see this day in, day out, and can only say to us "Well, you were one of the successful ones."
But it's not about winning, or losing.
It's about our broken system, and trying to fix what's so broken about it.
How are we successful, the ones who tried to commit suicide, and failed? How? Quite possibly so that we can lend a voice to those who lost their lives, and make others aware, and have a more open and honest dialogue of mental illness, how we feel, and of suicide itself. All the while struggling with our own insidious demons inside ourselves.
Because, once you've been in that place, regardless of if it was just the once or multiple times, you're never like you were before you visited this hell. We all know. It's a hell you'll either be familiar with, or pretend you'd rather not know. It's a hell of a thousand piercing screams, of a thousand bad feelings, of a thousand good memories that just seem so hurtfully bittersweet. Of a thousand wishes of just being "normal". Of a thousand "what ifs".
It's Hell. Even the Bibilical creation of Satan's Hell has nothing on the Hell that is inside us. It's not even Purgatory.
It's life.
Desperate? Yes.
Selfish? Yes, but not in the way you think.
Painful? Fuck yes.
Stupid? No. Never.
An end to a means?.....
Always.
Over the years, we have always heard the good old analogy "They're so selfish to commit suicide, they never think of their family, their kids..."
Selfish? Sure.
But it's also a selfless act. You're wanting to end your pain, you don't want your brain to be constantly thinking of how it feels to die, how to do it, and so on. It's a selfless act for YOU. Sorry, but we aren't thinking of you, our family, our kids. We are too focused on the overwhelming pain and hurt, it's a visceral physiological being enveloping us with all its blackness, like a heavy cloak. And yes, it can happen without warning. We can be smiling, laughing, bantering with family and friends, just hours before trying to take our own lives. The human brain itself is such a mysterious being. It can break in half just like that, and everything floods out, and we have no power over it except to let it come, and think of a way out of it.
Some achieve what they set out to try. Others fail. Like me. And we end up with overworked mental health social workers and psychs who see this day in, day out, and can only say to us "Well, you were one of the successful ones."
But it's not about winning, or losing.
It's about our broken system, and trying to fix what's so broken about it.
How are we successful, the ones who tried to commit suicide, and failed? How? Quite possibly so that we can lend a voice to those who lost their lives, and make others aware, and have a more open and honest dialogue of mental illness, how we feel, and of suicide itself. All the while struggling with our own insidious demons inside ourselves.
Because, once you've been in that place, regardless of if it was just the once or multiple times, you're never like you were before you visited this hell. We all know. It's a hell you'll either be familiar with, or pretend you'd rather not know. It's a hell of a thousand piercing screams, of a thousand bad feelings, of a thousand good memories that just seem so hurtfully bittersweet. Of a thousand wishes of just being "normal". Of a thousand "what ifs".
It's Hell. Even the Bibilical creation of Satan's Hell has nothing on the Hell that is inside us. It's not even Purgatory.
It's life.
Never a easy road. Well written
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