If you got here looking for help because you are suicidal, please call someone for help! Try this site if you need help.
I now return you to the actual content of this entry...
I just posted on where I am at now, as opposed to where I was at before. I have been hospitalized for suicide attempts on several occasions and, of those, two of them were nearly successful. (Those are just the ones that I got caught doing.) So I am no stranger to feeling suicidal. I can remember as a really little kid, standing at the top of a tall tree and wondering if I jumped out of the tree, would I die, and how marvelous that would be.
Having been caught in several suicide attempts, I am also no stranger to the reactions of others to these attempts. I have gotten them all, from "she just wants attention; ignore her" all the way through "we are going to put you away for a long time because we are tired of you trying to kill yourself" and everything in between. I know all the reasons why suicide is a bad thing, from "you'll burn in Hell" to "you'll destroy your kids" and everything in between. I have heard and read literally thousands of opinions, posts, comments and articles from survivors of loved ones who committed suicide.
And I get it. Suicide is bad. Suicide hurts people irreparably. I have often heard it described as "the ultimate act of selfishness" - especially by those left behind.
What I want to know is, through these people's grief processes and through the thought processes of those trying to understand it, do they not see just how bad things must have been for the suicidal person? I mean, seriously! Think about this for a second. It is human instinct - and a damned strong one - to survive. We come up with unimaginable reservoirs of strength in order to live through things that by all rights should have killed us. For most sane people, the concept of killing themselves is so foreign and illogical as provoke actual feelings of disgust. People are hard-wired to survive. Can you imagine just how dark a place they must be in for them to go through with an action that they not only know, but intend, will kill them and, in most cases, painfully?
Would you want to live in that place?
A commenter on a blog that I read recently said,
"I can't begin to describe the pain and suffering his brothers, sisters and I have suffered, I'm sure if he knew he would not have left us like he did."
And I COMPLETELY understand where she is coming from. That is a horrible thing to have to live through and no mother should ever lose a child or a sibling his brother. So PLEASE don't think that I am telling survivors not to feel this way.
But really, can you begin to describe the pain and suffering HE was feeling that he felt his only option was to leave you behind and in pain? I think the vast majority of people who attempt suicide are well aware that it will hurt other people. They have varying degrees of concern about this and for some that is actually on the "Pros" side rather than the "Cons" side. But if this person truly cared so much about his family that "if he knew" he would have chosen otherwise - do you realize how desperate he must have felt?
A short while back the father of a close acquaintance died from lung cancer after a very painful struggle with it. In the end, it was truly awful on everyone. When he finally passed, it was a relief to his loved ones to know he wasn't suffering like that any more. I heard that from all of them that I know - "At least he isn't suffering any more." He did not chose to get cancer and die. He did not choose to die slowly and painfully. And when he was finally at peace, people saw, recognized, and took heart in the fact that he didn't hurt any more.
And yet someone who is hurting so badly inside themselves that life itself is unbearable, someone suffering so horrifically as to overcome one of humanity's strongest instincts, someone in indescribable pain... is the ultimate in selfish.
We do not chose to be suicidally depressed. We did not wake up one morning and say to ourselves, "Self, I want to feel so awful that there is nothing on this world worth bearing this pain." We do not want to stumble in darkness through life, trying desperately to find the magic pill or right thought patterns that will lift this veil of suffering. We don't choose to live every moment slowly and painfully. But if someone in this position commits suicide, no one says, "At least she isn't suffering any more." They say if only she knew how much others are hurting because she left us.
They say that final, desperate quest for relief... is the ultimate in selfish.
Because of the pain it causes others, suicide is forbidden. Of all the reasons I have been given, of all the lectures I have received, of all the ultimatums that have been delivered... that is the only one I have that is stronger than the pain I feel. I was told, "Your children will NEVER recover and they will never forgive you." And so I am here and I will stay here, trapped until The Powers That Be decide it's time to go. So that the relief of my pain will not cause pain to others.
depression: cancer of the soul...
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