Thoughts About Suicide


Just to put your minds at rest, no I'm not considering suicide.  These are my thoughts about suicide and the urge to kill oneself, based on a life-long acquaintance with the urge.

My earliest memories of wanting to kill myself come from the two-year period when I was ten and eleven, a time when my life was unmitigated hell.  (I don't know if I thought of killing myself before then, as I have no memory of what it was like to be me before then.)  My material circumstances were nothing special, but for reasons I'm still trying to fully understand, it was a time when I was almost continuously overwhelmed with psychic pain and despair, relieved only by those brief times when I could forget I existed and fantasize about bees and ants or electronic circuits -- things to which feelings and consciousness were foreign.  Not only was I in pain, but it was regularly made clear to me that whatever pain I was going through was entirely my fault, and in fact, that it was my fault was also my fault, and it was presumptuous of me to expect anybody (i.e., real people, in contrast to me) to even think about it.

I thought about killing myself at least once a day for those two years.  I would go through the various ways I could do it in my mind: [ details omitted as probably being too morbid to be allowed here ].  After a while, I started mentally beating myself up for being too much of a coward to actually go through with it.  I knew whatever method I used would have to be successful, for I knew if I tried and failed, the never-ending recriminations I would endure would make my present living hell seem like a picnic in the park.  If I had tried and failed, no one would have cared how much pain I must have been in to want to do myself in, they would only have cared about what a slap in their face my committing suicide would be.

Why didn't I?  The only answer I have ever been able to come up with is this: I wanted to live.  Everything and everything around me -- parents, school, church, family -- was trying to destroy me, presumably in order to turn me into whatever it was they thought I was supposed to be, and though they did succeed in breaking me, at some point something deep inside me (rather like Cthulu?) resisted letting them destroy me completely.  I would do whatever it took to survive until I (well, what was left of me) could get away.

All this is half a century in the past now.  Suicidal thoughts no longer live in my mind, they just drop by every now and then like an unwanted guest, when I'm having a bad patch, to throw my routine into disarray and lie around on the couch and leave stale pizza crusts all over the floor.  I didn't kill myself back then, when things were orders of magnitude worse, so I know I won't now.

However, when I read discussions of suicide, and especially the arguments for not killing myself, I can't help asking myself: how would I have reacted to those arguments back in the day when suicide seemed like the only way to get relief from the pain?

My answer: not well.

--  "Suicide is not the answer" -- well, what the @#$% is then?

--  "It gets better" -- when, exactly?  How do I survive with my soul intact until that unspecified day?  And, most important, will it be enough better to make up for having gone through the years of hell until then?  That last question is one that I ask myself to this day.  The pain and despair have never really gone away, I'm just better at finding fun things to do to take my mind off them, and when the things stop being fun enough, I'm back where I was 50 years ago.

--  "Think of how much you'll hurt the survivors." -- that would have been, for me, a reason to kill myself.  I forced myself to stay alive in spite of the embarrassment (it wouldn't have been pain) my surviving would spare them.  That they got off scot-free and claimed credit for whatever success I managed is the price of my survival.

The only thing that might have made a positive difference would have been if there had been someone who would have sat with me, listened to what I was going through without judging me, and understood and cared about what I was going through.  It would have been even nicer if that someone would have been able to mitigate some of the circumstances.

(Oddly enough, the only person throughout my childhood who did do anything to help mitigate things was the older brother who also terrorized me my entire childhood.  One small conversation, but it was more than anyone else did.  One brief bit of understanding that led to one small step that put my life on the long slow path to improvement.)

IMO, Asche, the three responses you stated are probably a good list of things not to say to a suicidal person. I had some training dealing with suicidal people when I started working for a crisis hotline. Here are some that I thought would be more effective:

* If you decide not to die now, the option to die later will always be available. What other solutions can we consider in the meantime?
* What would need to change in your life to make it worth living? What might the first step be in bringing about those changes?
* What makes a life meaningful? Are there things you can add to yours to give it some meaning?

For the most part, the people I have known who either attempted suicide or wanted to just wanted to stop their pain. There are some things that don't ever go away, but that doesn't mean we can't find a way to cope. I'm not saying its easy, and its a process, but taking yourself out of the picture is probably not the answer.

I can say first hand that dealing with pain over the long haul, be it emotional pain or physical, is draining and hope is not always easy to come by. I've fought with emotional pain most of my life, and during the past fourteen, Chronic, serious pain issues that will not ever go away. That being said, if I were to take my life, my pain might be over, but the guilt of not noticing things were so bad, the loss of a family member and friend, my son's loss of a father are just some of the pain I would be creating for the ones left behind.

Leaving a note doesn't help those who have to cope with a friend or relative's death by suicide. You aren't there to answer their questions, or tell them that you were hiding the symptoms and they shouldn't feel guilty. There are some exceptions to that, but I won't go into it here, but for the most part, as long as there is anything you can give the world, even so much as a kind word to an overworked cashier, you aren't done living.

sam1234

My most recent suicide attempt was about a week ago actually. I overdosed on alot of differently powerful anti-depressant medicine.

All I can say is, after that frightful experience, I hope not to ever attempt suicide again in my entire life!

The only thing that has kept me alive through 50 years of suicidal thoughts and multiple overdoses is my faith.