Without getting into the details, glorifying things or giving people ideas who don't need anything to help them get any closer to the edge, I will leave the credentials of my thought to this: I've attempted suicide twice. I've been hospitalized in psychiatric institutions twice and been hospitalized a third time for a suicide attempt but talked my way out of psychiatric hospitalization. If I had access to a gun on those two occasions I would no longer be on this earth. Period. I only say all that to help people understand that I know what it's like to mentally let go. To talk or think about suicide is one thing but to attempt it is another. I've mentally gone every place but joined those who've left this earth. I know what it's like to let go completely.
No one should feel like life isn't worth living. No one should sit down and be able to justify ending their own life when they stack up the reasons to live versus going, but people do. The young ones probably just don't have enough life experience to understand things can get better. The first few episodes are so scary with any mental illness that you feel like there is no hope and no future. It's easy to want out when you look at life and see little to live for. To those people I say dare to keep living. Dare to see what God and life can do with you. I got a college degree, found an amazing wife and had a son that I love more than anything in this life! I got all that after being fucked up. I looked my wife straight in the eyes and told her I was bipolar and then gave here a year and a half to see it and she still thought I was worth marrying. She saw value in me I couldn't see. She didn't need me to be anyone more than who I was at my worst. You know what that did for me, it helped me be better and get better. It took me 9 years to get a college degree from the time I first attended classes but I walked across that stage as proud as any other graduate.
I still have nights I want out. Just a week ago my wife was working back to back night shifts at the hospital and I was going crazy. It was 1:30 am and for a host of reasons I wont get into, my mind was not in a good place. Some of it was my fault, a lot of it wasn't. I sat in the bath tub for an hour as the shower head drowned me in despair. I wanted out so bad. You know what I did? I took a heavy but acceptable dose of anti-psychotics, drugged my self up and went and laid in my sons bed with him until they kicked in and i slept. I made that choice because I want more days with my wife. I've seen what her love has done to me in 7 years and I want to see what 10 or 20 years with her will do for me.
I struggle to function. My therapist tells me I probably should get around to accepting that my life is going to be full of episodes. I'll never be what I thought I'd be in life and I probably wont be able to even work a full-time job, maybe ever. I'll probably have a hard time putting together more than 4-6 months without not functioning for a month or so. That's my life. It sucks in a lot of ways. It makes making enough money to support a family hard. It makes it hard to stay in touch with people you care about or consistently socialize. I can't even take care of my one kid more than two days straight without falling apart. It sucks a lot. But it doesn't mean life is worthless. I see people with similar issues struggle and I talk to them and I see a lot of them get better and sometimes I wonder when I'm going to snap out of it. It doesn't happen, but I keep going because I keep making progress. It's really really slow. If you look too close you wont see it. You see, where many of my friends are taking on the business world or medical school or climbing the ladders of corporate law. I'm climbing just as hard and fighting just as hard but mine involves a lot simpler things. I'm the man in the wheel chair learning to walk again. That is what I live for and to most they don't see it. They see what I allow them to see, but my amazing wife, she sees it. She sees it. What is great is that she sees it all and she doesn't want out. She stays faithfully by my side and we fight it together. If she can live with me than I can live for her. It's that simple.
I've gone off on my own little life but the truth is, as I've said before, we can't know what God will use us for if we don't allow ourselves to live out life long enough to see it. I wont give up. I can't give up. The world needs people to stand up and say, "I'm suicidal but I choose to live." If you are suicidal and you want to have a one-on-one conversation so you know I know what you feel, we can do that. I know and I understand. I have lived long enough with it to know something you may not know, it will get better. It will get easier to manage and there will be days the clouds part and bright rays of happiness draw out the hope within you.
To those who don't understand, try your best to understand, but don't be so arrogant to think that your worst day compares. It doesn't help anyone to try to relate to things you can't comprehend. If you've always been a preservationist it's impossible to understand the despair that has caused someone to forsake such a mentality, can you not understand that something has caused them to abandon such a position? Do us all a favor and quit trying to relate. Love us and give us hope. Listen to us and help distract us. Let's go have fun instead of dwelling in the darkness. The solution can only come from within the sufferer so quit wasting your efforts on solutions and start helping accept us and love us in our suffering. Be the reason we don't want to leave, not out of guilt but out of love.
If you are struggling, understand those who love you are just trying to help. See their gestures as assurance you have value, not as mentally self-preserving means of relinquishing blame for what you might or might not do to yourself. Be honest enough with yourself to realize you have things to be grateful for and reasons to live. Spend your time enhancing those reasons and magnifying their existence in your life. The darkness will still come, and at times the contrast will be hard to deal with but hold on and you will find it worth the pain. No depression is permanent. It may last for months but there will be a day it doesn't hinder you from doing at least a few things you love. The greatest mistake any depressed person can make is to believe that what they feel is permanent. It is these states that leave to impulsive decisions with lasting consequences. When you find yourself questioning why you should live, please, go do the thing you love most. If you can't find the energy or ability to find joy in what you usually love, reminisce about it and re-live it and dream of it in your future. If none of that works then there is always the age-old method of distraction. I don't care if you have to watch all 6 episodes of Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings trilogy before you feel better, do it. Get your mind anywhere else but in that crevasse of self-destruction. There's nothing like watching Jason Statham and his bald head beat up a bunch of bad guys to keep you from your own demise. Whatever you do/watch, don't reinforce the suicidal thought process. If depressing music helps you let it out then listen to it. If it makes you want to die then don't. Sometimes it does one for me and sometimes it does the other. I have a play list for depression, agitation & mania, happiness and love songs. When I can't do it anymore I tell my wife i have to go for a drive and I just let it out. Sometimes it's Taking Back Sunday, Sia or a little Jason Mraz to remind me how much I love my wife. Every time is different but I do what helps me live. I may die of a heart attack at 50 because i binge eat but if that keeps me from drinking, doing drugs or killing myself, I'll take it.
Life is amazing! Honestly, it is. I haven't worked more than 5 hours in the last 8 weeks, my wife and I have no savings and we've lived with my parents for 6 of our 7 years of marriage, but I love it. Sometimes it's embarrassing but then their are times where I meet people struggling and I get to see my talents and gifts. Just like most people, my talents are in things I've spent years improving and skills that have taken thousands of hours to perfect. I have the gift of understanding and empathy. I know what it feels like to want out and to feel no hope for the future, much less tomorrow. I know what it's like to cry until there is nothing left, to hate your body and mind because you can't will it to do anything. I know what it's like to crawl up in a ball on the floor because you can't make it to the bed. I know what it's like to take your pain and hate out on yourself because you think you're defective and it's so easy for everyone else to do things that take everything you have to even attempt. I know more fully than I can articulate. I've been shrouded in darkness and nearly suffocated from suicidal ideation. Not shown in the two attempts on my life are the hundreds of nights it has consumed my thoughts. I feel your pain even now. I cry for you and I pray for you. I pray that you'll have the courage to reach out of the fog of darkness to someone for help. If you can't feel hope, seek it out. I am here and there are others. I've walked your path and I will come back down it for you. There is no darkness too dark and no despair too deep that I can't join you. We can laugh and cry and cuss each other out if it helps. You can't shock me or send me away disappointed. There are others like me. Join us in the fight to live. Who knows, maybe you'll look back in 10 years and be able to help someone else on the brink of death.
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