My most recent experience with suicide: My best friend killed herself this past weekend. Her addiction had come back after twenty five years clean and sober, and it destroyed her.
When I was young, a friend’s father used a shotgun to kill himself messily, while his family was in the house with him. I’ve never forgiven him that.
Have a good one A Demon Plaything. It’s been a slice.
My sister killed herself 14 years ago. She lived in another city, but we had always been fairly close. She came to visit the weekend before. I wish I had seen the signs of the “goodbye” stage. I knew she was unhappy, but I didn’t know she was that depressed. She had broken up with her lover of 5 years or so, had started trying to get sober, and was, I thought, bettering her life and mental health. She drove out to the woods, pitched a tent, and hooked her car’s exhaust pipe to a hose that went into the tent. She didn’t want anyone who knew her to find her.
I was devastated. My mom was devastated. My mom couldn’t even see me without thinking of her, since we looked alike. So it got hard to see my mom, who STILL had a drinking problem, as did I. Then my mom passed away from a stroke following surgery, a year and a half later. I know the stroke didn’t have anything to do with the suicide, but it FELT like it, you know? The only women in my life ripped away from me. I never had any women friends. (I do now, thankfully!)
It was a very hard time in my life. I had just moved in with my husband, and he was very supportive. I eventually quit drinking and drugging and have been sober almost 13 years now. And I’m happy!!!
I’m still pissed at her for giving up and checking out. But I know I will see her again one day, and after I hug her hard, THEN I will bitch her out. I love you, Diane…
well, the thing that saved me from suicide was thinking what it would do to other people. a little over a year ago, i had an appendectomy, which was horrible (i’m terribly afraid of doctors thanks to bad experiences as a child and teenager),. it later got infected, and i had to undergo a disgusting, very painful procedure every day for a few weeks to clean and heal the wound. i also graduated high school around that time and was really upset that i’d have to leave my friends behind, the only support i had. not to mention social anxiety and fear of college. anyway, i wanted to end it all. i had disturbing visions of taking a dagger (i have several, i like weaponry) and piercing my heart. of course, i thought, NO, bad evil evil thoughts… and i tried to make them go away and they wouldn’t. i thought of my religion (for the record, i’m wiccan), and i thought of all my friends. for one thing, it would be a huge disappointment to them. many of my friends suffer from depression, diagnosed or not (that’s what i get for hanging out with all the outcasts…), and i thought that my death would trigger something terrible with them. i also thought of all the people that have worked to help me and make me who i am and make sure i turned out ok and how it would just tear them to pieces. i thought of the REAL victims of suicide.
after a few months i healed (with the support of friends and some “alternative” healing along with what the doctor ordered), and college came, hitting me over the head, but i felt better. i guess maybe i was suffering from a case of situational depression, but i’m better now. i didn’t tell anyone how i really felt that summer until a month or so ago. i didn’t want them to tell my parents, and i didn’t want to go to a mental hospital. i knew i could never bring myself to do something drastic like take my own life, but if i felt i was really a threat to myself, i would have told somebody.
anyway, enough of that, i’m depressing myself. people should just think of the people they love before killing themselves.
Victims of suicide never heal, never have closure, and never truly feel right with the world around them. I am certain there are various degrees of this, but mine is quite severe, as I was a child victim, when my oldest brother hanged himself, on Thanksgiving night 27 years ago. He was 18, I was 5. The toll that his death had on my family is severe, to put it mildly, and I can honestly say that the starting point of my “chronological memory” coincides with his death. I have memories here, and there, from before then, but I remember everything since, including the morning, when he was found, and all the horrifying details surrounding it(I only recently learned that I was incredibly lucky to have not seen him, myself, and sometimes I wonder if perhaps I did, and have blocked it out of my memory.
I suffer from severe depression, and have felt suicidal before, but I made a vow to myself that no matter how bad it got, that I would never do it. I’ve come close to breaking that promise to myself, but when I’ve been in that state, I just remind myself over, and over again about my promise, and think about how awful it would be to miss out on watching my kids grow up. It’s gotten me through some very rough times.
The biggest shocker, however, and one that is still a very open(yet never spoken of) wound is the suicide attempt of my mother’s, nearly 3 years ago. To have gone through the suicide death of her oldest child, as well as the suicide death of a close friend, and next door neighbor, to know what it does, and to get to the point that someone not previously affected by suicide would need to get to, in order to attempt it, and then beyond, just absolutely blows my mind. I would never have thought that I’d have the conversation that I had with my dad the morning after her attempt. Fortunately she is better now, and there is no fear of her trying again.
I have a friend, whose sister became pregnant as a teen, the father hanged himself a month before the birth, and she ran off, and became a homeless drug addict shortly afterwards, whose neice I feel so very, very, deeply for, although I’ve never met her. I remind him, every time I think of it, just how important it is that he be a part of her life, as much as he possibly can, she needs to know that she has constant, stable, loving family. Her life is going to be so difficult.
~V