Coldfire the two threads are completely different, since the thread titles are completely different. I am interested to realize that I didn’t and don’t count my suicide attempt as closer to death than the time I spent in hospital. Even though the time in hospital only had about a 10% chance of dieing.
Cheers, Bippy
I was 17 and a number of ugly things were hapenning - I had just broken up with my first true love, I was being deeply closeted about my sexuality and my religion (as in, fighting to stay in the closet to myself), my relationship with my father was deteriorating by the minute, I’d been in a car wreck earlier that spring and was in intermittent physical pain from that, and I was under severe academic stress. I made two half-assed attempts - tried to slit my wrists with a piece of glass and was interrupted before I had much more than hesitation marks, and tried to OD on muscle relaxants (didn’t have enough to kill me, and my trick stomach was smarter than I was and sent them right back up once it figured out there was funny business going on).
I hate it when my automatic reactions are smarter than I am . . .
About 20 years ago while I was a grad student, another student (I didn’t know him) jumped from the 6-story builing I was in. A day later, I was paralyzed with the fear that I was about to follow suit. Some days I held onto my bed all day with a white knuckle grip to keep from going to campus and to that building. It was like I had no choice. Some force beyond my control was going to make me check out.
I went to a psych counselor on campus, taking all the power I could muster to steer my bicycle away from that damn building. The counselor asked “What’s wrong?”
I said “I don’t want to live anymore. … I feel hollow.”
He responded “You don’t have any friends.”
Man, I broke down into tears and sobbed like a baby right there in his office for about an hour.
I promised myself ten more years, no matter what. Well, here I am 20 years later making it one day at a time. I tried a couple of dumb-assed counselors and family or friends but all they did was freak out and offer up simplistic solutions or advice. All I wanted was someone to shut up and listen, not think I’m a nut, no advice, and keep it in confidence. Truth is I’ve never really found that 100%, but I’ve come close with a couple of people.
The biggest realization I came to is that there is no pain like true loneliness. That so many have succumbed because they thought no one really cared. I’m no therapist, but after promising myself ten years, I also swore that whenever I meet someone in despair, I’ll stop whatever I’m doing and listen. I don’t know, but I think I may have actually saved a few. Sometimes I’ve cried over the ones I didn’t get to in time.
As to the OP, I can certainly say that if that counselor had not been there on that day at that time, I wouldn’t have made it.
I sometimes wished there was a support “network” of people much like there is AA, but the problem so far is that suicide has such a greater negative social stigma than does alcoholism that a potential suicidal, by the very nature of his state of mind, might eschew the association. I wanted sometimes so badly to buy a self-therapy book from a bookstore, but I was afraid that when I put it on the counter, the clerk would “know”.
Hmm…
I was about to step off the kerb in front of a bus but a (meddlesome) passerby grabbed me and told me I should look where I was going.
Another occasion, I tried to cut my wrists, but no-one had ever told me how to do it, so (using a razor I swiped from my mother’s leg-shaving stash) I cut in the wrong direction in the wrong place.
Not much happened WRT blood flow, and I felt even more of a worthless failure afterwards (I mean, imagine trying to kill yourself for being an incompetent failure and… failing.) From memory, it was winter, so I just bandaged the holes and wore long sleeves for a while.
A third occasion, I had learned the correct method of cutting ones wrists, and was poised, scalpel at the ready. Un/fortunately, a friend showed up as I was about to do the deed, and there was no point in going through the trauma if someone was going to save me as soon as I did it, so I was, once again, thwarted.
I still think about it from time to time, but my life circumstances are different now.
If I’d had a rope or a gun or a knife when I was in high school, I most likely would either be posting about trying and failing or not posting at all.
There was also a rather trying time some months ago (school stuff, and which led into more general things I’ve always struggled with), and if it weren’t for one person I probably would have tried. fizzy saved me there by existing. For about an hour I was so far gone I didn’t care about anything else in the world but her.
That’s what saved me.
When I was 20 I was stuck in a relationship that had completely gone to shit. I was on the receiving end of much mental abuse. My “girlfriend” used me for money and other things she didn’t have (namely because the lazy, greedy bitch couldn’t be bothered to get a job, but I won’t go into that since this isn’t the Pit, besides, it was 13 years ago). She expected me to do everything for her, no matter how much it inconvenienced me (e.g. taking her to the midnight movies when I had to be to work at 6:00 the following morning), and yet she was never satisfied and she never showed any appreciation. She was always belittling me and criticizing me for what she felt were my shortcomings. I kept hoping things would get better and the “magic” would return to our relationship, but that never happened. She put me through hell and made me feel miserable. I nearly flunked out of college because of her. I was losing contact with my family and friends because of all the time she demanded I spend with her (it definitely wasn’t quality time). I made several half-hearted attempts to kill myself. I tried wrecking my truck, slashing my wrists open and suffocating myself. It scares me to think that I once had such thoughts and such memories are quite frightening. I got counseling and I got on some antidepressants. I also finally got the good sense and I came to my senses to tell the bitch to fuck off and get the hell out of my life. It took me several months to re-assess my life and get back on the right track again, but I’m glad I never really went through with the stupid things I tried to do.
I spent a lot of my childhood (7 - occasionally now, at 18) contemplating suicide, always getting these urges when I pass busy streets (figure if I jump out in the street quick enough, the cars cant stop before hitting me) or when I walk over bridges. Obviously I never went through with anything, but it was always so tempting…
The closest I’ve come was the day I scared myself into therapy (something I’ve been against since I was 9). I think I was 15, and after my suicidal fantasies had subsided for a year or two, they suddenly started to come back, getting worse than they ever had been.
I was alone at home that day, feeling numb and had this urge to cut myself; I just suddenly wanted to carve designs into my arms, and not in an artsy-fartsy “ooh that’ll be neat!!!” kind of way.
I went into the kitchen and grabbed a knife and started cutting little shapes into my hand and forearm. The knife was dull and didn’t work well, so I switched to a serrated knife, hoping I could manage deeper cuts. After awhile, without really thinking about it, I started trying to cut numerous slashes up my wrist and arm.
I remember getting frustrated that it wasn’t working, and annoyed that our knives were so damn dull… Then I finally realized what I was doing, started crying and went to call my mom to tell her I was going to make an appointment with some kind of counselor.
I’m still kind of screwy (I HATE those pills! :mad: ) but not nearly as bad as I’ve been growing up. Now I mostly just have my numb-yet-slightly-sad days, which are strangely comforting.
One day while I was still living at home, before I reconciled with my father, I went to take the metro to Hamish’s house. While waiting in the station, I found myself staring fixatedly into the tracks, considering throwing myself in in a way I had never thought about it before. Happily, I got in the train, not in front of it.
On a more bizarre note, one day about two years ago I was coming home from university, and everything that afternoon reminded me of suicide. I was in the metro and I thought about throwing myself in front of the train. Then I thought about hanging myself from the sculpture. Then I thought about running into traffic. It scared the living shit out of me since there was nothing, at that time, that was making me depressed; it just suddenly arose. I called a crisis line when I got back home, and was gentle with myself that evening, and it went away and has not returned. Très bizarre.
Many years ago I was considering suicide… I realized I needed help, so, remembering many commercials, I found the yellow pages and began looking for the suicide hotline number.
The better part of an hour later I realized there was no suicide hotline number listed anywhere in that entire book.
The irony (or not. Geez.) of the situation worked better than anything they could have said to me. q;}
Not to be judgemental or anything, but I for one have NEVER thought about it seriously. I’ve thought about it when I wasn’t depressed as an intellectual thing (like now), but even in the depths of my most serious depression I can’t remember actually going “Gee. I wonder if I should end it all?”
My friend has summed suicide up nicely I think - Suicide is a permanent solution to temporary problems.
Take care-
-Tcat
Gun in hand, barrel in mouth, finger on trigger. 'At’s all I’ll say.
Damn you, SPOOFE, that’s my story too. Oh well…
All I can say, Tcat, is that it truly seemed like the most logical, sensible solution at hand. Being depressed is not being down or a little sad, it’s overwhelming, incapacitating and can seem to be without any end or solution.
Coldfire, I agree with you re message boards being no substitute for counseling. However, it can be reassuring and also helpful to people who are suffering from clinical depression and suicidal thoughts to know that others have been there and made it through.
As others have posted, my own situation was a result of sexual abuse by my pedophile father. It took me years to acknowledge what had happened and still longer to face things. Once I did admit that I’d been abused, and did the work, I got better. Now I’m extremely thankful I did not succeed although by rights, I should have died.
I think the value in a thread like this can come from those of us who have been there, either seriously considered trying or who actually did attempt – and not only lived but lived to be glad we did not succeed.
If you are reading this thread because you are contemplating suicide, please know that you can work through the issue, you can get through the pain you are in now. Yes, I know that sounds simplistic but believe me, I have been there.
I’m not proud of those three attempts but neither am I ashamed of them. I am very proud of the work I did, I know now I can get through anything because I survived that. You can too.
Standing on the highway overpass, waiting for a good semi to come by in the lane I was standing over. Forty-foot fall onto concrete followed by being run over by an eighteen-wheeler seemed like a pretty sure & certain way to finish it.
Fortunately, I decided that that would be awfully rude to the truck driver, so I went home instead.
-Christian (now medicated, therapized, & relatively content)
I wanted so desperately to hear these exact words. I felt like I was fighting all alone. … And now finally, after 20 years, here they are on some webs site message board. Thanks cont.
Mid 1970’s. I hadn’t yet permitted myself to go to a doctor about my depression - if I was strong enough I could “handle” it. Two things kept me alive: 1) I was afraid that I’d end up alive and maimed for a long and miserable life, and 2) knowing someone whose parent had committed suicide, and the effect on the survivors.
Like others here, I was helped enormously by therapy and meds. Therapy taught me to understand and cope with those terrible lows. Even on meds there are lows, but I know how to manage the effects. One key for me is the sure knowledge that the mental low or stressing situation is temporary. Everything is temporary, after all.
If you’re feeling desparate, know that there are people who can help. Many are just a phone call away. Talk to them.
Oh, absolutely. Which is why this thread wasn’t closed. But at the same time, we cannot stress the importance of professional help enough.
Same here Tomcat. There but the grace of OG… I just can’t fathom it.
A few weeks ago my friend left me a long, gushy voicemail saying things like “I love you man”, “Follow your dreams”, “Don’t let anyone hold you back.”
I didn’t get the voicemail until a couple days later because the #$%^&*@ phone I had at the time never notified me but when I finally talked to him he admitted that he was deadset to end it all. Luckily his sister had taken all his bullets.
As far as me? I’ve thought about it a lot but I could never actually do it. I honestly think my mom would either die of heartbreak or just be completely catatonic for the rest of her life. That would leave my dad lonely for the rest of his life since he would never remarry.
No sense in ruining two other people’s lives because I’m feeling blue.
The knowledge of what it would do to my kids and family has always kept me from doing more than thinking of it in passing, for most of my life.
But about three years ago, I was hit by severe clinical depression brought on by specific situational depression (not my words, my counselor’s).
During the worst of my depression, before I finally sought help, I watched a show about young girls who “cut”. And instead of being horrified at what these young women were doing to themselves, I thought “hmmmm, I wonder if it would work like they say it does”. (it being the “fact” that supposedly the pain from cutting, blocks the emotional pain one feels and also induces a small high).
Prior to that, I’d been thinking vaguely, but frequently, of driving my car off of a cliff (unfortunately, or fortunately, there aren’t that many accessible by car in Alaska). The heartbreak, and subsequent depression in my life was leading me further and further down the path to “could I do it”?
Watching that show, and having that reaction was the impetus I needed to call my boss into my office, ask for EAP, and go into a program including counseling (2 of them) and medication for about a 7 and a half month period.
“What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger” may be a cliche’ but in my case, it was true. Also, it taught my previously jovial “oh, people should just ‘snap out of it’” smug little bitchy self, that YES, hell YES there not only IS such a thing as clinical depression, but that it can happen to anyone, even a “Rebecca of Sunnybrook” like me. Not just because I went through it, so therefore it must be true, but because of what I learned from my counselors, and reading text etc.
Shame on me for ever having doubted, and it serves me right that I needed to learn that lesson and go through it. The strange thing is that I doubted when I’ve been studying psychology, both educationally (jr. HS, HS and college courses) and on my own as a hobby since I was about 11. I really should have known better.
Now? I owe that period in my life for many lessons learned, and for why I try like crazy (don’t always succeed) to be as kind and supportive to others as I can.