Most people cope with pain okay. We don't like it, but we deal with it as it comes along. It's only when the pain is too great and overwhelming that we consider alternatives. One of those alternatives is suicide. It's certainly not the only one, but it's elegant completeness is very appealing. A simple, complete end to the pain. Finally, peace.

But at what cost? Peace comes to you, but your life is over. So you don't really get a chance to enjoy the peace. Because you're dead. You think death will end the pain. But how can we know what will happen when we die? We don't. We're making a huge assumption about the afterlife. But we're so overwhelmed by the pain and not being able to cope anymore, it seems like a reasonable choice. And a pretty damned attractive one at that.

That's what suicide is really about -- not having the ability to cope anymore with the amount of pain that you're feeling. You just can't deal with it anymore. You feel overwhelmed and hopeless. Lost. You are at the end of your rope and your coping resources have just run out. That leaves you with three choices: commit suicide, reduce your pain, or increase your coping resources.

The feeling of suicide is temporary. It's hard to understand that right now, I know that. I never felt like wanting to die would end. I really wanted to end it all. Every day was just another reason to die. I wrote endless journal entries about how good life was to me, how thankful I was, and how much I welcomed death and the peace it would bring. But the peace wasn't real. It was just something I had imagined, something I had convinced myself would be a part of the choice. So although suicide remains an attractive choice, you lose the ability to keep living or any future you might've had. I know you don't think you have much of a future right now. But guess what...? You do.

So this leaves you with finding a way to reduce the pain or increase your coping resources. Reducing pain is difficult for most people because usually the pain is emotional -- it sometimes feels as if your heart has literally been ripped out of you. Breathing is hard, eating is hard, so the thought of doing anything is darned near impossible. But there are possibilities.

--tbc