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This post is a bit lengthy, but I felt a desperate need to get it out and be able to understand all aspects of suicide! For the sake of those who do not read my journal I am posting this on other groups. This time of year there is a very high rate of suicide. I know I have been there. I hope this speaks to you somehow!
I watched this video called drinking drunk. It was very graphic and heart wrenching. I pray for all my loved ones to be safe this New Year! It got me thinking. When we (the mentally ill) are suicidal we do not understand the sorrow we may give to others, because we are drowning in our own sorrow. Imagine this...imagine the pain in your heart you would feel if you heard of a loved one dying, then imagine that heart ache. Well, that is where me as a mentally ill person lives with everyday, every hour, every minute, every second. The human mind can only cope with so much trauma before it looses touch with reality. Every personality is traumatized by their past which invades their present reality and they do not know how to over come it. The pain is too real and so difficult to comprehend. The only thing that runs through our minds is the need to escape. If you have lost a loved one and felt that huge painful emptiness maybe you can experience were I and my personalities live.
On the flip side, if I got a call about a loved one passing somehow..how devastated I would feel. Like my family or friends...what I have put them through!? Yet, they choose to love me still knowing very well that I could cause them the most pain they have ever had to endure in their lives. Suicide is an act of causing the tremendous pain to our loved ones equal to the pain that we live with everyday of our lives in torment. Do I want to be the cause of my loved ones to inflict the agony that I experience? NO! I would never even have my worst enemy to experience just one of my personalities anguish.The sad thing about this is when I was nursing the idea of killing myself it controlled my mind. It wasnt until I was able to rationally understand the hell I was living in and work through it that I realized this whole process of years of therapy and psychotropic medications could be the legacy I would leave behind for those who chose to love me anyway. I did not come to this realization on my own. I could not understand this or even think of the ramifications of my actions effecting my loved ones.
So, with all that said. If, and when my broken hearted loved ones read this one day know that I am truly sorry for causing you the worst pain, equal to my own pain, in your life. I do not want you to be the victim of my actions. Just like I never wanted to be the victim of my abusers! I pray that my death would be of natural causes not my cause! I hope this for everyone here on DS!
I watched this video called drinking drunk. It was very graphic and heart wrenching. I pray for all my loved ones to be safe this New Year! It got me thinking. When we (the mentally ill) are suicidal we do not understand the sorrow we may give to others, because we are drowning in our own sorrow. Imagine this...imagine the pain in your heart you would feel if you heard of a loved one dying, then imagine that heart ache. Well, that is where me as a mentally ill person lives with everyday, every hour, every minute, every second. The human mind can only cope with so much trauma before it looses touch with reality. Every personality is traumatized by their past which invades their present reality and they do not know how to over come it. The pain is too real and so difficult to comprehend. The only thing that runs through our minds is the need to escape. If you have lost a loved one and felt that huge painful emptiness maybe you can experience were I and my personalities live.
On the flip side, if I got a call about a loved one passing somehow..how devastated I would feel. Like my family or friends...what I have put them through!? Yet, they choose to love me still knowing very well that I could cause them the most pain they have ever had to endure in their lives. Suicide is an act of causing the tremendous pain to our loved ones equal to the pain that we live with everyday of our lives in torment. Do I want to be the cause of my loved ones to inflict the agony that I experience? NO! I would never even have my worst enemy to experience just one of my personalities anguish.The sad thing about this is when I was nursing the idea of killing myself it controlled my mind. It wasnt until I was able to rationally understand the hell I was living in and work through it that I realized this whole process of years of therapy and psychotropic medications could be the legacy I would leave behind for those who chose to love me anyway. I did not come to this realization on my own. I could not understand this or even think of the ramifications of my actions effecting my loved ones.
So, with all that said. If, and when my broken hearted loved ones read this one day know that I am truly sorry for causing you the worst pain, equal to my own pain, in your life. I do not want you to be the victim of my actions. Just like I never wanted to be the victim of my abusers! I pray that my death would be of natural causes not my cause! I hope this for everyone here on DS!
It turned out that's all I wanted--to have a break, to do something other than fight every day, to stop living defensively. So rather than being about suicide, which I myself thought, what I wanted was just to let go, to have a break from living with fear, rage, intensity all the time.
22 years ago my best friend didn't understand that. His girlfriend broke up with him. He took it hard, and he just wanted to stop feeling that way. But in his case, he confused that with suicide, and he did kill himself. I miss him still.
Most of the time when suicide comes to a person's mind, it is in the category of a permanent solution to a temporary problem. It's harder when the temporary problem is chronic, as with PTSD and all other manner of chronic illness, and keeps coming back. But in between PTSD episodes I experience laughter, purpose, inspiration, all kinds of things worth living for. Just my 2 cents.
There really are people who have absolutely no one. It is a special kind of glacial and depopulated Hell. I hope you'll never experience it personally. And we who exist in that frigid permafrost should continue to do so year after pointless aching year... why, exactly? It is possible to feel nothing but pain and remorse, possible to take no pleasure in anything, year after year after year. I can testify to that reality firsthand, am as lucid as the next poster here.
Permanent solution to a temporary problem. How oft stated, how catchy, and how very ......pat.. What if the problem has always been there and always will be? What if there is no relief from unbearable suffering and irretrievable loss?
These are real situations that some exist with.
I do understand what you mean when you use the expression permafrost. Please though don't assume that people who are engaged in posting here in a spirit of optimism aren't also having to endure the frigid isolation, or are not still soaked in the defeat of their abuse.
Mujica is brave, and honest, not writing you trite platitudes. Perhaps take the time to read some of his other posts before putting down one of the strongest survivors in this group.
No one is saying survival and perseverance are easy. The only thing that is certain in this world is change. My experience is that utter misery is not true permafrost, but will relent somewhat if we are willing to fight for warmer days.
None of us wanted to be victims. Our choice is now that we have survived, where are we going to head. You are not the only one who is alone, who is facing this. We are just trying to inch our way forward.
I wish you the best boydie
To me, being suicidal is a symptom of a mental illness, and that is it. It doesnt make sense to me to ask if a symptom of an illness is morally right, or wrong. Or if the person with an illness should be guilted out of it, because I dont think that works. Because it doesnt make sense when you apply it to any other kind of illness. No one asks if its right or wrong to sneeze. Or blame the person with a cold for sneezing. The problem should be they are ill. Not how many tissues theyve used up.
Once again, not trying to put down anyone. What works for you works, and if it keeps you around, by all means. Im also not saying that you should be okay with killing yourself because you have some issues going on. I just mean to seperate yourself from the urges, and to seperate the person you love from their actions, and see it as the red flag it is to get help.
Really appreciated your perspective on this post - about treating suicidal ideation as a red flag for the need for additional or more effective mental health treatment. I am hesitant to label PTSD "mental illness", but self-destruction as solution is disordered thinking. It is a symptom.of help needed. And I like what you said about avoiding guilt tripping ourselves or others about it, just working to treat the agony.
But... I always have a but, because I'm always ambivalent. I have hope that I can heal and have love and creativity and friendship (good things) in life. With death all hope is lost. Like mujica said, death is so permanent a response when we are just temporarily on over load with the pain. It feels like it would be worth losing life if we could lose the pain. But I think most of us don't want to loose every thing and all life and all hope. We just desperately need a break from the suffering. Death is a tragic choice in this circumstance.
Twilight I don't think of PTSD as a mental illness. I think of it as a mental injury. The difference may be just splitting hairs. But I was not born with PTSD, it didn't spontaneously develop in me the way Cancer or Lupus does. My family hurt me. They injured me when I was a healthy child, they caused my PTSD. It remains something we didn't choose whether illness or injury. No one would choose it. So perhaps it's just hair splitting. It hurts like hell in any case.
I especially wish you well, boydie.
It certainly isn't easy, and I didn't come to my choice lightly. It happened in the year 2000 for me when I stood at that crossroads we know so well. I had given up to the point that I had to literally win and earn my credibility back on the topic of staying alive. I had lost utterly everything and everyone. I lost it all again in 2010, but by then suicide no longer had the allure it had in 2000.
I wish you all the support you need.
I got it in 2000, in 2010, and I get it now. I will especially never forget the support I got when I decided against all odds to choose life in 2000. Strangers responded and put their faith in me when I had given them little evidence of any reason to do so at the time.
Blessings.
Your note touched me. When I was at my lowest I decided I could not stand the pain of PTSD anymore. I hated who I had become and that I could not seem to stop the spiral downwards. My job was gone, my career was over, I did not know myself anymore, I did not trust people, and my relationships with others were not good. I hurt so badly. Everyday was painful and seemed to get worse. Years of therapy did not seem to be helping. I would cut my wrist to feel the pain because it was punishment for me not getting my life together. I thought I deserved to feel the pain cutting caused me. I then decided the only way out was to die. I did not want to live like this anymore. I gave up hope and stopped fighting. I tried to off myself, but I could not do it. I tried to drive my vehicle into the path of a truck over and over again. As hard as I tried I just could not do it. Feeling even worse that I had failed at ending my life. I checked into a hotel and feel into bed until my family found me the next day. I later come to learn that it was the love my family and the pain my death would have caused them that stopped me from doing it. Every time I tried to drive into the path of the trucks, I saw the pain on my families faces in my mind and I could not do it..
You are correct in saying offing yourself WILL cause pain to your loved ones and friends. You may not feel like it, but people actually do care about you. Your PTSD symptoms often mask the love and caring from others.
If you feel you are in danger of hurting yourself of others, please get help. It is just your PTSD symptoms talking and they are not you and do not represent you. Kill them to the curb by getting help and moving forward to a better place.
I just wanted to share how I see the anguish of suicide from both angles.
God bless you all. Have a happy new year.
Hugs!
Jessy
You wrote:
"I just wanted to share how I see the anguish of suicide from both angles."
You succeeded, and achieved that for many of us who've seen the topic from both sides, too. Thanks.
Muji