Suicide

Recently, two persons who are not particularly close to me came to me for a listening ear. Both lost someone very dear to suicide just a month ago; one lost a mother and the other lost a best friend. Perhaps they felt I could understand or maybe they just needed a listening ear and I was around. In any case, I felt privileged that they trusted me.

Both were obviously depressed and guilt ridden. Suicide survivors are often laden with the "if only I had" burden. They wondered what they could have done to prevent it. They thought of instances where they should have spotted the signs and prevented it. In a way, I could relate to that feeling because that was exactly how I felt when I miscarried my last child; if only... ...

I couldn't offer much advice and I guess they weren't looking for that anyway. All I could share was my own experience as a "suicide addict". Hopefully, they would see that they really couldn't do much to change the person's mind.

Suicide is addictive. It becomes the default coping mechanism when things go wrong. I 1st toyed with suicide when I was Pr. 4. I popped my granny's pills. They turned out to be Vits. After that, I had many episodes where I tried to slit my wrist, cross the road with my eyes closed and popped Panadols with coke and alcohol. Each time, I felt the immediate relief that I did not die and the problem seemed more solvable. I believe most people who committed suicide, didn't want to die. They just couldn't see a way out and see how they could carry on living. Of my many suicide attempts, I had 3 close shaves- the 1st when I was in uni and my hostel mates rushed me to hospital with excessive bleeding. I was knocked out cold by the panadol and alcohol and I had cut my wrist in the daze. The 2nd time was when my parents found me foaming at my mouth and rushed me to hospital to have my stomach pumped. I had downed a concoction of 20 sleeping pills. Being a parent now, I could understand how my parents must have felt. What a terrible thing to do to your parents! The 3rd time, I was looking out of the window, preparing to jump when divine intervention stopped me. That's was why I chose to believe in God.

Anyway, nobody could have stopped me. Not the knowledge that people around me loved me, not that the problem will eventually be solved, not even when my best friend was there for me. I could only think of suicide, and if I live to tell the tale, great and if I die, well, that was the point anyway. So it didn't matter what everyone around me said or tried to convince me otherwise, I was deaf to what was said. And I would have done it again and again, until my luck ran out of course.

I hope these 2 friends of mine will let go and live their lives more richly than before. I hope they will continue to build the dreams they had and live the dream, with the person they lost in mind. Most of all, I hope they know it takes time to heal and they themselves won't do something drastic.

So what stopped me for the suicide cycle? It was divine intervention. But for those not as lucky as me, I would advise counselling.