your thoughts on suicide

Great post, paintsrule.

I think what people should realize is no one wants to die. That just seems like the only solution. Instead, we/they want the pain to stop. To be saved. When I was suicidal, a friend said to me: "What if you die and nothing happens. You won't be able to feel sadness or hurt, but you won't be able to feel relief either. You will be nothing".

It's hard to explain how incredibly attractive that sounded to me. To feel nothing.
I know I'm not the only person to have felt that way. Everyone would much rather be happy and free of pain instead of dead. But when you are at that point, the idea that you could ever be happy is so inconceivable. You think that even if you were happy, something horrible would happen and you would just be sad again so whats the point?

You assume everyone will move on or be better without you OR you just can't care or seem to think about it. Because you feel worthless. You feel as if you are not contributing to the world or won't be missed when you are gone.

How completely insane does that sound? Even being the one who thought it, I can say it doesnt sound sane. I'm just trying to show some people who maybe never had these feelings the type of thoughts that go through your head.

You can be depressed and never be suicidal. No rational person will think suicide is an option, but when you cross over that line, your think in a completely irrational way.

To feel nothing would be a splendid thing when you are in that state. I agree completely.

I think you justify that people around you will move on so you don't have to have the additional burden of their sadness if you do kill yourself.

Definitly true, Solon.

I am trying to think of what happened for me.

I remember for a long time, I never did anything because I knew people would be left behind. I don't remember what happened but it was like I woke up one day and someone had turned a switch and I couldn't bear to deal with their hurt on top of my own so I just told myself they would move on. I thought I was "Finally doing something for myself instead of everyone else" :roll: Go figure.

Solon is what stopped me. I realized living without him was a worse hell than what I was going through.

This is a great post. I don't like to think back to the days I was suicidal. It hurts me to think about it. But when every morning, just waking up was a chore and I was never happy and nothing...not even horses made me happy I was ready to do something about it. I got help...but even the help didn't help. I remember walking out on the bridge late at night and watching the water crash against the rocks and wondered how it would feel. The peacefulness of falling and then the pain of my body slamming against the rocks. But unlike you...all I felt was nothing. I didn't have any emotions anymore. I thought maybe if I did something...like what I said above, I would finally feel something. Luckily, I called my boyfriend at the time. And when he came and let me cry and he just held me and told me he couldn't fix my problems but would always be by my side to help me with them...I felt loved for the first time in a long time. That's the only thing that kept me from jumping over the side of the bridge that night.

Aren't horses amazing?

The same experience is what made me decide on my career. Once I get my LCSW, I'll be practicing therapy using Equine Facilitated Therapy.

RoughRider:

I don't mind talking about my experiences because I hope someone can relate and feel like someone else got through it so maybe they can too. I've never been to the point where I felt nothing and was seeking to feel so it's hard for me to understand that side of it. Thanks for sharing your story. :)

So true Spastic_Dove. It just seems not worth it anymore. Its like, if you left, everyone you knew and once loved would find out and just say, "Oh really? Hmm. Now whats for dinner?" Like no one would give a flying patooty if you lived or died. And that may not be true but it sure seems like that when your toes are over the cliff.
To "outsiders", if you will, it may seem like really? Come on now, you can't honestly think NO ONE cares? But uh yeah, people do feel that way. Happiness, to people considering sucide, seems like something that existed a billion years ago and was suddenly yanked from you and ran far away and is never coming back. If you can pull, dig, claw yourself out of the pit and off the cliff your rational thought will come back and it will be like wait, huh? I felt that way, naaah, that's stupid! But, unfortunatly for truly depressed people the bad, sad, horrible feelings will come back and for alot of people this rollarcoaster becomes more than they can take, and sometimes they never climb out or lift their heads above water to stop the drowning. They stay there in that depressed, agonizing almost catatonic state, lying in bed, dreaming of being nothing, and slip away, exhausted from feeling. It happens, its not rational, like Spastic_Dove said, but its reality and no one should be punished for feeling reality.

No problem. I guess when I read your story, I felt I had to because in my mind, I couldn't understand why you would want to feel nothing. Like that one song says, "I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all." When people ask me about it now, I've learned that "nothing" is the hardest feeling to decribe. Some people say that you can't feel nothing but I don't believe that.

Funny that you mention that, that song has always confused me because at times nothing seemed like the greatest thing in the world and I couldn't imagine wanting to feel.
Can't say I've ever been in your shoes though.

Funny how the mind works...

Oh yes, you can. I have. Its like walking around and existing in a catanoic state where nothing matters. You're just DONE. You just havent gotten to the last step the leaving step, the step to making the nothingness permanant.