Probably the hardest thing I've ever written tbh.
There is still a massive stigma attached to suicide and mental health. And if I'm to be honest I wrote the above and very nearly not posted it.
But I do know of others that have gone through with suicide and succeeded, when I've been asked what I thought I would just say 'I can't understand it' yet I knew the ground only to well and did understand it. But didn't want anybody else to think I had come so close.
All that works for me these days is just telling myself life is not forever. That way I can move forward with some kind of internal peace and nobody is going to be left hurt.
I know life is what you make of it, I don't blame anybody now for how I ended up at the bottom of that pit. Yet I did at the time.
It was everybody's and everything's fault, but I understand now it was how I absorbing things said to me. I had totally lost the 'take it with a pinch of salt' teachings.
I came through 40 years managing not to look to closely at anything, in a way I ignored things, kind of not focused on anything and lived in this bubble which I felt protected in.
But then I started to wake up and look around me at everything, and this is where the internet did me no favours whatsoever. The news was always bleak, misinformation was spread left, right and centre. I started to wonder if anything I had ever been taught at school, home media was actually correct.
I've learnt now to stay away from social media, twitter, facebook etc. I've learnt to stay in the moment and not dwell over the past which is a classic sign of depression, I've also learnt to not dwell on the future and what could happen and go wrong therefore reducing my anxiety.
I'm glad I've managed to do that because every day now something doomy is thrown out in the media. Covid, Russia, Politician Scandals etc etc.
I'm to the conclusion now that what will be will be and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. But that has took what happened to me to get to this point, so I write this in hope it may help somebody who is at the very bottom of the pit.
It is true that the only person that can do anything about it is yourself. I was on medication 5 years before I even attempted suicide, I must admit the medication did work, but it took a little part of me away, I was no longer interested in anything, and if I tried to do something like play the piano for example then I couldn't even remember the notes anymore. It takes away your creative side, and leaves you a bit like a zombie, I just ended up wanting to sleep all the time. And for those 5 years that's all I did.
Then you get mental health people that would talk to you once a week, and this helped a lot for the hour I was sat there with them, but once you left and went home I was stuck in exactly the same place all over again till the next week.
When they did realise how bad I was they put me in a hospital I could not get out of, and tested more drugs, the sleeping pill was my favourite, yet watching others in there being held down and injected because it did kick off daily, made me realise it's really not much different to the victorian era, but the beds are probably more comfortable now days.
I don't have the answers for anybody that is or close to the very edge. And I realise that a lot of people stay completely trapped within themselves because they don't want to hurt there family or anybody else.
Yet that is equally tough ground because they live in a world where nobody has a clue how they are really feeling. And speaking to family or friends then most of the time its, 'pull yourself together' or 'people had it way worse in the war' or 'there are millions of people worse off than you' etc etc.
And though they are trying to help there are no magic words, the best magic words are the ones not spoken and someone just listens, but that's not great especially for the person listening. It's dark ground. And very draining.
It's a lot easier to do if you're walking though, the exercise is part of the cure in itself!
The only real advice I can give to anybody fighting these sort of demons is, when that internal voice starts telling you that you're useless, not worth it, alone because nobody likes you or anything else that cause you to start judging things and making you feel you might not be capable of anything and hating yourself, then you literally have to start fighting back, tell yourself you can do it, you're not a loser, you don't hate yourself etc, this does take time
You have to challenge it every day and slowly that internal voice gets quieter, it's not easy, but it is doable.
