I learned at church this morning that a member family had lost their teenage son to suicide. As a parent myself, I think that I can sympathize — though not truly empathize — with their grief; a pain from which they will never fully recover.
As someone who has grappled with clinical depression for all of his adult life, I can also sympathize — and perhaps even empathize — with the turmoil of the young man who took his own life.
I have been wrestling and praying for a long time now about whether or not I would ever tell you, dear reader, about the day when I tried to do the same thing.
I have decided that I will, soon, but not today.
Instead, I simply want to share a reflective piece that I wrote some months ago when I was in the midst of another depressive episode. I have attempted to describe the way I felt at the time.
My description may not be helpful to anyone else. Everyone has his/her own emotional diction. Mine may not be yours. Perhaps it’s too schmaltzy for your taste, like the really, really bad teenage poetry that was thankfully lost (or torn up) long ago.
But, for those who are left behind after a suicide; those who can’t understand why the person they loved so dearly would ever do such a thing; here is one man’s description of how he feels when he is teetering on the edge and wanting to jump.
Please understand. I am not offering excuses or justifications for suicide. Heaven forbid! Far from it.
But I know that suicide leaves the living with desperate, unanswered, often self-accusatory, questions: “Why?”
Only the deceased can answer that question adequately; but, then again, maybe they couldn’t either. Maybe that’s part of the reason they are gone…I don’t know.
Sometimes depression doesn’t leave cogent answers behind.
Here are my reflections on how I feel when I wish I could be dead:
It’s the loss of cohesion that tips me off.
I can feel the entire polar ice-shelf shift within me. Acres of my psyche split off and fall away, silently sliding into the bottomless, black sea leaving barely a ripple. I don’t know where it goes or why. All I experience is a deep, darkness within.
Nothing to see here, folks. Just move along…
The actual break goes unnoticed. I can’t say when it began. But I feel like a man consciously unconscious, suddenly aware that he is sinking, drowning. I try to reach out and gasp for air, clamoring for a shard of daylight, the tip of an iceberg. But I remain submerged, my body growing numb, buried beneath a placid surface reflecting nothing.
My feelings are disconnected from reason. The two have no relationship. At least, that is how it feels. My core is frozen, drifting where it will, no longer secured to anything solid or rational.
I am completely alone, even as I am surrounded by people who love me. Their love just doesn’t matter. Not to the way I feel, anyway. Not to the way I see myself.
Life is meaningless, and no amount of self-talk can change that now. It’s too late for another counseling session. All of life has been a colossal waste of time and effort adding up to nothing.
I learned long ago never to “share” these thoughts or feelings with just anyone. Too many accuse me of self-pity. Buck up and soldier on, they say, not realizing that’s all I’ve done for much of my life.
Stop focusing on yourself; look outward, they insist. But wherever I look all I can see is a panoply of reasons for despair. A human parade of pain, suffering and hopelessness.
Tell the coroner that I killed myself with an overdose of self-pity.
The undertow has me now. I recall the many times I swam hard against the current and briefly managed to remain afloat. But I can’t remember that stroke now that I need it again. How did I do it?, I wonder. Perhaps that was my dream self. I have no psychic muscle-memory to bring me towards shore.
There is no shore. Only blackness.
Nothing matters. My strength is spent. It’s not only the unremitting tragedy of life, the futility and aching sadness of this world that pulls me under, but the unbearable weight of nonstop resolve required to keep me above the surface of despair.
My mind can repeat its therapeutic S.O.S. till kingdom come: “You know none of these things are true! There is no good reason for you to feel this way! Count your blessings; count them one by one; count your many blessings, see what God has done!”
I do review my blessings, repeatedly. I know I have many. I haven’t completely lost my mind, after all. I do not forget what God has done. But recollection occurs far, far away, in the distance, beyond the horizon. Memory has no relation to my current drowning. Recollection is the resurrection of dead, dusty data. What difference does any of it make right now?
I am adrift in a dark ocean, going nowhere, meaning nothing, too tired to tread water any longer.
This is the peculiar burden of living. Dying takes only a moment of surrender before the void, then peace. Whereas living is a voracious, unsated beast always demanding more. More energy. More effort. More human contact. More expenditure when all reserves are empty. More than I have left to give.
What the hell does life expect? It has sucked me dry till my insides are a wasteland, an arctic desert with nothing more to give and no more interest in receiving. How much more can God require?
I am already gone. I began to leave a long time ago. My further absence will be grieved temporarily, but not for long. Soon, I will be forgotten, as I have forgotten myself.
Believing in heaven is the blessed curse. It doesn’t keep me rooted. It makes me want to go, sooner rather than later.
There is no good reason to stay.
If you are now or have been considering suicide, please call the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-8255.
Or talk to a friend, a loved one, even a complete stranger. But whatever you do, please do not harm yourself. Reach out, get help, even as you feel that no one can help you.
There is a God who loves you desperately. His son, Jesus Christ, can and will heal you and make you whole. He has done it for me.
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