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Originally Posted by RC3
If you don't mind me asking...what was it that made you feel that the only way out was to die? I have also been pretty rock bottom, alone, homeless, desperate and all out pathetic in my own drug induced despair in the past, but I think I was just too scared to try and end things myself. I kept praying that God take me out of this place.
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When I became severely depressed, all I felt was pain, total and absolute pain. Besides the emotional pain, I was in an incredible amount of unrelenting physical pain from previous spinal surgeries that had been botched. (I also had, at that point in time, an undiagnosed benign tumor in my spinal canal, sitting on top of my spinal cord and wrapped around the sciatic nerve.)
I had always been a very spiritual person...and I could no longer feel God's presence. My prayers went unheard, or so I thought at the time. I went to my church, and all I felt was alone, sitting there in the pew. I felt like God had turned His back on me, that He didn't love me anymore. And I just couldn't go on with my life. It was as simple as that.
Anyway, I just became bone-weary tired of being in pain. A few days before my sucide attempt, I was abducted by several guys and pretty messed up. (I've written about this event in recent posts, but I'm just not up to talking about it tonight. If you want to read about it, I think it's on the thread titled "The Artist's Way".) This event put me over the edge, so to speak.
I made the decision a couple days before the actual attempt. And then suddenly my mood was a thousand percent better. Not because the depression was lifting, but because I knew I wouldn't be in pain very much longer. In retrospect, I can see how classic I was in my suicide attempt. I gave away some prized possessions, including a very expensive guitar that usually never left my side. I took my younger siblings out individually to lunch, to dinner, to the playground. And I used my front-row tickets and treated my best friend to a Bob Dylan concert, the "Hard Rain" tour. And then I went home. I thought about writing a note, and then decided I didn't know what to say. So I said nothing... I just sat there and downed two bottles of barbiturates and one bottle of painkillers with a large glass of Pepsi. And then I crawled into bed and went to sleep.
For some strange reason, I felt no fear, absolutely no fear, of what I was about to do. I was so lost in the void, so out there in the darkness...I just couldn't figure out how to get back.
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Originally Posted by RC3
Maybe, I held on to some kind of hope... maybe, some just can't see any light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. Maybe that IS the light at the end of the tunnel for them!?! I so want to understand this.
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You've answered your own question right here. It IS the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. When someone is so depressed, in so much pain, and feeling so hopeless, suicide can seem like the light at the end of the tunnel. An escape, a way off the merry-go-round that we call life, total peace... That's what it feels like, peace and an end to pain.
And that is exactly why people who are suicidal need someone to hold out their hand so they can grasp it. Suicide can be a lure, a trap, quicksand. And it can be hard not to become enveloped in it. You need a hand to hold onto when you get caught up in its web.
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Originally Posted by RC3
I don't understand feeling so drastic because someone decided they didn't want to go out with you anymore. That is what I think some of this is about right now. My son went out with this girl he really liked for about a month and she decided that she couldn't be in a relationship with him right now. That...I don't get. To want to die because of someone else's opinion.
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I think a lot of teenagers and young adults who kill themselves do so shortly after a break-up. Love is so intense at that age, and some people blur the boundaries between themselves and their boyfriends/girlfriends. Also, I know that a lot of adoptees have talked here on these boards about how breakups trigger their adoption-related fears of rejection. Some adoptees seem to have trouble getting close to others; some adoptees have trouble letting go of others. We all know that this issue doesn't only pertain to adoptees. A lot of people have trouble in relationships, but most people haven't been relinquished by their mothers at birth. So I think breakups may be harder on some adoptees than non-adoptees. But that's just my own viewpoint and understanding. I could be way off-base.
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Originally Posted by RC3
I do understand wanting to check out for other reasons though. I have known that kind of darkness.
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Which leads me to wonder whether depression in running in your genes. You've made reference to the darkness several times. Do you know if there was any depression in your birthparents or grandparents? How about siblings?