Suicide 2

Last Monday I was going to commit suicide. I had thought about it for about a week and had decided that was the course of action I was going to take. I know I wrote about suicide before, but I was writing about it from the outside perspective instead of my own experience with it, which is what I'm going to write about in this post. The week before last I was feeling overwhelmed with all the trials of life. I was overwhelmed with bills, I was stressed out about work, and I was just feeling extremely unhappy with life in general. The most dangerous part of the days leading up to what I was going to do was that I was incredibly good at keeping up the façade that everything was ok. I was acting like everything was normal, but behind the mask I had put up for myself I was in absolute turmoil. The first two days after I had made up my mind, I was in a horrible depressive state. When I was driving from place to place in my car, I would be sobbing uncontrollably to the point of having to pull over and get my compose myself so I could actually focus on driving. The third day, I went into a sort of manic state. I would be laughing uncontrollably at nothing and went out and bought the cinderblocks I was going to tie to my ankles before jumping into the river by my house. After I came out of that manic state, I went into a phase where I felt absolutely nothing. I had gotten all of my emotions out of my system, and was just a shell of a man. On Monday, when I was going to do what I was planning, I was still in that blank state. It was like I was in a trance, I was just on autopilot and I wasn't even thinking about what I was doing. That night, I wrote what I truly believed would be my last post, detailing what was going on and what was going to happen. After I made that post public, I went out to do what I was going to do. My phone was going off like crazy as so many people I knew were desperately trying to reach me, but like I said, I was in a daze and it just wasn't getting to me, I ignored all of the calls and messages. Before I was going to jump into the river I decided I would go out for one last drink, and it was at the bar where the police stopped me and took me to the hospital. I had no idea that law enforcement would work so quickly, and had they not stopped me, I wouldn't be typing this today. I spent most of last week in the hospital where I talked with many people who were also on suicide watch and their experiences were all very similar to mine. My older brother came to visit me on thanks giving and we talked for a long time about what was going on, and I'll only reveal one thing that he told me, as it was a very private conversation. He told me how selfish it would have been of me to put my friends and family through that, and while it was partially a tough love talk, it did wake me up from the trance I was in. I realized something incredibly profound. I realized that my life isn't just mine, it's part of everyone whose lives I have made an impact on and it's not my right to take that away from them. While I'm out of the darkest part of the woods, I'm not completely out of the woods just yet. I am going to be taking part in intensive therapy and I've still got a long way to go, but the light at the end of the tunnel has reappeared and I find myself moving towards it instead of further into the darkness.