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I’ve been there. Deep in the muck and mire, the fog of war keeping me blind to any escape or advance. I’ve felt the imp extend his claws and lock them around my shoulders. I have listened as it whispered into my mind. I have seen the visions it planted in my mind’s eye. I have sat at the table each morning and shared my coffee with death, his eyes and cloak as black as the liquid in my cup. I have tasted the cold steel of a barrel in my mouth, and planned my own death down to the most intricate of details.
Some of you have already judged me. You sit there, basking in your moral superiority, thumbing your nose at my weakness. You turn away with derision and disgust, blame my near death on the selfish thoughts of a corrupt mind. You adjudicate me without knowing the struggle of living. Worse, you tarnish the memories of the thousands like me every year who don’t make it out of the darkness. You blame them for giving up, for capitulating, for ending their lives because they were sad.
You blame the teen for giving up after being bullied. You blame the veteran for lacking the mental fortitude to cope with the invisible scars of war. You blame the middle-aged men, like me, who are unable to find happiness in a world they either don’t understand or understand all too well. You assign blame without any attempt at comprehension. For you, it’s easier to believe we gave up and ended our lives because we are selfish and sad than it is to believe we simply couldn’t slog through another day.
If you’re still with me, do me the honor of continuing on. Maybe I can change your mind. I hope so, because perpetuating the lie of the selfish suicide allows the stigma and misunderstanding to fester and grow like a tumor. The shame does not belong to us, though that is where it is so often assigned. The shame belongs to you.
Somewhere along the way, I came to believe in an impossible dichotomy: I needed to be perfect and I was never right. Trust me when I tell you this, that kind of thinking will tear your mind asunder. It’s like having two warring factions living inside your skull.
One tells you that mistakes are unforgivable. In the tragic event that you do make a mistake, it must be analyzed, categorized, and relived on an infinite loop until such time as your death occurs or your mind fractures and leaves you vegetative. There are no circumstances when a mistake, real or perceived, is worthy of forgiveness. This side of your mind requires endless punishment for any and all errors and it is not in the business of neglecting its duty.
The other side wants to make sure you are aware that you will never be right. You’re wrong. You thought the sky was blue? Nope. The kids left dishes in the sink? Your fault. Tire blew out on the truck? Idiot. Marriage falling apart? That’s all you, bucko. Everything in life becomes your fault. Somehow, everything is because of your failings.
That kind of contrast will tear a man apart. I know. I lived it, and I came to believe that not only wasn’t my life worth the resources I used but that the world was significantly better off without me. Killing myself wasn’t something I wanted. It was the result of an illness that had grabbed hold of my mind and sapped every ounce of strength from me. It was a way of sparing my friends and family another day of watching me become less the man they loved and more of a liability and empty husk. A shadow of a man who was and the ghost of a man
who never would be.
My story is my own, though the selfless nature of my near suicide is similar to so many I’ve heard. Though our stories are all different, there is almost never a selfish side of the story. None of us set out to kill ourselves. It’s never the first option on the table.
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If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255.
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Photo credit: Getty Images
When my ex-husband told me that after 23 years, 3 children, building 3 businesses, and half our lives together, he didn’t want to be married anymore. I went to that dark place, felt that weight and pull. I looked over the edge for a very long time, had dark dark dreams, but somehow managed to make it. Each day is a step farther away from that place and after three years the visits from that Imp are fewer and far between. Thank you for this, I can’t tell you the number of times I have had arguments with people trying… Read more »
Well written thanks for sharing this
Thank you.