1. “Fuck I’m still here”
I almost don’t want to share this because I don’t know if it’s helpful for people who are going through it right now. But I’ve seen and read so many accounts of people who changed their mind when it seemed to be too late, or realised all their problems were insignificant once they were almost dead. But that didn’t happen to me.
When I started vomiting blood and bile, all I could think was “I really hope I’m not throwing up the pills right now”. I also felt disgusting and ashamed, but I didn’t want to live and I didn’t change my mind. When I woke up I was covered in blood (some from vomit, but a lot from my arms and legs which I’d absolutely shredded with a blade.) there was sick all over the floor and in my hair, and my clothes and face were wet with tears. I was a mess, and I felt like I’d fucked up my life in every possible way, and I have never felt so disappointed or disgusted with myself than when I properly realised it hadn’t worked.
And honestly I would’ve loved that to be a wake up call or the moment I changed, but it wasn’t. I felt that same disgust for some years afterwards. To me, that was confirmation that I’d never be happy, and that I’d never settle into life in the way that everyone else seemed to. I just accepted that I’d never be happy, and that I’d never stop wanting to die. I can’t really explain why I thought this. I just believed there was something inherently wrong with me, an illness, or something about who I am as a person, which meant I would always feel suicidal.
If I could go back and meet this younger version of myself, I would give her such a huge hug. But I don’t really know what I would tell her. I don’t know what it was that made everything finally click. I don’t know what is happening in my brain now that wasn’t happening then. I think I just finally realised that it’s down to me. Of course you can’t think your way out of depression, but you can learn how to cope with it better, and eventually how to combat it. Over time I completely changed my attitude. Depression still plagued me, it was still there in my head, but I found ways to make it quieter, and ways to make it hurt less. Very, very, slowly, I even found ways to be happy. I realised that my happiness was my responsibility, and I couldn’t just sit there waiting for depression to leave me.
There’s a quote I found during that time which I really like: “no matter how far from the truth we are led by histrionics and lies, the truly, objectively beautiful remains untainted.” I thought about that a lot and I still do. No matter how bad things get, no matter what awful things my brain throws at me, there is objective beauty in this world which can never be taken away. I worked really hard to see it everywhere. Flowers, the moon, my cat, my mum, strawberries, anything at all. I just reminded myself that to me, these things will always be beautiful, and my depression couldn’t stop that. Eventually it was less hard work to find beautiful things. I saw them everywhere, and I still do.
Another is from Oscar Wilde “the only reason for a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.” When I first discovered that quote I believed myself to be useless. This quote made me smile. Everything here is useless really. The only point is to love things and sometimes to let them love you.
I’m happy to be alive. Im happy to be here with all these beautiful things and people. If anyone out there is having a difficult time with suicidal thoughts, or depression, please know that it can get better. Please know that I love you very much and you are a beautiful thing that I’m proud to share a planet with.
2. Well I had attempted to hang myself when I was 15. I have a birth defect (deformed legs) and just couldn’t take the bullying anymore. So I got myself all strung up by a belt stuck in the door jam of my closet, stood up on a stool, and tried to get the courage to knock the stool over.
Then I accidentally knocked the stool over.
I hanged for about fifteen seconds, just long enough to make things start to go black. And then the cheap plastic belt I was using broke.
I hit the ground and just yelled out loud “OH FUCK” because 1. The belt broke and I was still here, and 2. Thank god the belt broke and I was still here.
I’ve found something I am truly passionate about (comic books and animation) and things have been on a steady uphill climb.
3. “Fuck why did they have to call my parents.” Woke up in the hospital handcuffed to a bed with a horrible headache but the worst part was the drama and attention my parents brought to the whole thing. If I could have chosen I would have just spent the week in the hospital with no one knowing and gone back to normal life after.
4. I decided to hang myself with an extension cord in the rafters of my garage. I decided to do a quick test run to make sure the beam would hold before saying my goodbyes to my family. During the test run, I slipped off my chair and actually hung myself. The panic I felt during those few moments I was dangling was all it took to convince myself I should live. I needed desperately to tell my mother I loved her before I went. My father too. I could only think of getting out of it, so I could give them their well deserved goodbyes, and let them know how much I loved them. When I luckily managed to get my footing back on the chair, I realized I wasn’t ready to go. I had so much love left in me. I felt like it gave me a second chance to realize I didn’t want to go through with it. I’m doing well now. I have two beautiful girls, and a man who would give me the moon. I’m happy I had a botched run, because I’m sure I wouldn’t have realized how i really felt if I got to text my final goodbyes.
5. Something along the lines of “What? How?”
I had hung myself and right after I had drifted off I suddenly took a quick breathe and I was wide awake again. I realized I had grabbed the rope and pulled myself up a little bit to allow me to take one small breathe. I then untied the rope and cried for a while before going to the hospital.
I still think about it a lot, because I felt like I had no strength, and couldn’t imagine how I had managed enough to pull myself up, outside of consciousness nonetheless. I just tell myself now that I was saved for a reason, and I have to figure it out. Keeps me from trying again.
6. I was a teenager. I woke up and immediately wondered what day it was, why it didn’t work, and then I checked to see if I had vomited the medication. I felt sick so I went upstairs and discovered that three days had gone by, I was poofy, and my father hadn’t noticed that I was you know, not exactly alive or okay. He didn’t even know if I was in the house. I moved out on my own not long after. I was 16. I did not regret trying and I did not vow never to do it again. I just got on with it. I felt sick for days.
7. “I can’t do anything right”
8. Oh shit oh shit oh shit im still alive im in pain, a bloody mess, still wasted and my car is wrecked how can i kill myself asap in the middle of a fucking field.:
9. “Oh thank God.”
10. Not so much a thought, more the realization that my mother wasn’t upset because I had just tried to kill myself but was angry because the rope had dug deeply into the ceiling rafter and ruined the paint before it snapped.
11. I’ve had many attempts in the past but the one that suck with me the most was
“NO NO NO NO NO NO.I have to get out of here. I can’t do this. I have to leave before anybody finds me awake. Maybe I can make it outside and throw myself in front of a car.”
I just remember how absolutely desperate I was to die at that point. Like an animal backed into a corner I was terrified. I attempted by drug overdose so my body was still shut down. I was able to rip out my IV before a swarm of nurses came to hold me down. I was screaming at the top of my lungs and fighting as hard as a could (which honestly wasn’t all that much). I was willing to hurt these people who were trying to help me just so I could go kill myself.
Sometimes people don’t realize how deep a person falls to reach the point of wanting to kill themselves.
12. I was with the boyfriend. He fell asleep, I wanted to forever. I remember nothing clearly after the ambien. But as soon as I came to, I have weird memory flashes. The boyfriend being in the drivers side of my car… The glaring lights of the first response. He tried to get me in the car, but my breathing slowed dramatically. He had to call 911. He saved my life. Those flashes haunt me, as I’m sure they do him. For me, those memories force me to understand the pain and fear and panic he experienced.
13. I’m a diabetic. I can remember deciding to use my insulin to go. Figured that passing out and dying of a seizure due to hypoglycemia would be a quick and easy way to go.
So I give myself the biggest dose that I could at one time, 60 units of fast acting insulin (it usually takes care of around 600g of carbs) and instantly regret it, so I run to the corner store across the street and get like 4 liters of sodas, and assorted chocolate bars, and dial for a Chinese delivery that arrived about 20 mins later. I got an odd look from the delivery guy as I start eating the chow mein right in front of him.
The entire episode lasted an hour before my blood sugars start to level out. I’ve never had to fight for my life before that, and it was pretty terrifying. But I totally have a new appreciation for food now, because it literally saved my life.
I cried for a while, prayed. As far as what my first thoughts were after I injected myself was probably “omygod, what have I done!” And just ran out of my house.
14. I still have problems with my hands from it. I was going through a period in my life where everything felt grey and it seemed like no matter what i did I couldn’t find any meaningful happiness, almost like I was slowly suffocating. After a couple of months I began to have dreams about killing myself and then one day i made the decision to try it. When I woke up I was actually pretty confused. When the realization kind of sank in where i was and what I had done I didnt feel too strongly, but maybe many different emotions. First it was kind of like that moment when you in the kitchen and you drop something made of glass. After the noise and everything settles down you just kind of sit there looking at all the pieces spread out across the floor. You know you have to clean up the mess but before you start there is that moment where you’re kinda comfortable in the mess.
15. “Eh, guess it didn’t work. Oh well, i should shower.”
I had planned and made my preperations. I tried to overdose and set messages up so that I would not be rotting… took the pills and laid down. Woke up the next day and this was my first thought. Guess it was a sign that I was not meant to die.
Friends did get the messages though and it started a lot of stuff. They called the cops on me later and then I got kicked off campus because the dean didn’t want a death on campus and felt I was high risk. Yeah, thanks.
16. It took a while to have a conscious thought, I suppose from the seriousness of what had just happened. The first thing I thought, aside from the confusion and disbelief of still breathing was both “Godammit” and “This is what you get for forgetting to clean the goddamned gun.”
17. “Not like this” I became conscious in the ER. I still wanted to die, just not in a hospital in a traumatic atmosphere. I had taken paracetamol (too many to count) and had fallen unconscious after vomiting all over myself. My heart rate was dangerously low and my respiration was not ideal.
After I came to consciousness, I accepted all treatment just so I could get out. Now I float round everyday, waiting for the ideal time to try again.
18. “Oh thank God.”
I had suddenly realized that I wasn’t ready to die just yet. When my hands were shaking so badly from the drug withdrawal that I couldn’t even tie the noose, I was so glad I was incapable of killing myself. It felt like God was saving me because I couldn’t trust myself to keep myself alive at that point.
19. Immense guilt. I was 13. I’d been raped by a man. I couldn’t get my head right. I overdosed on everything I could find and went to bed to die. My next memory is laying in bed on the hospital ward with my dad next to the bed. He looked at me and asked: “this wasn’t because of me was it?”
I’ll never forget the guilt I felt in that moment. He’d been sat there all night scared shitless that his son might die and – wrongly – that he might somehow be the cause of it. He’s not what you’d call an emotional man; he’s gruff, pragmatic, conservative. Seeing the tears in his eyes and hearing his voice crack… it will stay with me.
20 more years later, that guilt is what stops going through with it now. I stand at the platform edge waiting for the tube train to roll in, or walking over Waterloo bridge on my way home, and I wish I had it in me to jump. I even went to Canada to try, hoping that the distance would somehow ameliorate the memory. But I feel such guilt … for my family and friends… who, despite whatever note I might leave, would be caused immense grief.
Don’t do it kids. If you feel like you can’t go on, talk to someone.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
1 (800) 273-8255
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