Suicide is something that torments a person day and night, 24/7. Often, something wrong happens first – whatever that might be and the person starts to considers suicide as their option. Then the cycle of thinking of suicide begins, and there’s probably no ending to that cycle unless the person seeks professional help or somebody does that for the person.
The famous saying,”Suicide is a solution to a temporary problem” isn’t always true. Just how temporary is the problem when you can barely grasp the events happening around you? When you’re being abused and the abuser keeps a tight leash on you, you just barely get out of the place and before you know it, you’re hauled back in and abused some more when you think you didn’t do anything wrong.
Well, guess what? Suicide isn’t just a solution to a temporary problem, it can also be a solution to a permanent problem. Here’s why. After the abuser is convicted, gone for good or dead, the victim still has to go through recovery, which isn’t easy because then you’re prone to going back to your old habits which then leads to the abuser and the abuse. After recovery (depending on length of time), you still experience parts of the abuse – by flashbacks. That can delay or deteriorate the recovery long term. You’re struggling to stay in one piece, you’re struggling not to panic, not to cower against the big looming world which you haven’t seen in a long time and you’re struggling to live your everyday life – the “new” everyday life. The emotional effects are hard to overcome – you become drawn to suicide and its allies, which could be drugs, alcohol, self harm etc.
When suicide lingers in your mind after recovery and now you’re perhaps an accountant or something that’s related to having a career or to have one, you think of nothing but suicide and then before you probably even realized what you’re doing, you’re drinking everyday, you’re cutting yourself and there’s scars and scabs up and down your arms, you’re just throwing away your just built life because of suicide. One day at home, right out of the blue, maybe perhaps after an argument with your friend or a co-worker or you just woke up finding that you can’t get through the day, you attempt suicide.
Images of your horrific/disturbing past flash through your mind. You become angry, scared, confused and feel hopeless. You call yourself a worthless person, a person who’s no good, a person who attracts crimes, criminals and worst of all, you convince yourself that suicide isn’t just helping yourself, it’s “helping”others who would be better off without you, the worthless person, the so-called “burden” of the government, family and friends. You tell yourself that when you’re gone, all the problems would be gone. No more friends and family members having to drive you to appointments, to events, to stuff where you once did by yourself.
While in the kitchen, thinking yourself as a burden, you then take several over the counter bottles – all different types and take them all with water, take a knife and repeatedly cut and stab yourself, arms, thighs, abdomen and neck. You saved the neck last because you knew it would bleed the most. When you’re done, you feel ecstatic. Yet so ecstatic that you decide to call family and friends of your “achievement”. You decide to call your mother first, since she was the only one beside your best friend to go handle your “burden”. As soon as the words left your mouth, your mother starts crying, begging you to call 911, to hold on, to stay alive. When the word alive came to your hearing, you scream at your mother, ” I DON’T WANNA STAY ALIVE! I WANNA DIE, DON’T YOU GEDDIT YOU BITCH?”. You suddenly became angry instead of ecstatic.
You take the knife that you used to cut and stab yourself and finish what you started. At that point you realize that you’re feeling very dizzy, the room sways and goes blurry to your vision. A headache comes pounding to your head, your stomach feels queasy and then you vomited. Just before you pass out, a loud knocking comes and you decide to get it before you pass out. But you passed out halfway through to getting the door. You see the door being opened by force and then blackness settles in. The last thing you heard was, “Get her in the ambulance immediately, she’s in shock and probably dying from these stab wounds”.
When you wake up, you find yourself in an environment full of the colour white. You wonder if you’re in heaven, that maybe you did succeed. You feel happy and relieved at the same time that you start laughing. You never felt this good before. Suddenly, a woman who looks like a matron appears in front of your face. You’re aware that you lying down on your back, but for some reason you feel intruded and really angry that this matron look like lady is interfering with your just found happiness. You snap at her before she could utter a single word, ” What do you want?”. The lady responds, “My name is Julia and I’m your nurse.” You suddenly feel perplexed. You asked Julia, ” Where am I?” She responds, ” In the Toronto General Hospital at the psychiatric ward.” Realization immediately dawns on you and you start screaming, saying that it’s not true and that you had already gone to heaven. Then after the outburst, you hear sobbing from a distance and you turn to the direction to where it was coming from. You see your mom, sitting in the chair beside the bed and realized at once why you were at the hospital, at the psychiatric ward, and the pain coming from your abdomen. You realized at that point that your own self that was once a “burden” was being helped by family and friends, that you weren’t a burden because they were helping you, to overcome the nightmares, to overcome the past and start a fresh life. You then started crying, ashamed by your actions, wondering why you had to take it all in when at the same time others were sharing the pain alongside with you.
You vowed to yourself and others that you would never do it again, never until you had died of old age. You feel guilty, but your friends tell you that it’s all part of the recovery process. You understood because this is the second round of recovery for you and you had felt guilty in the beginning before it turned to depression which led you to attempt suicide. Hope began to fill your heart, happier days began to happen and you began to enjoy life. You decided to dedicate yourself and others who would like to work with you to raise awareness of the aftermath after a traumatic experience – in your case the aftermath had you attempt suicide.
This story is fictional, and it tells of how people relapse after a life changing event. In this person’s life,suicide was a way to escape her inner demons and what was happening around her life. Suicide isn’t always understood by plain text which is just listing the signs and symptoms of suicide, it is perhaps better understood when a story is given and analyzing the story integrates knowledge further when the reader understands the causes and the plot of the story.
See also: anomic suicide
