I am getting so many personal messages here from people who are afraid to talk about what they are feeling for fear of triggering others..or fear of being misunderstood.

We shouldn't feel like we are walking on eggs...we need to identify the elephant in the room. (everyone is familiar with that....right?)

Nohope I hear a lot of anger in your words....and guilt about the anger...and longing for what used to be. All those emotions are normal when someone we love kills themself and ruins our lives. It sounds like you had it all and he threw it away....how could you not be angry about that!

What a horrible legacy to leave his children. And the "core of your pain"...we are the walking wounded. It's a very long journey to the other side but you've begun.... And we are all going to get there!

TALK PLEASE TALK!!!!

I can't say anything else.....

Alffe,

It is a subject that many find very fearful to speak the word suicide, not to mention the devastation it leaves behind. Many think that a person that commits suicide is selfish, I once thought that, until a very dear friend took his life. He left behind his wife and two small children. However, his wife told me that it was a relief in some ways, she was angry that he would such a thing to himself. She was relieved because she would not have to face the struggles of living with his many mood swings. Some said she probably did it herself, others said she drove him into doing the deed.

I say, he was a man that needed help and no one realized just how much until it was too late. That each of us have our own faults, whether we are angry, relieved or whatever emotion and therein lies the problem of why people will not talk about suicide or the feelings it leaves behind. The fear of being judged the same as the loved one that is no longer here. People still, with all the other troubles in this world, put more emphasis on a person that takes their own life as a "crazy, selfish, stupid and the list goes on" person rather than one who was hurting so much, that hope was gone.

I do hope that people will answer your post, because the only way to work through the feelings is to deal with them....one at a time until healing or some sense of peace is found.

I think of my friend often and in that moment of him pulling the trigger, I doubt anyone could have saved him, not knowing is what we live with and what we have to come to terms with in order to continue along the path.

To those that are keeping your feelings locked inside...think about letting them out, to rid yourself of the darkness that is disrupting your life so that you might once again enjoy the day each one as it comes.

Thank You Alffe for such a thread.

dear alfee,
in the state of MO. they will arrest you for attempting suicide or saying you are going to commit suicide, even telling this to a psychiatrist in some states
will end with you being jailed or put in the mental hospital, muchis still very archaic in this area, maybe we should have blackout threads, some will use the trig -thingy for the post -red button with X on it -warning this post may trigger
bad emotions -or maybe not for some to read...
so instead of saying the words -I am su - c--d-l -
we should use codes like BNOTS - black night of the soul...or that poetic way Shakespeare wrote it -to be or not to be -that is the question?
luv,

I think people hold back for several reasons.

Fear that someone they know in "real" life will stumble across their words...

Fear that they might say the wrong thing or be misunderstood (which happens a lot when we interpret the written word) ...

I wish people would talk more, too... because when we do.... look where it goes... we find out we are not alone.

xoxox

I will not stop talking about suicide....I spent 8 years NOT talking about it after my son killed himself. I think throwing a bright light on how many people suffer with those thoughts or live with the anger and guilt after losing someone they love to suicide will be educational. And perhaps even comforting to learn that it's common to think those thoughts and to acknowledge them. (((David)))...to know that we aren't alone or crazy..we are just struggling.

I'm fond of saying that when you are in that black hole of depression, you tend to forget that it has sides! What I mean by that is even if you can't see the light...it's there, on the other side. And there are people reaching out to help you up...to let you know that you aren't alone.

I have had that kind of help from complete strangers so I know it's there.
I also know that people can't help you if they don't know how you feel.

Thank You Alffe for bumping this up again.... I needed to re-read it

It's Labor Day and I'm not getting my labor done because the conversation is too interesting! I'm trying to get old wallpaper
off the guest bedroom so I can repaper it before company comes..


"Everyone wants to know the details of dying, though few are willing to say so. Whether to anticipate the events of our own final illness or better to comprehend what is happening to a mortally stricken loved one - or more likely out of that id-borne fascination with death we all share - we are lured by thoughts of life's ending. To most people, death remains a hidden secret, as eroticized as it is feared. We are irrestibily attracted by the very anxieties we find most terrifying; we are drawn to them by a primitive excitement that arises from flirtation with danger. Moth and flames, mankind and death - there is little difference.

None of us seems psychologically able to cope with the thought of our own state of death, with the idea of a permanent unconsciousness in which there is neither void nor vacuum - in which there is simply nothing. It seems so different from the nothing that preceded life. As with every other looming terror and looming temptation, we seek ways to deny the power of death and the icy hold in which it grips human thought. Its constant closeness has always inspired traditional methods by which we consciously and unconsciously disguise its reality, such as folk tales, allegories, dreams, and even jokes. In recent generations, we have added something new: We have created the method of modern dying. Modern dying takes place in the modern hospital, where it can be hidden, cleansed of its organic blight, and finally packaged for modern burial. We can now deny the power not only of death but of nature itself. We hide our faces from its face, but still we spread our fingers just a bit, because there is something in us that cannot resist a peek."

---------How We Die by Sherwin B. Nuland

And I especially liked this..."The greatest dignity to be found in death is the dignity of the life that preceded it. This is a form of hope we can all achieve, and it is the most abiding of all. Hope resides in the meaning of what our lives have been."

*********************

Now stop entertaining me...I have work to do!!

Another bump!! Hugs for the room.

To see this cream rise to the top, for it is in the contemplation and the discussion we may be led to hope which will abide and hold each one of us safely.
Mark56