Trigger Warning- Blog mentions suicide. Please seek professional help if you are triggered.
Chatting to a 19-year-old with a lot more wisdom than I had at 19. It was an open discussion around mental health and mental health issues.
Word filtered through to us that someone had taken their life because ‘they lost their job’ and the 19-year-old quickly popped up and said “no way, he clearly would’ve had demons he was battling with and this was the tipping point” and boy was I drawn by that knowledge of someone so young.
You can thrive, I promise and while it might feel unpleasant now, I believe in you.
It’s hard to write, it’s hard to say but suicide is much more than what has happened that day or even that month. It’s a breaking point and fortunately an avoidable breaking point (more in that in past and previous blogs focused on education).
It is true that life is 10% what happens to us and 90% what we chose because no matter the situation you will have a choice. The problem is when the choice is highly motivated by emotion that issues start to really arise. (Meditation is a great practice to be able to act with thought rather than feeling).
Suicide is the breaking point where the person just can’t live with the pain they are feeling anymore and it’s a pain like no other. The pain consists of a lot of these thoughts:
- I’m better off dead
- Others would have an easier life if I was dead
- I’m not good enough
- My friends don’t like me
- My family only help and love me because they have to
- The world is better off without me
Plus much more….
Thinking like this is usually a really slow burn that can cripple someone’s mind completely from seeing the pleasant things in life. It’s a highly distorted mind which can’t see clearly. For some it takes years, for some months but it doesn’t take less than that.
What people tend to see though is the last weeks or days where the person really hits rock bottom.
A suicide is never about a job loss- it’s more about a person thinking that they are again failing.
A suicide is never about one relationship- it’s about the person not feeling like they are loved by anyone.
A suicide is never about one argument or fight- it’s about the person feeling a complete lack or worth over many months of years.
Suicide is many moments built of over a long time which reaches a breaking point where the pain is too much.
You can check out more of my story of suicide, depression and anxiety on the contact page of the website