Comments on: When Life Gives You Lemons…

By: Francis Coyle

Francis Coyle — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:03:44 +0000

I have been going through a lot of hurt today, and over the past few weeks much grief, loss and remorse. I have been thinking more and more lately of sticking a knife through my heart and getting it over with. Yet I just watched a sunset across a wintry landscape and I don’t know if I am ready to give that up yet. Maybe a few more sunsets. Hmmmm….

There are people who love me very much. If I kill myself they will feel the same hurt, loss and grief that I do now. I just picture my soul as not some abstract life force, but as myself with all my feelings, showing up at my own funeral. If that were to be true then I would feel even more remorse for having put everyone through that. My best friend killed herself when I was in college. I sat in the college cafeteria looking out the window. She was missing from my life and I could never put her back. OK, thoughts like this could screw up a perfectly good suicide.

So I tried another tactic. I stood looking in my bathroom mirror and asked myself if I could kill the person staring back at me. I liked the person I saw — a little dorky, with my hat on crooked and my clothes not hanging right. I have a kind face and the saddest eyes.

I actually can focus on little pleasures in life and find some measure of joy and comfort in them. Since I found I liked myself I can just hold myself and comfort myself.

I am just going to have to sit still and hurt some more. I don’t feel like I am suffering from depression and despair. Although I think of suicide a lot and am withdrawing I do make a point of connecting with people and am discovering I am able to connect in a more real way and be more present in the conversation. I am less reigned in and less reserved. I have been truly humbled by my experience and current situation. I don’t feel I have the answers any more so I sit and listen. My relationships with the people closest to me are improving greatly.

Friends and neighbors I run into daily on the path don’t see there is anything going on. They give a cheery hello and I give a cheery hello back and everyone looks like they buy it. The only two spotting something wrong looked scared and the husband asked me if anything was wrong. Both hold PhD’s in clinical psychology and are practicing psychotherapists. OK busted.

I don’t hold it against my family or friends for not noticing. I am not telling them anything. It would scare the wits out of them. They wouldn’t know what to do with my suicidal feelings. They would feel so helpless. If regular people could handle all the psychological events folks can go through in life, there would be no need for mental health professionals.

Right now it is hard to see what options are left me or what my life will eventually be like. Life can take such dramatic twists and turns, yet what comes of it all isn’t necessarily all bad. I have to remember that and remember, yeah I once could feel happy and love my life. I can find little moments and ways of feeling happy again until all this strong feeling passes.

Take care guys and thanks for the chance to share.

By: Any

Any — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:32:59 +0000

I know your feelings well. It’s so hard being the rock, the pillar, the fountain of strength for everyone, and having no-one to get strength from when you need it the most. You want to turn to friends and just cry. You want someone to tell you it’s going to all be alright. Well guess what..it might not be. You may spend the rest of your life being there for others to garner strength from. It it such a bad thing though. Its a selfless act, but how bad would a life of helping others ahead of yourself be? It will be trying and lonely, and you may have to give up some of your dreams (I know I have).
The only other options, if you intend and want to continue, is to find a source of strength for yourself. Some choose their god (If you believe in a god), and some choose strangers via the net to be that listening ear.
I hope you manage to find a way, but at least be aware you are not alone, and today at least you are in another persons thoughts.

By: l

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 06:47:37 +0000

Wow, I am having a lot of the same thoughts… all the way down to registering to be an organ donor. While the situation is a little different for me, a lot of the feelings are the same. I feel like we experience even greater guilt because we don’t have a “good reason” to be depressed. I have no right or reason to feel depressed and suicidal considering how privileged I am in comparison to others, but it is so hard not to. The guilt feels even worse when I think about how my family probably thinks I am “selfish” for feeling this way, when part of the reason I’m still here is because I could not do something like that to them. How do they feel making me stay here?

Sometimes I feel like things are turning around, and the next second I’m falling deeper into the hole. It is like my life was on track, then somehow deviated, and now I’m struggling majorly to get back on. I’m not sure what to say. For me, I am trying to become a doctor so that even if I feel like my life is just biding time, I can at least help someone who enjoys their life to live. I am hoping that I will not always feel this way: at the bottom of it, I just want things to get better, too (Yet, why is it so hard to go get real help?) I don’t necessarily want to die… rather, I just want it to not be such a struggle to want to live. Sometimes hope is so fleeting.

Ironic isn’t it? To pray to God for help…but, if I do pray tonight, I will for you. I hope things get better..加油!