Answers on a postcard

Suicide is painless, it brings on many changes. It’s the moving to the point of suicide that is painful. The wavering in your mind where you have the internal conversation about the act, then think about how this will affect everyone else.

Should one be deeply unhappy, just to make others comfortable? Or do you have the right to say, “That’s it, I’ve had enough. I’m going onto the next great adventure”?

I have lived with an almost daily thought of taking my own life from when I was a teenager, and each day I have thought that today is not the day. It is not something I have ever tried to talk about since I know that others will decide that I should not be allowed to make my own choices. So I have thought my thoughts in silence, thinking perhaps today or maybe tomorrow, knowing that society makes it forbidden to talk on a subject which affects me so much.  But deeply aware that any mention of suicide, even in so called jest, to anybody, will bring the displeasure of society falling on top of me. However, I do believe that as an adult that I have the right to make my own decisions. I’m not mad or ill, you don’t have to be ill to commit suicide, you just don’t want to be.

I have always been insecure and shy, and sometimes I find it almost impossible to start the day and go out to meet people, especially when I meet them for the first time. This fear can almost paralyse me, and I have to carefully fix a mask on my face and force my behaviour in order to hide this all-consuming black hole. The mask is fixed in place everyday, and to others I’m sure I appear to cope, but on the inside I feel such an overwhelming sense of despair, and loneliness.

Sometimes I feel that I am stuck outside a building looking in, watching everyone else live their life and enjoying themselves, however, I am stuck not knowing how to open to the door and join them, and even more frightening, thinking that if I do push open the door then the focus will be on me, and the pressure will be just so great, and I won’t know what to say or do.

I know that I appear aloof and distant, even that I look down on people, but only I know the truth, that I’m just don’t know how to talk to people, how to engage. I suppose that I protect myself by not getting too close, that I protect myself by pushing people away or being rude to them, so that they cannot hurt me.

I feel alone everyday, all day, I work alone, I go home and I feel alone, even when I am with other people. I don’t feel I have anyone to talk to, my only real conversations are with myself, as it is only with myself who understands this utter, utter pit of despair I’m in..

How still can I sit here? If I sit very still nobody will know what I’m thinking, no-one will see the pain in my eyes, my feelings of failure and despair. I put on earphones – there is no sound behind them – just so that people will not expect me to join the conversation. I stare at the computer in front of me, to all the world I look as if I am concentrating on something, but I know I’m staring into the void of nothing.

As time moves on I withdraw from the world. Why bother having the TV on, or the lights, or anything really. I live my life sitting, waiting, waiting. Waiting for what? I can sit here all day, every day, waiting. Is there a bus coming? Or am I waiting for my life to change; or, as I suspect, I’m waiting to make my final decision about my life.

I feel that the time for my decision is close, very very close.  What will be my route? Nothing dramatic, I really wouldn’t want that. I would like to just fade away without fuss and bother, perhaps an ambiguous death, a car crash maybe? Did he fall asleep or … The thoughts and worries will quickly fade from everyone’s mind.