Getting close to the day. Everything is planned and verified, as much as it can be done. The only thing that’s a total wild card is what I’ll be feeling in the minutes before. My method is jumping. Success rate is 100% from my chosen location. 90% in general from that height. So obviously there aren’t many accounts of people’s last thoughts. I highly doubt there are any failed jumpers here but if there are please post what your thoughts were especially as you fell. Any other extremely violent suicide survivors please share as well (train, gunshot, anything that immediately results in severe damage) although I highly doubt any of those people are here either.
‘Peaceful’ suicides I feel are in an entirely different category as far as what you feel as it happens. I myself have made a halfassed overdose attempt as well as a hanging experiment and they were nothing compared to the overload of emotion I felt climbing the tower i intend to jump from. Fear obviously but a fear like you’ve never felt in your fucking life. But that same violent fear is what I believe will propel me because at a certain point it turns into pure mindless adrenaline, the kind that makes you do anything
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You should be careful. Youre not suppose to talk about methods.
Thought I was pretty clear: “please post what your THOUGHTS were”
I figure anyone who bothers to read my entire post will see that this isn’t a discussion of methods. I want to know what people think, feel and experience emotionally when faced with a violent death.
“This is not a place to share suicide methods.”
Tell you what, Hall Monitor 7, I’m not going to argue with you. If you, by some bizarre swat of reading incomprehension, think I’m asking for tips on how to do it, then go ahead and waste the moderators’ time by complaining. Don’t forget to report the 600 other posts where someone says “ima shoot myself”
Meanwhile maybe others will recognise that my naming of certain general methods is meant to delineate the difference in the level of fear at the point of death.
Seven months ago, I put my affairs in order and decided to eat a bullet. I spent about 18 hours trying to work up the courage to pull the trigger, had the gun in my mouth countless times, hammer cocked, pointing slightly up and back to destroy the brainstem. The only thing I felt was fear. I chickened out. I never felt like the moment of liberation I’ve craved for years was just around the corner…I only felt fear. And so here I am, somedays wishing I’d been able to summon the courage to squeeze the trigger the rest of the way, and somedays feeling better about being on a more productive path.
18 hours with a gun in your mouth, that must be the worst fear of all because death is physically in your hands. The movies make it look too easy.
I’m sorry that the experience didn’t scare you straight, at least that’s the way they describe it in suicide prevention talks. Maybe that’s what I’m secretly hoping for by picking a method that’s terrifying, maybe a part of me wants that blast of fear to fix me. But it sounds like that didn’t happen with you.
What specific thoughts were you having? Were you thinking about your life (people, memories) or were you thinking more about what comes after? With me when I was up there the only thought I had was how it would feel when I hit. For some reason I was terrified by the sound it would make, how cold it would feel on impact, ‘trivial’ details like that were overloading my brain.
I had a text message on my phone addressed to my siblings, 1500 miles away, explaining that this was my goodbye. All that I needed to do was push “send.” My plan was to push “send” then pull the trigger. The most repetitive thought I had was “In the space of two seconds, it will be over. One to push “send”, one to squeeze the trigger. I felt fairly confident that once the brain is destroyed, there is nothing else, that all we are resides in our brain. But I couldn’t push “send”…why, I’m not exactly sure…a desire to live, I suppose. I finally did push it, after about 15 hours, and still couldn’t muster the courage. At that point, my family called the police and what happened after that is another story. Short version is well, here I am. I no longer have the gun, but buying another is still an option, and I’d say odds are good at this point that I will – I need to know I have the option of controlling my fate. But I’m also working towards making some changes…”they” say suicidal people don’t really want to die, they just don’t know how to live. I agree with that, at least as far as I go – I lack basic coping skills and live in a depressed state of fear and anxiety. Living like that is pig shit. It’s not living. But only I can change that. I have an obligation- there is one thing keeping me alive, and I’m fairly certain that at some level, it had something to do with my inability to kill myself. I have a cat that changed my life, and I want to care for her. That’s what I have in life.
I’m digressing, I suppose.
I thought about my life, all the good things, the bad things…I thought about my family, but knowing what they would have to deal with didn’t bother me. I thought about what would happen when the bullet did its work, tried to conceive of what might possibly happen, and I just kept coming back to the thought that when the brain stops, we stop. Heaven, hell, afterlife, reincarnation…there’s no way any of us can foresee what happens one second beyond death, no matter how we try to analyze it. We just can’t know. Any theories or speculations on the subject are just that – theoretical. None of us knows. I believe we exist inside our own brains and when the brain dies, our human consciousness ceases to exist, but I also believe we have a non-physical “spiritual” component, if you will, that …that moves on to something else. Who knows. I could be insane – I spent 18 hours holding a gun, preparing to die.
The strange thing? I also started a new job that day. I was three hours late for it, because I ended up at a local park, surrounded by cops for three hours, while I negotiated my life with one of them by phone. I went to work after that, on my first day and apologized for being late. The lady in personnel smiled and said ” No worries.” If only she knew what had just transpired.
Shit, I must be insane.
This is a very serious suggestion I’m making: you should write a book. Not a stupid “It gets better” book like all the others but the truth just like you spoke it here. There’s no magical switch that suddenly makes your life better, hell you’re likely to end up right back there like you said, but I think this is the unspoken side of suicide that needs to be said. I hear it’s pretty easy to publish an ebook on Amazon, I’ve known people (teenagers) who did it. Anyway, you have a great way with words and an experience like only 3 in 10,000 can say they’ve had. Just an idea.
Thanks for that. You’ve given me a shitload to think about. I realize when I was facing death my brain was blocking out all logical thoughts. Not once did I think of family or friends (acquintances, since I don’t have friends). Whereas you seemed conscious of everything at once. Maybe that’s why you didn’t do it. Because I truly believe that if we are thinking rationally and clearly we won’t do it, if we are more or less physically healthy.
I also like your solution of caring for a cat to give you a purpose in life. When I first became suicidal the only thought keeping me alive was feeding the birds outside through the winter. Maybe that tells us all we really need is to feel useful to someone or something. Isolation is a death sentence.
You’ll find out where you’re at when you’re standing on the edge, preparing to jump. I’m not going to offer any advice other than suggesting you decide whether you really want to die, or find a way to learn to live, as “they” say. It may take standing on the edge to make that choice, in what you believe are your final seconds on earth. We’re all free to choose our fates, and the majority of us won’t or can’t choose suicide, and there are the people of whom is said “I never knew they were so desperate…”.
“They” say the people who succeed often just do it, with little communication or indication that anything is wrong – here today, gone tomorrow, and noone suspected there was a problem.
You’ll have to decide if you’re ready or whether all this is an indirect plea for assistance. I wasn’t ready…I thought I was, but I wasn’t. I hurt, badly, but there’s some part of me that remains active and refuses to die. Maybe I’m lucky…maybe the changes I’m working on will yield … something.
Give things thought, if you can. Oh listen to me, swearing not to give advice and then giving advice. Humanity is a misguided species with little sense of how to find contentment that lasts, and finding purpose can be as elusive as spotting Santa Claus hanging out with Bigfoot. Life sucks, and it seems to my simple mind that it was designed to suck. And that’s just life…a daily dose of pain. So as for purpose, it’s been suggested to me that our purpose is simply to learn how to navigate the pain, and ain’t that a real ***** if that’s the only reason we’re here?
I don’t know you from Adam, don’t know your story, I just read your post and replied because I’ve been there. That was seven months ago, and I’ve found that while my failure may not have exactly scared me straight, it did turn me around and put me in a place where I have to learn to cope better. If you need to exit, I totally get it. Completely. Life sucks, big time.
And maybe you haven’t finished learning about your capacity to function in our shit show of life.
You’ll figure out the answer. Either choice requires incredible strength and determination – the question is which side of the tipping point are you on.
Best wishes, Nobody Else.
Even if you don’t like to give advice, this is some of the best advice I’ve heard. I’m thinking hard about 2 points you made. The first is
“You’ll have to decide if you’re ready or whether all this is an indirect plea for assistance. I wasn’t ready…I thought I was, but I wasn’t.”
Hate to admit it but I don’t think I’m ready. As much as I want to be dead, I’m not ready to do it. So that means this probably is an indirect plea for assistance. Maybe that applies to everyone posting on this site for more than a day. If we’re sticking around and talking about how we feel then isn’t it safe to assume we’re not quite ready to do it? At least not right this minute.
The second point you made is something I wonder about a lot
“So as for a purpose, it’s been suggested to me that our purpose is simply how to navigate the pain, and ain’t that a real ***** if that’s the only reason we’re here?”
Exactly. Avoiding pain isn’t a reason to live. That’s why I hate when people use that as a response to why bother. It’s also why the argument of fear/pain doesn’t deter me from suicide (“it could be worse”, “think of the people you’ll hurt”). To me the pain I’m feeling is already unbearable so the argument that my suicide would lead to more pain just doesn’t register, just like the purpose of life being to avoid pain. If avoiding pain is the only goal I know 1 quick way of achieving that goal.
I’d like to think that life does have a purpose, a real purpose, something unique and crucial for each of us. But I’m just not seeing it. So how’s that, no reason to live but not ready to die. Well one of the two conditions has to change soon.
Thanks again for these thoughts. I hope you can find the answers.