I am brand new here so bear with me if I am out of line (Please let me know if I am). As much as I have seen hundreds of suicides and the ripple effect it has on so many people throughout that ripple effect, I can now truly empathize with those who were struggling. I am just having such an inner struggle with those I want to protect and the madness that I just want to stop.
I had a friend once who waited until he saved enough money for his funeral then left the world. I often wonder about him. The life of the party, had everything going for him. On the outside, we never saw it coming. Then, we learned otherwise. I can't help but think of him in times like this. I left an unbelievable woman after 26 yrs (22 married), I agonized (to this day actually) of the pain I put her through, then I met this girl and lost her recently. I don't have any kids or a strong family and my father passed away a few months ago. I don't have any family members to reach out to and my friend base doesn't really have the time to listen to my problems. I have talked to the girl, asking her to work things out with me but it sounds bleak at best. I am in a 40 condo unit building that is used primarily for vacationers. No one lives here full time beside me. The entire 40 condo building has one occupant - me! Isolation is brutal. I just sit here and don't have a damn thing on the horizon. I am just utterly alone and feel like I am in a dark room, broken, defeated ... despondent. I cannot see a way out of this. I am tired of being alone in the world. I just want this pain to stop. But being what I did for a living, I saw the consequences that affected the family and friends and I just don't know if I can do that to them. But this pain is overwhelming. I am sorry for rambling. The minutes pass and it gets progressively worse mentally. I just want to get better!!
GoodPersonEffed
Brevity is my middle name, but my name was TL
- Jan 11, 2020
- 6,727
This comment is going to cover a lot of angles. I think you'll be surprised. How it starts is not where it's going to end. Please know that I hear your suffering and torment about the conflict between hurting others and trying to meet your own needs. I think you'll see that I get more than you may expect if you base it only on how I begin.
So you've seen how others are impacted, and you don't want to do that to them, for them to have the experience. Yet you're having an experience that leads you to consider suicide to end your suffering.
Many have said on this forum that if one insists on saving the life of a person who is suicidal, then they should have to be responsible for that person's life.
Just a thought -- why not give some responsibility to the people who you don't want to cause to suffer? Not to tell them you're contemplating suicide, but to say, "I have things I can't handle alone, I need some emotional support, I need some insight, I need some connection with others." When I say give them responsibility, I mean that they have power over your decision because you care about them, so why not use the power in a constructive way, and give them the opportunity to have a positive impact in your life? If they can't, then maybe it will give you a broader perspective of those who are impacted by another's suicide. Perhaps they were shocked and hurt because their focus was myopic and turned inward. Sometimes the one who suicided reached out, and others rejected; and yet if they don't, people say, "If I had known, I would have done something." It's generally an impossible situation.
I get where you're coming from better than many. My dad was a homicide detective and later a forensic investigator for a non-LE government agency, beginning when I was a little girl. My first forensic word was "optopsy." When I was 14, I had a boyfriend commit suicide, no note, he was 16. No one saw it coming, though because I got inside information from my dad (not just the investigation, but turns out another cop had inside personal info), the suicide had been prepped a couple months before. So I've seen suicide from a lot of different angles. I learned a lot from my dad about how people respond to suicide.
They always seek a scapegoat, they often seek a reason outside of the person that would have triggered such a thing. I saw that happen with the boyfriend, from several angles. Yet in the years I've had to process it, and it was indeed traumatic, I've also come to realize with additional life experience and maturity that there had to be a whole lot of things going on with him for which he didn't have support. And I've come to learn how myopic and self-absorbed people are, how the event becomes about them -- how they experience and perceive it -- not because they're assholes necessarily, but because that's how humans experience things.
I have the idea that because of your experience, you likely know that the best thing you can do for the people who will be impacted is to leave them letters. That was a main thing I learned from my dad about suicide, and it applies in life in general -- when people don't have answers, they will make them up. They'll blame others, they'll blame themselves, they'll try to figure out something that makes sense. If they feel to blame, they may take it on, even if it's not accurate, or they may deflect the blame before they even come close to recognizing they have culpability. And sometimes when they're given answers, they'll reject them and come up with their own. So a letter is not a perfect solution, and it's not always helpful, considering that some people won't hear no matter what is said to them, in which case I think they're going to have their drama no matter whether there's a letter or not.
The people you saw impacted by suicide -- perhaps being here on SS, and perhaps considering this choice for yourself, you'll get a broader perspective now. It hurts like a motherfucker for them, and the person who kills themself is also a scapegoat, taking the blame for others' feelings, trauma, shock, etc. I think it's one of the most complex human social situations possible. Humans want things to be black and white, for emotions and concepts to be simple, and they will try to reduce things to that kind of simplicity so that they can manage, even if it means they take unwarranted blame, and both the one considering suicide and the one who feels the impact afterward may do that. This is really challenging stuff, there are no words for how complex it is.
It's like a bunch of blind men touching various parts of an elephant, each one certain that an elephant is an ear, or the trunk, or the tail, or a leg -- there is only so much anyone can know, because everyone is limited in what they are capable of comprehending. You comprehend more than most, you comprehend that others will not be able to comprehend, and in some ways it's harder because you can't boil things down to the simplicity that others can which would help you come to some determination that would bring peace or confidence in the decision, even if the determination you arrived at was just an ear and you thought it was the whole elephant.
So you've seen how others are impacted, and you don't want to do that to them, for them to have the experience. Yet you're having an experience that leads you to consider suicide to end your suffering.
Many have said on this forum that if one insists on saving the life of a person who is suicidal, then they should have to be responsible for that person's life.
Just a thought -- why not give some responsibility to the people who you don't want to cause to suffer? Not to tell them you're contemplating suicide, but to say, "I have things I can't handle alone, I need some emotional support, I need some insight, I need some connection with others." When I say give them responsibility, I mean that they have power over your decision because you care about them, so why not use the power in a constructive way, and give them the opportunity to have a positive impact in your life? If they can't, then maybe it will give you a broader perspective of those who are impacted by another's suicide. Perhaps they were shocked and hurt because their focus was myopic and turned inward. Sometimes the one who suicided reached out, and others rejected; and yet if they don't, people say, "If I had known, I would have done something." It's generally an impossible situation.
I get where you're coming from better than many. My dad was a homicide detective and later a forensic investigator for a non-LE government agency, beginning when I was a little girl. My first forensic word was "optopsy." When I was 14, I had a boyfriend commit suicide, no note, he was 16. No one saw it coming, though because I got inside information from my dad (not just the investigation, but turns out another cop had inside personal info), the suicide had been prepped a couple months before. So I've seen suicide from a lot of different angles. I learned a lot from my dad about how people respond to suicide.
They always seek a scapegoat, they often seek a reason outside of the person that would have triggered such a thing. I saw that happen with the boyfriend, from several angles. Yet in the years I've had to process it, and it was indeed traumatic, I've also come to realize with additional life experience and maturity that there had to be a whole lot of things going on with him for which he didn't have support. And I've come to learn how myopic and self-absorbed people are, how the event becomes about them -- how they experience and perceive it -- not because they're assholes necessarily, but because that's how humans experience things.
I have the idea that because of your experience, you likely know that the best thing you can do for the people who will be impacted is to leave them letters. That was a main thing I learned from my dad about suicide, and it applies in life in general -- when people don't have answers, they will make them up. They'll blame others, they'll blame themselves, they'll try to figure out something that makes sense. If they feel to blame, they may take it on, even if it's not accurate, or they may deflect the blame before they even come close to recognizing they have culpability. And sometimes when they're given answers, they'll reject them and come up with their own. So a letter is not a perfect solution, and it's not always helpful, considering that some people won't hear no matter what is said to them, in which case I think they're going to have their drama no matter whether there's a letter or not.
The people you saw impacted by suicide -- perhaps being here on SS, and perhaps considering this choice for yourself, you'll get a broader perspective now. It hurts like a motherfucker for them, and the person who kills themself is also a scapegoat, taking the blame for others' feelings, trauma, shock, etc. I think it's one of the most complex human social situations possible. Humans want things to be black and white, for emotions and concepts to be simple, and they will try to reduce things to that kind of simplicity so that they can manage, even if it means they take unwarranted blame, and both the one considering suicide and the one who feels the impact afterward may do that. This is really challenging stuff, there are no words for how complex it is.
It's like a bunch of blind men touching various parts of an elephant, each one certain that an elephant is an ear, or the trunk, or the tail, or a leg -- there is only so much anyone can know, because everyone is limited in what they are capable of comprehending. You comprehend more than most, you comprehend that others will not be able to comprehend, and in some ways it's harder because you can't boil things down to the simplicity that others can which would help you come to some determination that would bring peace or confidence in the decision, even if the determination you arrived at was just an ear and you thought it was the whole elephant.
