AlexShalman.comPractical Personal Development

I’m a 35 year old man, by all accounts a ‘good catch’ with a very kind heart, and first tried to kill myself when I was about 12 years old. I grew up in a strict Catholic household where ‘father always knows best’, I guess that was sometimes a cause for grief, but the real reason for my stupid actions is a darkness – a sort of negative seed – that has always existed inside of me. It’s there even in the best of times, and usually there is nothing significant enough in my life to justify it. It’s just dark, plain and simple.

On that first attempt, I took every pill in my parents medicine chest and started going through the whole list of overdose reactions within minutes. My dad noticed something was wrong and I told him a bug must have stung me. I started convulsing and breaking out in huge hives – he helped me take off all of my clothes and put me in an ice cold bath (we were poor, so a doctor or hospital was out of the question.) I remember blacking out a few times, but it passed and I never told him what really happened.

The second time was about 5 years later. I stopped eating for about a week. On the 7th day I drove for a few hours and ending up at a hotel room about 300 miles from home. The plan was to take a bunch of sleeping pills and then, before passing out, tie a plastic shopping bag over my head to suffocate. I didn’t get far enough along to actually attempt it, but it was such a dark time, overflowing with feelings of hopelessness.

I’ve tried suicide several times since then. It’s been a thought, an idea, that has come into my head pretty much every day of my adult life. I guess I never really pulled it off successfully before because even though that ‘dark seed’ is strong, there was something else inside me saying ‘no don’t do it, things might get better.’

That ‘no don’t do it’ voice has faded over time. I’m beyond crying or caring. When I can go to sleep, I do it with a sharp knife by my bed. The darkness is on permanent loop in my head: I am nothing, my body is disgusting, my mind is not worth knowing – I should just fade away with the least noise possible. I don’t intentionally want to hurt the few other people in my life, but I think if they could somehow plug into my pain they would understand my actions.

I would never wish for anyone to go through these emotions. The darkness handicaps you and mutes all joy. Everybody dies and I am so close now. This is just how it goes I guess.

Im an early teen father, and feeling extreamly depressed, because my child got taken away by the government to a foster home, all because i wasn’t there, and that wasn’t myfault.

I was down in southern BC and i went up to where i lived previously to visit, but when i got up there, i saw my ex, but my child was not there, we cried for a week, and a started drinking and smoking, still do, i have nearrly killed myself, cause where i lived up there, we hunted, so i was going to take a .257 winchester to head, but my skitzophrenia made me quit it (thats the only time it was nice to me)
but even as tears crawl past my cheeks now, i seek guidance, and possibly, a cure so that my skitzophrenia will be less violent with me, i can hardly live with myself. Ive tried to find another girlfriend to push aside negative and enjoy life withanother, but it hasnt happened. please help.

Sorry everyone, another long comment. As most people seem to be, I am just going to share my experiences of suicidal thoughts.

I seem to go through cycles of depression where even though I try to do the things that I enjoy and be around the people that I love, I can’t shake the thoughts that it wouldn’t make a difference if I died. I am entirely aware that it would make a huge difference to everyone and could even affect some of my loved one so badly that they themselves could suffer from the same kind of depression through grief. But knowing that I am wrong doesn’t get rid of the thoughts.

I fairly half-heartedly attempted to drown myself when I was about twelve, and I have been to see a counsellor since, when it all gets too much. What I don’t understand is that the suicidal feelings don’t always have a connection to what is happening in my life. I am now 20 and today for the first time in about a year I started considering suicide again, looking up methods and so on which is how I found this site. I handed in the final two essays and completed the final exam of my degree a few hours ago but now all I can think about is how much paracetamol I have in the house and whether it is enough to kill myself.

I wouldn’t say that I feel particularly depressed today, there is just a sense that it is going to be so long until I am truly happy again that it isn’t worth the wait. My reason over the last three years for not attempting suicide again has been that it would be such a waste to have started a degree and not completed it. Obviously I have been considering my family and friends’ feelings too.

The difference today is that now my degree is over and I really don’t think that it would be that difficult for my loved ones to get over my death. There is nobody else in the house and, as happens every time I feel this way, there is a feeling at the back of my mind that someone is daring me to go through with it.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the time I am a cheerful and positive person. I have an active social life and strong ties with my family. I will probably never go through with the temptation to commit suicide. I certainly won’t today. For the very same reasons that I won’t do the deed, I also will not ever tell my family that I have considered it. Only a very few of my friends know that I have ever tried and even they have probably forgotten since it most likely appears so out of character for me and it has been so long since I told them.

What I am trying to get across by writing all of this is that even when you have been through these feelings yourself, it is very difficult to understand them. The main difficulty with them is that they can catch you so much by surprise that you become unpredictable, even to yourself. I have come to recognise the warning signs and so I know that when I imagine throwing myself under a bus as it drives past or counting out the pills to take, it is time to re-evaluate the day and do something that makes me feel better.

I can imagine my life in another 20 years’ time. I’ll be married with children, happy, involved with the community and in contact with a supportive network of friends and family. But realistically, it won’t be that easy. All marriages face difficulties, and with a history of depression it would be pure fantasy to say that once I find the right man any suicidal inclinations, however rare, will disappear. I have a huge amount of hope that all of these things will happen, but as soon as I think of the reality of it, it seems so far away and so unachievable that going out in some sort of twisted blaze of glory now seems both easier and more desirable than waiting another twenty years for the kind of happiness that will turn out to be impossible anyway.

Don’t any of you worry for me, I am fine. As I say I recognise the warning signs. This has been a good place to get the feelings off my chest and I do feel better for it. It is good to be able to talk about these things openly and without fear of judgement.

Thanks xx

I’m seriously contemplating suicide for the following reasons:

1. I have been in constant, excruciating, chronic pain for the last several years, diagnosed as fibromyalgia and ankylosing spondylosis along with spinal injuries suffered in a 1988 auto accident in which I was nearly killed. The medication for the pain that used to help no longer helps, and the stronger narcotics, such as morphine, methadone, dilaudid, etc., worsen my severe dead-like feeling (like the life force was pulled from me years ago) so that I am entirely bed-ridden, and also give me severe side effects that I cannot tolerate (severe, constant itching day and night, for instance);

2. I sold a home in a neighborhood where, in addition to graffiti, stabbings, shootings and gang members everywhere (I dare not wear the color red), just to name a few, my next-door neighbor, who apparently was manufacturing meth, was shot and lay bleeding in my driveway in the early morning hours one day so that my house, of course, was cordoned off with yellow tape. Except for the vibration of my home’s front and back yards from the bass of the five-foot-tall speakers in the yards of neighbors directly next to me and behind me at all hours of the day and night so that I couldn’t sleep, the area was … quiet once a month or so for a few minutes at a time. I sought help from the city and organizations that claim to help the disabled, but no one would help me other than to advise me to “move to an area with an HOA”.

Not sleeping much or at all for seven years (2001 to 2008) apparently can wreak havoc on one’s body and brain, and I literally felt that I experienced a sudden “brain break” not once but several times during that period, “episodes” that permanently altered how my brain works.

More on “brain break” to come, maybe. So I purchased a smaller, what appeared to be a lower-maintenance home in a quiet neighborhood, only to find that there are a slew of major issues I had no clue about, a home inspector failed to find, I failed to find until living here, and for which no one is responsible. The builder is not responsible because more than a decade has passed. The city is not responsible because, for instance, the pipes in the ground that go to the city’s main are considered to be the homeowner’s property (I advise every homeowner to take their pipes with them after selling their homes!). The homeowner’s association is not responsible because they are merely a volunteer do-nothing group and the property management company is only responsible for taking care of the common areas.

Every company I have hired has taken advantage of me, lied to me and screwed me over so that I have to keep having (or trying to have) the same things repaired again and again and again. I have sought help from the state’s attorney general, who can’t do anything, and from my state’s Registrar of Contractors, but the inspector I am “stuck” with claims that all these things are “good enough” (yes, if it’s “good enough” that my bedroom’s foundation is literally breaking apart from the rest of the house!). If I were independently wealthy, which I’m not, I wouldn’t mind getting ripped off over and over and over and over and over again until I found an honest company (surely, that’s how the wealthy keep their wealth!), but I’ve reached my financial limit.

3. My geographically nearby relatives don’t want to have anything to do with me, for various reasons, including many I don’t know and will never know, such as: a. I did not attend a niece’s wedding about nine years ago because I was extremely ill and bedridden and because the niece had forbid me from “talking to, going near, touching, or having anything to do with” her then-boyfriend (now husband) after I had called him on his cell phone to get my niece’s cell phone number as she was in nursing school and I was extremely short of breath. She was angry that I had his cell phone number because she thought I was perverted in such a way that I would want to “steal” a guy young enough to be my son, although I have no history of “stealing” men, much less the men any of my female relatives are married to, engaged to, sleeping with, interested in, etc., because I have morals, like an idiot. I only had his cell number, in fact, because I paid him to stay at my house to care for my now-deceased — due to ingestion of tainted pet food treats which I stupidly thought were somehow regulated — golden retriever while I was in California visiting a boyfriend who was my age; b. because I told the same niece what her mother (one of what is said to be my two sisters) had told me about her, alienating her forever, despite many apologies. In fact, she lives very nearby but has never once been to my home nor has invited me to hers. And she has never once called me nor returned a call from me or sent me a card, etc. Yet I was very close with this niece, spoiling her rotten, obviously literally, for most of her life, which apparently doesn’t matter to her; c. No one wants to hear about my pain, and if I don’t talk about my pain, then they don’t like it if I say nothing and just listen, or if I mumble or if I have “a look” on my face or if I’m alive and taking up valuable space; d. I am “invisble” too often, and it frightens them: I would take one of my nieces to the mall, for instance, when she was younger, and even though people often “crash” their bodies directly into me (since I am 5 feet 9 inches tall and Xena-like), I never dreamed that the “invisibility” would, for lack of a better term, “spread”. But no, my nieces and/or nephews would also be run into as though they weren’t there. And this extends to whatever car I’m driving too. No matter who has been behind the wheel or in the passenger seat, including one sister, my mother, etc., whatever car(s) I’ve owned have been hit at least 17 times, mostly while stopped at a red light or a Stop sign. The people who hit whatever car it was actually said that they “didn’t know (they) hit anything”, “didn’t see (my) car”, “didn’t think (you) would stop”, “thought (you’d) just hit the (pedestrians) in the crosswalk” and on and on and on. It’s obvious even to me that I’m a “harbinger of bad luck”, as one former friend referred to me;

4. I have no one person in all the world who cares for me and cares what happens to me or would help me as my body continues to break down physically. In the last year, I have lost the hearing in my right ear, I am almost legally blind and I am only 47 years old. The doctors don’t know what to do, can do nothing or literally are so inexperienced that treatment that might have helped me at some point was not provided, which I didn’t learn until many months and/or years later. To reiterate, not one person will help me nor wants to help me and I am in constant, excruciating pain that is unrelieved by current pain medications. I cannot afford to be in the hospital full-time on a morphine drip (nor would I want to because I would be scratching all night due to the unbearable itch!) and the pain will not go away. The more I try to do for myself, the worse the pain gets.

I will miss dogs because I really adore them, and I will desperately miss my dogs, both of whom I allowed to suffer for too long due to lack of proper diagnosis by veterinarians nearby and within a 35-mile (one-way) radius of my home. I will never regret the money I spent on my beloved canines, both of whom exhibited an infinite loyalty and an infinite capacity to love, just two of the qualities missing among humankind.

Hi Alex, i’m 26 and i have a 3 year old son. i have had it with life and my son and i are always in the way. his father has never cared long enough to stay and my mother is a pain in the….well. people at my work always find something to put to the side and treat me like a child. for the last week or so i have thought of killing my son and myself. what do i do.

Guys i want to live life at its full…but i ve failed to get whatever i wanted to get, always.
in education i always wanted to top but i remained an average student throughout my life. i wanted to live a very pure and fair life…but i failed!
now i want to die b,coz i am caught up in intricate relation.. i love a person, and my mother lover her also as a son. she is mad after him. he is nice to both of us. my mother is used to tell him, sms him openly that how muych she loves her but i can,t do it coz of my personal n social code of morality. now what is wrong with me is that he has also started giving her back emotional responces. they used to talk whole day n night and it gives a sort of pain to me,,i know its possesivness. i never ever was jealous in my life bit now it gives a sort of jealousy to me, and i also feel ashamed of it. that person is my ideal n i thought him very very much pure. he is our family member n my father n brothers have no objection on there relation. two nights ago i saw them hugging n that has darkened my whole life….. why they were doimg so in this way??/ that was unbearable coz i can never expected it from him….he was pure…he is a shy persson for all other girls. he is a teacher, i am his student, and this is how we got introduced and then he became a part of our lives. after that night i have not talked to them and you know they are also not talking to them. im confined to my room n dnt want to talk them as well. i want to die..i,m broken..but only coz of my father n his respect i.m stopping myself.
NOW CAN ANYONE ANSWER MY PROBLEM?????

I m trying my best but i think suicide is my ultimate option…