Temporary problem?

I feel like I should apologise in advance, because this is going to be a bit of a rant.

Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

I am so tired of hearing this! Every time someone talks about feeling suicidal or having suicidal ideation, this inane little saying gets dusted off and paraded around the conversation. Enough with it!

Do you seriously think someone would contemplate suicide if they understood that their problem was temporary? Do you?

Suicide is the ultimate act of desperation, the final fall-back when no other solution seems to present itself, including waiting for the problem to blow over or solve itself. Suicide is a way out of pain that shows no hint of ever having an end. The problem looks and feels permanent. That is why the only solution that remains is a permanent one.

Essay, written by a 17 year old survivor

In a quest to re-connect with my younger self, I have been looking for clues of who I was age 4-16. I looked for photos, but none seem to exist. Then I remember a piece of writing, an essay I wrote for a school assignment at 17, but never handed it because it was simply too raw.

The class was English creative writing. We were to write an essay entitled "me". This is what I wrote:

Is my child vulnerable?

Most parents worry about whether or not their children are vulnerable to be molested. Those that don't, should.

The short, simple answer to this question is "yes". Your child is vulnerable. All children are. However, some children are more vulnerable than others. So which children are more vulnerable?

Who gets targeted?

The children who are targeted are often the outsiders. The are the unpopular kids, always hanging around the fringes of their peer groups. They have low self-esteem, they lack confidence and they are isolated from their peers. They have weak social skills. They are lonely and desperate for attention, affection and acceptance.

Gratitude

It was Thanksgiving in the US, so I thought it would be appropriate to post a happy post. Even considering everything I've been through in my life, I have a lot to be grateful for. And as my late wife always used to say - it is not humanly possibly to be thankful and depressed at the same time. So here goes:

Why tell my story?

Today is exactly one year since I started writing down my story. And what a year it has been!

I started off very motivated. I wrote in blog-format, completing at least one post a day, some days more than one. I dissected all the horrors of my childhood in the minutest detail, recalling sights, sounds and smells, going back to old journals to verify dates, reliving everything as I sought to inject the appropriate emotions into my writing.

It all proved to be too much. By January of this year, I was sinking into a deep depression. Continuing to write through the pain, I eventually crashed back onto the bathroom floor with a paring knife, my tears mixing with the blood dripping from my arm.

The next day, frightened into action by my self-inflicted wound, I made two decisions:
1. I needed to stop the recall, to stop writing.
2. I needed to go back to therapy.