For Anyone Feeling Suicidal.
An open letter to anyone who is in pain and feeling like they just don't want to do this anymore.
I'm really... truly sorry to hear that this is where you're at. I have been suicidal myself. Genuinely. I was just recounting to some of my clients the night when I almost drank drain cleaner fluid. I had prepared an altar of sorts where I expected my parents to find me the next morning, and it's by the 'grace of god' (if you want to put it like that) that I fell asleep before I was able to do it.
Since then, I found my healing, found myself again, found self-love, and found real purpose and passion helping people through the same journey.
Now, unfortunately... I'm not a crisis intervention guy. I'm not the one who can talk you down from a ledge exactly when you're in that horrible place. I'm the one who can help you find your way through the healing when you find yourself ready to dedicate yourself to it.
The one thing that I can say most for now is this:
I promise.... promise... PROMISE you... that, just because you can't even IMAGINE in this moment how life could ever get good again, DOES NOT mean that it can't!
Seriously. In moments of this kind of pain, the worst part about it is the fear that it will never end.
Maybe it's been years that you've felt this way, and so you don't believe that the pain will ever end. But it absolutely can.
It's a shame that - as humans - it often takes years of rock bottom to get us to finaly find ourselves and turn things around - but if you manage to pull yourself through this, find some trust, and move through the pain to find yourself on the other side, then... pain is just a memory.
I am so glad that I'm still here and that I didn't do anything drastic. For one thing, there are many lives I've changed and even saved that owe that to me not giving up. But then, also... just for me... this world and this life has so much left to offer me that I wouldn't have gotten the chance to experience.
I get it... there's a lot of pain right now and you can't at all see the path to how that will end. But PLEASE try to understand and believe that the pain absolutely CAN end... that it will... and that when you get to the other side, the pain is just a memory and there's a long and beautiful life left to be lived.
Try, for one moment, to imagine a version of yourself... 5 years from now... that has genuine love. Both for yourself and from someone else. A version of yourself that is doing something meaningful, that you enjoy, that has purpose. A version of yourself that is excited about life and has freedom and abundance and happiness. I know it's hard right now... but try... for one moment... to envision that version yourself and to believe it's possible.
Then, ask yourself... if what you're going through right now is merely the price that yoiu have to pay to become that person, aren't you willing to go through it?
In my experience, we are. If you KNEW for certain that a few years from now, because you went through all this, you'd have all of those things, then you'd be willing to pay this price to get there. It's only the fear that life will always be painful that makes it unbearable... but that's just very simply not true.
I promise you.
Try to have some trust and faith.
It is through the pain that we heal the traumas of our past and that we find ourselves on the other side.
Think of the worst physical pain you've ever been in. Did you ever break a bone or something? It hurt like hell at the time, right...? But it doesn't hurt now! And that's the point.
That's how this emotional pain will look to you in the future. It will just be a bad memory.
And one that you can look back on with a healthy sense of self-loving 'nostalgia' of sorts, thinking fondly of the scared version of yourself you are in this moment. Knowing that that version of you was beautiful too... even though it thought that it had nothing left to go on for.
You can get to that version of yourself. I've been there. And I believe in you.
Tags: #PTSD, #depression, #suicidal, #there-is-hope
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Benjy Sherer is a mental health coach and emotional fitness trainer specializing in anxiety and trauma healing. His approach is about bypassing the intellectual analysis of our past traumas and focusing instead on conquering the subconscious cycles that keep us stuck in fear and which prevent us from truly healing our pain.
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