This is not some kind of a Hollywood fluff story.
It all started when I was divorced on 07/25/2014. I have been battling severe depression and anxiety with an occasional suicidal thought since then.
It came to a head on 07/02/2016 I had a started to feel it coming on strong – my depression.
When it comes on like a freight train I know I won’t be sleeping. 07/03/2016 it was really bad and overwhelming and constantly crying for no reason.
Around 1:00 pm on that day I had my first thoughts of committing suicide. Doing the typical things such as searching for ways to do it online.
Plus battling back and forth with myself if it was the right thing to do.
I don’t think I would ever let it go that far, but I was still having them nonetheless.
When I say I have suicidal thoughts it doesn’t necessarily mean I am going to kill myself.
Being suicidal is having this unexplainable ache while you’re living. It’s waiting for your life to end and wishing I didn’t have to carry on.
Having this ache and incapability to feel happy while living. This doesn’t mean I am going to kill myself. It just means I would not mind dying.
Around 9:00 PM that night I started getting scared that I was really getting ready to kill myself.
A good friend of mine (you know who you are) talked to me for a solid 2 hours trying to get me to call 911.
That friend finally got me talked into calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255).
The woman that got on the phone with me was extremely helpful, she called the local police in my hometown. And she called my sister-n-law to give her a heads up.
The police came and it was a man, a friend that I have known for most of my life. He talked to me and was making me feel a lot better too.
He, in turn, called my brother and asked him to come to my house. When my brother arrived he and the cop talked and it was decided to ask me if I would be willing to go to the hospital in Morehead, KY.
There is a difference between wanting to kill me and wanting to kill the part of you that wants you to kill yourself.
Suicide: that word catches your attention, right? The truth is suicide catches everyone’s attention. But it’s the actions leading up to suicide that goes unnoticed.
When I arrived at the hospital it was 11:30 PM and I was put in the ER and into a gown and I had to wait for someone upstairs to come and evaluate me.
They finally admitted me about 05:30 AM the following morning. When I got upstairs the nurses were amazing and friendly.
I really didn’t want to kill myself, but sometimes it feels like it doesn’t matter if I am alive or not. Does this mean I’m suicidal?
I know what it feels like to think it doesn’t matter to be dead or alive. I think that’s different from being suicidal. I also think that’s why I just decided to seek happy moments to fight the gloom and doom. Lifetimes get shorter every day… may as well go with good thoughts. 🙂
Thanks for reading and commenting. I also try to focus only on the happy moments!
<3
“Being suicidal is having this unexplainable ache while you’re living. It’s waiting for your life to end and wishing I didn’t have to carry on”.
Yep! Those are the words that capture it.
Memories of my abusive childhood, rape, abusive first marriage and my brother’s death by suicide all haunt me with those thoughts. They are very heavy.
And menopause set it over the edge. I’m very thankful Wellbutrin took the edge off but I’d love to kill the memories or at least the triggers. Thank you.
Thanks for reading and commenting. I also take Wellbutrin 450mg every morning. It helps some but I get a few side effects from it. Tremors, Dry mouth, Insomnia, increased sweating, weight gain the side effects are almost as bad as to why I take it in the first place. I have several triggers that I try to avoid, but sometimes its impossible.
I am so sorry you are going through this. This may not work, but you may want to check a few apps out I have tried on mood… feel free to ignore but hey I thought I may as well mention them….
Moodfit
Available on GooglePlay and App Store
-track things like mood, activity, recording things you are grateful for, sleep so you can just in a way feel somewhat accountable to do those things and see if any are having a correlation on your mood. You can also add your own ones like whatever you want. It has some good articles – one was on black and white thinking that I saw a few days before literally doing exactly what that article talked about…
-free
-not pushy!!! if you ever feel guilty about not keeping up with something, this app is pretty good at being all happy and just saying welcome back – not sending notifications saying hey its been x days why haven’t you filled in your daily mood and activities.
-makes it easy to jump back into for me at least. Maybe it’s the very happy smiley emoji that helps.
Pacifica
Also on GooglePlay and App Store
-Again its like a tracking daily helpful activities and mood, but it has a hope board which I like since it reminds me what I want to work towards. Also, has a forum which I again like because others may feel similar but some give good advice on what helped them, so its not all negative, but definitely not condescending.
-Then the goals part. I like them because you select them from suggested lists within various categories. You then say how hard you think it will be to do and when you complete it say how hard it actually was – mine never are as hard as I predicted. Some are like take a nap or go outside and others are maybe a bit harder – it depends on the person. Some are out there like improve or I have call a radio station as my hardest that maybe I’ll do just because it would be so out there, but would need to work up to it. I am never doing improve!
-Also has this section on thoughts that takes you through exercises to try to help you reframe them if say something triggered it. So you may say what the feeling is, the “bad” things like exaggeration, all-or-nothing, catastrophic, etc, then you have to change those to reframe them into something more positive or just maybe something like I may have overthought this (it walks you through). what you wrote into something better by changing each negative word you had into something more realistic.
-And has a guided path section. This is a good place to start with because it tells you about each of the categories I just mentioned (the first week session one) and it’s seriously like listening to a therapist. And each ends with so go try this now in the app like try using the hope board. This session is free – later ones aren’t. Everything I mentioned though is free and I like it a lot.
MoodMission
On Google Play and App Store
-So you start by inputting whether you are feeling a negative feeling (like I’m anxious or depressed), rank how distressing it is, pick a specific option describing how exactly (e.g., is it stopping you from doing things or can you just not put your finger on it, among other examples). Then it gives you a suggested list of things to do (missions) and says why they help. Like count your breaths or run in place for 60 seconds or clean or go outside. Nothing super long except I guess walking is or cleaning. It’s your choice which one you pick and they change each time. You then say if you feel less distressed and how helpful it was to track what types of things help (mindfulness, physical activity, etc). They weirdly help pretty well or some do for me. I was skeptical like yeah ok running in place for 60 seconds sure.. you’d be surprised. Admittedly I stick with shorter ones so far but am trying to stick with it more.
Happify
Again on both GooglePlay and App Store
-It has some free guided tracks with some fun activities. However, not all content is free and it pushes heavily that you should subscribe. If you ignore that though (and ignore the pro tasks in the guided sessions) I think it does have good things – I sent a friend an email from it to just say why they are a good friend and it walked me through filling it in. Helps. Then I texted him and told him hey I’m happifying myself – like it!
-for the free version there are some tracks that have tasks that are not all free but I think still helpful. Also some cool game type things like negative knockout – knocking out things with bad emotions on them like angry birds in a way. Or uplift – you have to hit balloons with positive words and not the ones with negative ones. They can be good distractions to just shift your focus and breathe a little. Not all games but just something unique about this app in addition to guided tracks.
-Also posts good articles.
hope something helps!
Wow, thanks for reading and commenting they have apps for everything!
Of course. Everyone needs help at times. Great part about apps is they don’t sleep or have a hard time hearing someone else’s suffering (not like this is always the case, but even so, I feel guilty if I keep contacting someone). The apps help there – I don’t think I am bothering an app listening to whatever I ramble on about or do.
There really is an app for everything- even apps to discover other apps.
I tried others besides those I listed. They were my favorite. But there are many many many others. I hope you find one that can help you in any way. Tiny things can help. The hard part is believing that long enough to stick with it. There may be an app for that even (I think there are a few) … but whatever helps is all that matters. Feel better.
I’m sorry to hear about the tough time you went through but am thankful that God intervened through those who helped you. It’s important that when people are suffering from depression or suicidal thoughts that there is dialogue because there is still a stigma about out there that prevents people from opening up to others.
Thank you for reading and commenting
Dear Paul, I am so glad you are writing here and expressing these feelings. So many people with depression do not use this type of outlet. Keep writing. There are a lot of us who want to listen. 🌸
Thanks for reading and commenting – I generally don’t post here so often – but I try to post every day on https://www.paulcoxwriter.com/blog and https://myhealthmindandbody.com/ Thanks for the encouragement! I plan to continue to write.
Cool