World suicide prevention day 2020

 Imagine this for a second. Your other half is playing in the summer sun with your toddler, you’re stood there watching them, not a care in the world. However, you’re stood there watching them with a handful of pills in your hand, because you can’t give them the love or care that they deserve. Thinking that despite the initial hurt, their life would be so much better without you.

Is it hard to imagine? I live with those images every day. I can picture it as vividly as any day in my life. My wife never knew until I first spoke about my suicidal thoughts last year. I felt a sense of shame for thinking of it.

Now imagine a few months later, as your second child is born, facing the fact that you cannot bond with them. Thinking that they’ll never like you. What sort of parent are you? It really got to me. I ended up writing my thoughts down, how I would be better off dead. Perhaps subconsciously I left it for my wife to find. Imagine the distress that caused. She could see I wasn’t coping but couldn’t talk, it was literally killing me.

Think that’s enough? Imagine laying in bed, next to your partner, thinking how easy it would be to walk to the bottom of the hill and either electrocuting yourself on the live rail of a railway track or just walking in front of a train. I don’t think I’ve ever admitted that to anybody before. I’m not comfortable with those thoughts but they happened.

Now imagine, you’ve got 3 wonderful children, a partner that loves you to the moon and back and a future goal for a new career. That’s what I’ve now got, and it was nearly all taken away from me because of a lack of self worth, and suicide. Is it worth it? I’ve been asked before what stopped me, and it’s simple. My children. Since I’ve been more open about my mental illness, you can add my wife to that answer too. She’s been an amazing support, and I’ve often been described by her as her 4^th child, but I’m eternally thankful for her being there for me. Stopping the thoughts, stopping the self destructive behaviour.

So that’s all in the past, I’m perky and all is good and spouting some preachy bullshit to stop others. Yes, I am trying to be open to stop others from taking their own lives. However, despite controlling them, the thoughts remain. Perhaps once a week, perhaps once a month, but they’ll pop in my head.

“Shall we just end it all?” Oh shut up brain. “But you’re tempted though aren’t you?” I said be quiet. “Let’s think about the ways we can do it…” These thoughts are just that though. I know I shouldn’t be thinking it, but I know with the support around me I will never give my dark side a chance to act out it’s fantasies.

I’ll admit writing the first few paragraphs of this were hard. As I said, the images are still very real and it brings more than a tear to my eye to think about it, but I want to get the message out there, suicide is never an option. It solves nothing. It creates pain for others, and despite everything going on in your head, ALWAYS REMIND YOURSELF THAT SOMEONE WILL BE THERE. Oh and for the love of cream cakes, talk. I emailed jo@samaritans.org who listened throughout, never preached to me, just helped me make sense of stuff.

You may find that when you talk to someone you don’t get the reaction you expect or need, but I promise you, 99% of people will want to listen and help, so keep talking 💚