Suicide

Just over 2 and a half years ago, I took two weeks off of work to lock myself in my house and figure out, once and for all, if I wanted to continue living or not.

After much deliberation over those two weeks and doing all the things I loved to do like meditating, yoga, singing, dancing, playing my guitar and drums and didgeridoo...reading, writing, watching my favourite movies and eating all my favourite foods...even taking a full day to be drunk on red wine and the next day to be completely stoned on weed and then the next day being really sketched out on some crappy cocaine...I painted and tried to celebrate life and being alive, but no matter how hard I tried, no matter how many things i turned to, to try and find satisfaction and love and hope in this life...an eerie sadness and an inescapable pointlessness pervaded all my senses, rendering me completely useless, joyless and despondent. nothing mattered, there was no point to anything, we are all going to die anyways so why not make my death a conscious choice?

I could see no reason in carrying on with this exhausting, boring, irritating thing called life. So on the 15th day, upon waking, I made the decision to end my life. Of course, I needed a plan, a plan that wouldn't fail. How should I die? What type of death would best suit my needs? I didn't want to burden anyone with a messy clean up although even my body rotting away seemed like such a burden to the unlucky soul that should find it.

slitting my wrists seemed like the way to go for me, i always loved having long baths and i thought it empowering to be able to watch my life drain out of my veins...to really be present for it all ...awareness and lucidity in death, instead of fear...it seemed 'right' for

i got online and decided to do some research into the best and most comfortable and pain free ways of committing suicide. After all, I was sure I saw in a movie some where that you have to slice the wrists in a certain manner to ensure death...but i wasn't entirely sure. Internet to the rescue!

However, I was shocked to find out that 99% of people who slit their wrists DON'T die. It takes an aweful long time and the weak feeling that is akin to hunger, that last for so many hours, didn't appeal to me at all and i wiped my brow with a huge 'whew' that was close...glad i didn't choose that option.

cause i don't know about you, but it would be pretty aweful to try and kill yourself and then end up failing and waking up with even more problems than what you initially had

i was in an information frenzy...and i couldn't believe all the websites and groups out there that support a persons right to choose to live or not. organizations with huge documents describing precisely how to 'off' yourself with the least amount of trouble, pain and burden on yourself and others. Groups like The Church Of Euthanasia (whose 'four pillars' are suicide, abortion, cannabalism and sodomy: sounds like a church to me),  The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement,  Assisted Suicide, Ergo, and of course, Satan's services and Satan's services a practical guide to suicide I found this to be the most helpful guide out there to really get get informed about everything to do with suicide. It's a morbid read with all the ways in which you can kill yourself but still very informative, especially if you are looking to help prevent a friend from committing suicide or need to understand why or how the behaviour takes place. If anything, i found that after reading this guide it triggered the reality that i probably won't succeed at killing myself which was a wake up call in and of itself.

I couldn't believe that people were actually turning a profit with books like final exit, the peaceful pill handbook and even an organization that sells 'exit bags' for a meare $50 (sarcasm intended) i mean basically it's a plastic bag with an elastic band over the end so you can suffocate yourself successfully. Don't get me wrong, I am not against suicide...if it's done in a responsible way not because you are trying to get back at someone or escape debt or anything like that...but if you are truly suffering and you have made a conscious, deliberate choice then I feel that's fair if that's what someone wants to do with their life.

I had settled on two different ways to achieve my ultimate goal...the most appealing was an overdose of heroin..I used to use it (the synthetic versions of the drug) when i was a dancer once upon a time ago and i always had a love for the euphoria and relaxation it gave me ...even back then i used to think, when i die, this is the way i want to go.

The second option included my love of floating and water and so i thought i could wait until late at night (preferably with a full moon and a cloudless night so I could look up at the stars while I waited to die...i am such a romantic huh? cue the music from titanic) and swim out far into the ocean until i got so tired and then allow for myself to drown...i wondered how long that would take...

i had drown once before when i was 16 at a party in a friends pool when i was tripping out hard on a few hits of acid ...i remember the feeling to be so peaceful and i felt like i was in my mothers womb completely one with everything and totally free and happy...i don't know if the drowning or the drugs caused this reaction but i always felt ripped off when i was recussitated as though i was taken away from the only peace i had ever know in this life...as if i was born into suffering not just once at the time of birth but twice....i felt sad for weeks over this loss of freedom, over the life that was still in tact.

still searching the internet, I  began to think and wonder about death and what if it wasn't final? I was for all intents and purposes, an atheist at that time but i still worried what if hell is real and i am exchanging this amazing life of mine for a shitty torture filled one? would I join hitler and bombers and rapists in the depths of hell for an eternity of torture?

Worse than hell, I thought what about Karma...there is something that I do believe in..so what if i come back as a third world country child sex slave or worse yet, a scientologist?

Or maybe i will just be reborn as myself again, forced to live out this life again just like that movie groundhog day only i would have to start from day one and go through it all over like a bad movie that you just can't leave. all that pain and boredom and bullshit...all the suffering and unhappiness with my childhood and my mother...would i have to endure that again? Maybe that's why i have so many instances of deja vu? cause i have already killed myself in my past and keep coming back going through it over and over and over till i finally push through?

all of these 'consequences' and fear of the unknown started to gnaw away at me...the big WHAT IF suddenly scared the hell right out of me. I wanted to say fuck you to that fear but the unknown is a tricky little fucker ...and the truth is, we don't know what's on the other side and we don't know if there is a heaven or hell or if there are consequences for your actions in this life...everything is suspect...everything that anyone believes in this life about all that shit is really just a theory, just a myth...and i didn't know what to believe anymore.

I delved deeper into the internet and found threads and forums of other suicidal people who had no one to say goodbye to so they just posted their suicide notes so that they could connect and say goodbye to someone, anyone...and that's when i got emotional and actually started to cry as i read these fairwell letters.

mostly the letters were the same underlying message...the people writing them felt disconnected, fed up with life and suffering and BELIEVED they were not good enough to have friends and family...they isolated themselves and essentially built a tiny prison out of all their negative thoughts...effectively hypnotizing themselves into believing in all the bad they thought about themselves...there were so many notes that i felt were exactly what i was thinking and feeling and i couldn't believe how many others there were going through the same feelings of despondency, joylessness, pointlessness for no particular reason...and here i thought i was the only one...

i wanted to reach out and befriend them all but i already knew most of them had taken their lives and all i felt was the loss over that. and i cried in that moment with my whole heart...i cried over the fact that there are so many out there who just want to love and be loved...unconditionally, and yet cannot find this acceptance they are looking for. I cried with an intensity i hadn't felt in a very long time...as if my very life depended on it...as if their lives depended on it.

i found a site of failed suicidals who spoke openly of their need to die but the attempts (some 5 or more times) were always unsuccessful leaving them with so many problems, like the inability to move the hands or fingers after failed slicing of wrists...the permanent dialysis due to kidney failure from an overdose of prescription drugs, liver damage, wheelchairs, blindnesses, you name it, these people had it ...all self induced. they went from being healthy and unhappy to being severly unhealthy and unhappy and also feeling like an even bigger loser than before because they failed...even in death they failed!

but reading these suicide failures really brought out their humourous side and they were using self depricating humour to get through the pain of it and i couldn't help but laugh....you know, that full belly laugh that massages you to your very soul leaving you all glowy and warm after wards? I remember thinking holy fuck...these people really fucked up! This is rediculous! They went from being unhappy cause of depressed thoughts to not being able to wipe their own ass for the rest of their lives...now that is Karma ! And somehow their failure made me laugh cause it seemed so silly. I think the laughter also came as a relief that i was glad it wasn't me...all of a sudden a creative surge came through me and i started writing a book that was full of funny things ...i felt alive and creative and joyous and my heart leaped with excitement over this wonderful idea i had for a book. And i couldn't stop laughing and writing and feeling completely present and in the moment. My whole body was alive and i was filled with joy and wonder as i wrote for 12 straight hours...as if something inside of me released and woke up.

This laughter sparked something in me...and made me want to carry on just for a little while longer to see what the next thing will be that makes me laugh or creates that creative spark that makes me feel alive. I gave myself permission to 'pull the plug' whenever i choose to...and in doing so, i gave myself the freedom that i have always longed for to do whatever i want and need to do in this life...once you face your own death there can be no more fear only the ability to move forward and seeking truth and find reasons to carry on...
like creativity and laughter...those are my two greatest joys in life ;o)

I still go through the boredom and feelings of pointlessness and sometimes i slip back into suicidal thoughts from time to time...but now there is a curiosity about the thoughts and where they come from that was never there before...the knowledge that i have given myself permission to die at any time, gives me the freedom to stick around and see what this life is all about.

So, if you are hurting or ever thought about this because you feel alone in your suffering or feel that no one loves you or can accept you for who you are...know that I am here for you. I accept you unconditionally...You can contact me and we can chat anytime. I am not a professional but I do have a lot of experience in this particular area (personally speaking) and can be a really good listener. Hey, everybody needs somebody! There must be a reason that I went all through all that shit just to still be here...maybe that reason is to be a friend to you and help you???
I am not judgemental when it comes to this stuff...in the end, it's your choice but i have found a lot of ways to keep going, to stay motivated to live maybe we could help each other out.
Thanks for reading and understanding everyone!
Patricia

I Am All Grown Up, Now What?

I seem to be having an existential crisis today. Questions keep popping up into my brain. Questions like, who am I? Where do I want to be in 5 years from now? What do I want to be when I grow up?

Ah, but I am all grown up and here in lies the problem.

I am 31 and I still don’t know what it is that I want. How can this be? When I was finishing high school, I envied those who knew what they wanted to study next, cause I sure as hell didn’t know what I wanted to be…I thought it was just a phase, I told myself to just get to work and the mystery will unveil itself.

I took lots of jobs and did the bare minimum really, just enough to make ends meet, sometimes, if I felt inspired, maybe a little more than the bare minimum. I figured it was a by-product of being in my 20’s. I went to school for various things, I had lots of ideas and plans that I followed through on till I got bored and realized that it wasn’t for me.

Fuck, I really squandered my 20’s away. Until that last year 29 when I gave it my all and got my business off the ground, worked like a dog and actually made it work somehow…only to realize that it was again not what I wanted, I felt like I was exchanging one mask for another yet again.  I didn’t want to be married to anyone let alone a fucking job!

I ran away to Thailand, convinced I needed more education in my field of business….but upon completion of the gruelling regimented 6 months of training, instead of opening up the school and going about the plans I had put into place, I put the brakes on again and did even less than the bare minimum to get by. Sleeping most of the day away, lost in a zombified version of myself…while pretending to live and going through the motions of eating and loving and really, working as little as possible and stilll complaining about it.

At 31, I am officially retired for a year and a half…which means, although I have a little money (enough to take this time off) at the end of this time, I will be penniless, jobless, carless, homeless, nothing but a few boxes of stored things and the luggage I bring back to Canada with me…I will have nothing! Weird, only 5 years ago, I had everything….and I felt the same as I do now…only with more stuff…I attributed the shitty feelings to having too much stuff and it was tying me down and ruining my life.

What is life? WHo am I, really?

I want to say that I should be grateful for the life I have been given and that I should show my gratitude by doing something fabulous with it but on the flip side, what’s the point? I mean, if I smoke or don’t smoke, if I am skinny or fat, if I win a fucking Oscar or I am a bum on the street, in the long run, it doesn’t matter!

Everything is Arbitrary! But living in this type of manner is really fucked up…cause it’s neither here nor there, not this or that…it’s an ambiguous mind fuck that leaves one with the feeling that one is endlessly chasing it’s own tail.  Leaving one exhausted and gasping for breath …with that all consuming question still lingering on the lips …what’s the point?

I used to walk through grave yards when I felt down…I would read the tombstones and cry over flowers that had been left, the notes people left to their loved ones, the saying ‘gone but not forgotten’ touches me so, dead flowers on top of living grass that hides the dead people buried below was some morbid type of poetry that somehow infused me with life, with feeling, with real emotion.

the park bench that is dedicated to a dead married couple that lived and breathed love…it’s a nice notion to read the inscriptions, it’s wonderfully romantic even…cause once you die, no one would put a tombstone that says here lies a dead beat mother who beat me all time…no they would say here lies a wonderful mother and we will miss her so …even in death, no one speaks the truth.

I went to a funeral once, for a man I never met but heard about. He was an asshole who abandoned his children, stole from everyone he knew and was a mean alcoholic who died at the age of 50 from alcohol poisoning. Even though I never met him, I cried so much, because there wasn’t much to say about this guy, the service was super short i mean what can you say about a homeless alcoholic without embellishing too much? I thought of the life he could of lead and where did he go wrong and how sad that he died with nothing…but then, you always die with nothing even if you have made something of yourself and you have everything, it’s still nothing. So, he could be me, maybe he realized this too and that’s why he gave up because of the pointlessness of it all, why bother to try and be good and be straight and sober? Who fucking cares? I totally get it!

Yet all of it makes me sad cause these people who were mothers fathers dr’s heros lovers, friends, junkies, assholes, con artists, no matter what kind of life they lead, it ended …so when people talk to me about long term goals I think fuck, why are we thinking about 10 years from now, how about the reality of 100 years from now when none of this shit matters, none of it! The majority of us won’t even be remembered in 100 years from now save for an inscription on a slab of rock where our corpses rot and become fodder for the bugs.

Sometimes, flashes of inspiration lifts me out of this deep inertia that I float in constantly. Like earlier when I got inspired to revamp my diet and exercise regime (which is pretty grim these days) because maybe getting a svelt body and eating organic healthy food, will make life more liveable? Or how a few days ago, I actually put up an online dating profile so I could take charge and find the love that I so deeply crave and therefore be fulfilled and live happily ever after. Or the compulsion I felt a couple of hours ago to really give it a go and follow my dreams no matter what because then I will have meaning and meaning will make me want to live a better life right? It has to make me happy right?

No! NO! and NO! This is not true…memories of getting my body skinny and fit to where I was proud of it, flash through my mind but I still felt the same as I do now. Yes, I have lived exclusively on a vegetarian organic diet but that just gave me more energy with which to plunge deeper into these types of thinking…I have been loved and loved another but still that hollowed out feeling remained, like there was something missing, something that I was incapable of grasping, of finding , of obtaining…a hole of insatiable hunger as if my very soul were the tapeworm itself eating through the love, the joy, the sustenance that life provides me.
I have followed my dreams and fulfilled them but they didn’t fulfill me back.

I have scoured the earth and have come back with nothing but shards of glass embedded in my body, reminders of the pain that fulfilling something that brings no fulfillment brings. An empty hole, a vacuum, I seek, I pray, I breathe, I keep living with the hopes that something will satisfy, that everything will stop cutting me and something will start healing me.

I don’t even know what I am writing right now, I don’t really have a point or anything to say, just the compulsion to keep my fingers moving, to put words onto the page. Secretly I think that one of these days I will reveal to myself, through stream of consciousness writing, the true secret to the point of my life, to the point of your life…

Hmmm, doesn’t look like that secret is going to reveal itself today…
Patricia