Inspiration from Struggle (On being suicidal & surviving)

Last updated on: July 31, 2016 at 12:35 am by Karen Kaiser

Inspiration from Struggle (On being suicidal & surviving) 2016-07-31T00:35:30-04:00 Karen Kaiser

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I told him I had no intention of sharing this story. The person who inadvertently helped save my life one night. So far, I’ve told him and no one else. I don’t like talking about this subject. But I know that it’s necessary in order to help people understand the struggle of mental illness. I’m talking about this incident both to show how humans can help one another by sharing their experiences, and to highlight suicidality.

To begin, I mentioned in another post that I mostly feel suicidal when I’m in a mixed bipolar state. A mixed state is when you are manic and depressed at the same time. Suicidality usually rears it’s ugly head during those episodes. I would estimate that I have about 2 mixed episodes per year. One night in February, I was feeling extremely low. I was totally empty and my soul felt such a void that I couldn’t stand it anymore. I thought my children would be better off without me. I actually thought they didn’t need me in their lives, and that I was like a cancer to them. It’s crazy, right? But that’s what this type of episode does to you. It clouds your thinking and makes you almost delusional.

That night I had decided that it was time for me to stop living. It wasn’t a conscious or rational thought. I just knew my time on earth was finished. I planned to jump out of my bedroom window. Even that wasn’t a full thought out thing. I just had a sense that I would take a leap at some point that night. It was over, I thought. I can’t really explain it. Anyway, I happened to have my laptop open on my bed. I remember saying my goodbye’s in my heart and silently deciding it was time. When I turned over, I glanced at my laptop screen for some reason. I saw a post about someone in prison who I had been writing to and supporting. The woman who wrote the post said that for those of us waiting for justice for the man, we had only been following his story for about 2 years; while he had been waiting for 17. In other words, we should be patient. This hit me really profoundly. I couldn’t reconcile how this person had been going through his ordeal for 17 years, yet I had only been having problems for a few years. If he hadn’t given up, how could I? At that point, I knew I couldn’t go through with my plan. It just didn’t make sense.

This was the first time something like this happened. Other times I’ve been suicidal, I went to the hospital and the doctors had to help me recover. This time, the problem resolved on it’s own after being reminded of someone else’s issues. It happened again recently, as I’ve blogged about. I don’t quite understand how. But it’s like that with mental illness. Sometimes things work out without much intervention and others, you need help from doctors and other professionals to get better. It just depends. I’m happy for how things ended up that night, and I’m happy I decided to give life another shot. My kids definitely aren’t better off without me. I know that now. Nor is my family. I’m grateful to Allah to be thinking clearly.

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