If you’ve considered suicide, what keeps you from doing it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone thinking about it not have family/kids/spouse/pet etc? In other words, no one that would be scarred if you vanished tomorrow?

I certainly struggled before I got married. It was the “permanent solution to a temporary problem” saying (that a lot of people apparently hate) that got me through.

Also I think that learning that my brain was lying to me and it wasn’t true that the world would be better off without me (maybe it didn’t need me but i wasn’t going to move the needle), and that even though i couldn’t find any deeper important meaning in life didn’t mean that it was pointless. Those little things we do, like hobbies and jobs, can be the entire meaning of life, and maybe that’s enough.

[Anonymous]

Very close to my child, who is adopted. If I was gone, it would rip her up. Cannot allow that to happen.

[Anonymous]

I strongly considered it around November/December 2005. I wrote letters to my family members and called my grandparents to tell them that I loved them. Then I purchased everything I would need in order to do it and picked a weekend that I knew no one would be expecting to see me.
The thing that stopped me was realizing that I would ruin Christmas for my parents and siblings forever. So, in my insane logic, I decided to wait until January. Apparently, in my mind, if I killed myself in January, my entire family could just forget about me over Christmases, and not think about my passing until the holiday had ended. Like they wouldn’t think about it every day for the rest of their lives.

Anyway, by the time January came, some things changed for me. I started an antidepressant. I was still suicidal a lot of the time, but I had many moments of ambivalence. I moved back in to my parents’ house for the month so that I would be monitored (not that I told them what was going on), and I wouldn’t have weekends alone.

Eventually, things got better. I met my husband that spring, and we started dating here and there. And things got bad again. I stopped my antidepressant, then didn’t start it again because I didn’t think I was worth anyone’s time to prescribe it for me. Eventually, my depression resolved on its own after about a tear and a half. (I meant to say year and a half, but I’m going to leave that in there).

I have dealt with it a couple of times since then. But once I got married and then had children, I never made any serious plans. A couple of years ago, my son was diagnosed with ADHD, and I realized that I had so many of the same symptoms. I started treatment for it, and many of my thoughts of worthlessness and hopelessness went away.

[Anonymous]

If you met me in person you would never know that I feel like this everyday. In person I am the happiest woman you could ever meet.
It's just a mask. I feel worthless, empty and ashamed everyday.

[Anonymous]

I'm a nanny too and often stay on this earth because of the kids. Like a previous poster does. But then I have lied to them. I pretend I live alone when in fact I still live with family at the age of 37. I didn't want their parents to judge me as a loser but now realise that they don't like the real me. Just the me I have portrayed myself as.
I am single, no kids, unattractive, no friends. Just worthless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a nanny too and often stay on this earth because of the kids. Like a previous poster does. But then I have lied to them. I pretend I live alone when in fact I still live with family at the age of 37. I didn't want their parents to judge me as a loser but now realise that they don't like the real me. Just the me I have portrayed myself as.
I am single, no kids, unattractive, no friends. Just worthless.

At 37, you're so young. I moved across country from Kansas City, MO, my home town to Arlington, VA at the age of 40. I was living on my own, though. However I had never lived away from family. I need people around me. I made my own family by meeting other people at my apartment complex who love their dogs as much I love my mine. You're not worthless.

[Anonymous]

I was so saddened by the suicides of Kate Spade, Robin Williams, and Anthony Bourdain. I watch Anthony Bourdain's show sometimes, and I can't believe someone with so much life committed suicide. It almost feels like throwing a temper tantrum, so I try to power through my thoughts of "I'll kill myself" because life isn't always going to go my way. I know that some people can't power through those feelings of life never improving.

[Anonymous]

Because I couldn’t break my parents like that. Now that I have kids it’s them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was so saddened by the suicides of Kate Spade, Robin Williams, and Anthony Bourdain. I watch Anthony Bourdain's show sometimes, and I can't believe someone with so much life committed suicide. It almost feels like throwing a temper tantrum, so I try to power through my thoughts of "I'll kill myself" because life isn't always going to go my way. I know that some people can't power through those feelings of life never improving.

I was jealous of the three of them for finding the courage I lack.

[Anonymous]

My kids. Can’t leave them with my abusive husband or my aging parents. My oldest has special needs. We haven’t come all this way together for me to just say “you’re on your own, buddy.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone thinking about it not have family/kids/spouse/pet etc? In other words, no one that would be scarred if you vanished tomorrow?

That is the tunnel vision of depression. When I came out of it, it felt like I had been living life looking through a cardboard toilet paper tube. Once I got my peripheral vision back, I saw that there were many people who would be affected if I had killed myself.

I'm PP. Can you share who? I mean my coworkers might for 5 minutes, maybe, but other than that...no one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have kids and a husband, and I can't imagine the trauma it would cause them. I love them too much to ever put them through that.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm afraid I'll traumatize my daughters.

Yep, you will

My dad committed suicide when I was 5 yo. To this day I can't really let it go, I'm mad at him for leaving me and my sister, abandoning us.
I do understand that he was mentally ill, and at that point wasn't himself, but it still hurts, even so many years later. (darn, today is exactly 40 years since his death)

So, even though it's get really dark from time to time and I toy with idea what if, I'd never ever do it. I'd rather commit myself to psych ward

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a nanny too and often stay on this earth because of the kids. Like a previous poster does. But then I have lied to them. I pretend I live alone when in fact I still live with family at the age of 37. I didn't want their parents to judge me as a loser but now realise that they don't like the real me. Just the me I have portrayed myself as.
I am single, no kids, unattractive, no friends. Just worthless.

At 37, you're so young. I moved across country from Kansas City, MO, my home town to Arlington, VA at the age of 40. I was living on my own, though. However I had never lived away from family. I need people around me. I made my own family by meeting other people at my apartment complex who love their dogs as much I love my mine. You're not worthless.

+1 Love this. Every human being has inherent worth. I am sure there are many "successful" married with kids and careers folks who would trade places with you two.

[Anonymous]

I doubt it.
Who would want to be an unattractive woman in their late thirties, single and still living with their family?
The kids I look after deserve a better role model.