Suicide Always Looks Back, Not Forward

It’s easy to want to die when you’re looking back at years of walking through life with a boulder in your stomach. It’s easy to kill an agonising history, but suicide doesn’t kill the past. It kills the future: that moment you first see your baby’s face; the girl you haven’t met yet who will arrive if you just hold on; the promotion that alters the very fabric of your life. Suicide kills the day your future life partner first tells you he loves you. It kills every sunset and every happy tear that will fall when you get past your depression.

When I attempted suicide, it wasn’t just the pain I wanted to kill. I hated my life. I hated my job. I hated my home town and my relationship, and I’d stopped believing I could change any of it. We commit suicide to end the suffering, and not to end our lives, but it’s hard to survive when your life’s not bringing you a single nth of strength.

In those days, I used to play the “what If” game a lot: what if I never found a real career? What if I couldn’t get out of that godawful town? What if I never got past my depression?

What if. What if. What if. I asked all the what ifs except what if I did manage to move to the city? What if I found a real career? What if I fixed my relationships with my family? What if everything turned out gorgeously?

The “What If” world only fills itself with darkness. It doesn’t bother with hope much, and it turned out that I did make a life in the city. I did find a career I loved. I did fix my relationships and recover from depression.

If I’d seen my future back then, I might never have picked up that blade.

When you’re facing a long, dark history, it’s impossible to think anything might change, but then one day someone reaches out to help you in all the right ways, and then the lights start turning back on.

I believe change is possible because I’ve seen it, not just in my own life, but that of the many friends I now have who got help, too. Miracles happen, and they’re not made of magic, but of those moments when you finally find the right kind of help. That’s when you get to work towards the future with all its precious moments and new stories. It’s easy to want to die when you’re looking back, so look forward. Look towards the many miracles that will turn the lights back on.