Making Peace with Suicide

Posted April 10th, 2015 by lexa and filed in Guided Writings
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Making Peace with Suicide… I know that statement sounds impossible and crazy to even contemplate and I want to shed some light on one of my personal experiences with suicide and I hope that this helps anyone who has experienced losing someone to suicide be able to make at least some peace with it. (I told my son I wanted to write about this and was trying to figure out how to do it without using him as an example and he said, you may certainly use me , if it helps one person it is worth it).

My oldest son experienced a couple year span where he found himself disenchanted with life. He found that nothing really excited him, that getting up go to college was a challenge and that he did not enjoy it when he got there. He found that getting up itself was a challenge and preferred to sleep to not have to be in his experience of life.

His depression became my biggest focus. How could I fix this? I cried, I begged, I prayed, and I demanded that God make him happy! I worried most of the time about him, I cringed each and every time the phone rang that this would be “the call”, the call that said, you will never see him again, you failed because you could not make him happy, he is your son, and how could you have let him down this way.  My wonderfully wise husband finally said if suicide is what he chooses, you are going to have to accept it. I was appalled and said that not on my watch will he choose suicide, I will fix this.  After that first reaction, I let what he said sink in. Who was I to decide what was right for him? Who was I to decide it was my job to fix it? I finally was able to see it this way:  Before my son was born, he looked at earth and decided that it looked like fun and a good idea to take a human body. Once he got to that sad place in his life, he decided that this was not necessarily what he signed up for and did not really want to stay. I realized that I was being very selfish trying to make him choose to stay here. That if he had decided he hated college and wanted to quit, I would say fine, if you are not happy doing that, don’t do it. I had to honor him and say, if being a human does not serve you fine, if you are not happy doing that, don’t do it. It took a while to really own that, but it did happen. I stopped losing sleep worrying and was able to enjoy my life more, and am very happy that he has decided to stay around because I really enjoy him and would miss getting to spend time with him.


One Response to “Making Peace with Suicide”

  1. Ken says:

    Very good rationalization, I haven’t dwelt on it as long as you having just read the piece, but I feel like we need to try everything, medication and the like and if modern psychiatry and counseling love and prayer fail to change the course of events then we have no choice but to accept it.

    I am happy that you son stayed too.

    Was there something that changed? I think that would be helpful to people as well.