Nearly suicide month

It is nearly October and in this country due to the enervating heat that peaks during this hot and dusty month it is commonly referred to as suicide month. The start of these thirty-one days is marked by the anniversary of when a girl in my year at school committed suicide when we were in our first year of high school. It is always a poignant memory and having experienced depression subsequently and contemplated and attempted suicide myself it also always causes retrospection.

For many years I felt a sense of guilt and responsibility for my school friend's death. She had been under performing in school and at the end of the term prior to her death she had not given her parents her school report. Being the next person in the alphabet after her I had witnessed our class teacher giving her the report and was subsequently called upon to testify that she had indeed been given the report. It turned out my classmate had problems in her family life and I felt ashamed that I hadn't tried more to reach out to her and be a friend she probably desperately needed. I do now know though that once you become set on suicide there is not much others around you can do to help you come out of this thought line. You need professional help and even then this might not be enough. Once you enter into that downward slippery slope into utter hopelessness there is not much that can make you feel there is something worth living for.

My Christian faith has made me have my own inner war over my thoughts and how they align with what God's plan is. When at my wits end I have wondered why God can allow one to suffer and not allow an end. The age old dilemma of what happens to your soul if you commit suicide does even in my darkness pull me back though. Recently someone who has looked at many accounts of near death experiences mentioned that for suicide victims there is often no feeling of release when they neared death and the pain was still with them. This is a sobering thought. But is it enough to hold one back when one is at the bottom of what seems an insurmountable pit?

I have found that what has worked for me to some extent are methods of cognitive behavioural therapy, whereby when I start spiralling into negative thinking I try to stop the thought pattern and take pre-emptive measures to stop my descent into further depression. It does not necessarily become easier but it makes me more aware of my moods and I have learnt to become more recognitive of warning signs and have a greater awareness of my moods and underlying factors that are contributing to them. The key is then to have a basic action plan of what I should do to try elevate my mood or stop it from deteriorating further. This can include making myself get out of the house and see people, which is often the last thing I want to do. Simple things like being in the garden with my dogs can also help. At times it may not be depression but anger that has to be managed. An angry outburst due to pent up feelings can sometimes fuel the then downward decline in my optimistic outlook.

It has been a number of months now since I last had a serious contemplation of suicide. In my subconscious there lurks a fear though of returning to this state as it never feels like I have completely won and irradicated the possibility of feeling this way again. I have to try work on having things to look forward to in my life as a goal to strive towards and something to make me want to live until tomorrow for and see to its fruition. It is a work in progress.