A Wonderful Sunrise over Stannage Edge

I am not unaccustomed to lying awake at 4.00am and being swamped with serious thoughts of taking my own live.  Sleep doesn’t come easy and my thoughts become sharply focussed on the failure to develop a career, financial worries, the fear of rejection, awareness of my declining physical health and feeling all alone. I desperately seek relief from this pain.  Relief is a feeling and you have to be alive to feel it.

I want to reassure anyone who knows me and is inclined to dash to the phone to call me, that the fact that I am prepared to write openly about this, indicates that I am not about to throw myself in front of the next express to St Pancras.  I understand that it is a fact the people most determined to take their own lives will not speak of it to anyone.

I remember a group of people sitting around my kitchen table and gossiping about the bizarre behaviour of one of their friends.  He had done something foolish, had possibly felt ashamed and had withdrawn socially.  A few weeks later, he took his own life.  I was in a pub and some of the people who had earlier sat at my table joined me.  A woman who was clearly very upset stated that she had wished the unfortunate young man had chosen to speak to her before taking his own live.

I’ve lay awake at night and considered suicide.  It’s not easy to pick up the phone and call someone.  You don’t want to appear weak or flawed and you don’t want your call to be perceived as a pathetic attempt at attention seeking.  You want just want somebody to understand and acknowledge that you have more pain than you can cope with right now.

Some people react badly to suicidal feelings, possibly because they feel angry, frightened, ashamed, confused or guilty.  I have received such a phone call and I know it is not a comfortable place to be.

My strategy for dealing with suicidal thoughts is to get outside and to walk.  For me, it is harder to contemplate throwing myself off nearest tower block when I am watching a wonderful sunrise over Stannage Edge rather staring blankly at my bedroom wall.