Want to Want

July 21st 2018

In my new part time job I am connecting with people struggling with mental health. Most of the time, so far, it's been pretty uplifting. We might focus on what is going well, what there is to look forward to, how they are handling relationships with others, medication, and what they're doing to stay healthy.

Of course, not all conversations are as easy. There will be times when someone wants to die, when the pain is just too great and the weariness debilitating. 

Sometimes the arguments seem all too reasonable - why should someone stay alive when all of life is suffering? Last night I went into the bathroom to cry at work because I feared I hadn't said the magical right thing.

You know 'the magical right thing'? It's that thing you wish you knew to say to someone suffering so deeply that all they can see is a view from a concrete basement. If you have lost anyone to suicide it will come back and whisper to you every now and then 'but you didn't say EXACTLY the right thing'. And no. You didn't. Because it doesn't fucking exist. You can try and try. You can reach out, hug and hold and hope. You can do a visualization for the person to turn up the lights in the basement and to notice the door - but you can't make them walk out - can you?

Are we to start behaving like Tony Robbins at his seminar where he shocks and shouts people into life? He has studied the shit out of a whole lot of stuff in order to do that. He might not even get it right each time, but no one dies. Not that I know of anyway.

If I could take a suicidal person and make them feel the love,the beauty, the reasons to live, I would do it. I know that it would involve changing the environment and physiology - and sometimes these drastic changes might have other issues attached. Courses such as Landmark could be helpful for some, and unsafe for someone else. 

What saves a life? What breaks through the concrete of deep, deep depression?

If you broke through and chose to live, I'd love to hear from you and know what made the difference. Comments in the blog rather than facebook are greatly appreciated. 

I was suicidal when I was 21. Life had thrown up so many challenges already and I was exhausted. I thought there could be nothing better than to just ly down and never have to get up again. Fortunately my mum picked up that something wasn't quite right (I was suddenly way too cheerful) and I told her the truth - that I had my plan and was going through with it. I saw a counselor and I thought she was a bit useless. 

She was hesitant and shy, admitted she was quite new at this. That really pissed me off for some reason and I was arrogant towards her and said "give me a reason to live" and she appealed to my fragile ego. She asked if I'd considered university. I thought it was for rich people and she said it was for anyone. I then said 'but I'll be in debt'. She replied 'yes, but you'd be alive'. Suddenly a light did go on. Oh. Yeah. 

And yes, I have not paid back my student loan to this day as I've never made a decent enough wage for long enough to do so (should have become a Graphic Designer ay?), but babies, I'm alive!

Now the thing is, I vowed to myself that I would never, ever die by my own hand after that depression did lift and I climbed out of the basement to see what else was going on. I wanted to want to live. I wanted to want to feel better again. I was willing to open the door out of that basement once someone showed me it was there. 

What to do when someone is so tired and sad that they can't even walk to the basement door? If only I could carry them - but that's not my journey. Instead I would ask them to ask their own higher power, whatever that might be, to give them the strength to do it. Your higher power might be nature, or some nameless and beautiful sense of expansiveness, limitless energy, starlight, an inner birdsong. Want to want it. Can you ask then, even for that? To want to want to feel better. To want to want to live.

Love Cx