My darkest day

“I want to die”

Was the thought going through my head, over and over again, on repeat.

I was 21 years old, and life was hard.

I was lying in the middle of the street at 3 in the morning, and I was intoxicated.

I had been going out drinking with my friends, and I had met my ex there.

The pain after our breakup was still fresh and the anger was there, all consuming.

The street was empty and quiet, and I was lying there thinking about my life.

I had just given birth 3 months earlier, and I was now a single parent.

My ex and me broke up in a massive fight 1 month earlier, and it had been messy. This was the first day I had seen him after the breakup.

I didn’t have a lot of money and was in the process of moving back home to my mom.

I was on welfare, but my ex didn’t pay child support, and my beautiful daughter was still a baby in need of milk from the pharmacy.

I couldn’t breastfeed her, when she was born. I was so stressed out that my milk wasn’t running, and she was constantly hungry trying to feed from me, so I had to give her formula.

It wasn’t the first night out drinking with my friends, after I had given birth.

It was my way of escape, trying to drink my sorrows, and failures away.

My daughter was with my mom and being taken care of better than I could.

I was lying in the middle of the street, and I felt I was the biggest failure on earth.

Life was too hard.

I wasn’t a good mother, I hadn’t been a good girlfriend, I wasn’t a good friend, those where the thoughts I had. I was depressed, stressed, tired, and in pain.

I just wanted it all to stop.

While I was lying on the street thinking about all this, I hadn’t noticed a car had stopped and called the police, until a guy was standing over me and told me to get up. I wasn’t in a state to care so he lifted me up and put me inside the police car. I tried to resist but was too tired to fight back.

I don’t remember much from that night only one thing, that I was quiet, and that I tried to open the door of the moving car to jump out.

The policemen asked me my name, but I said nothing.

They drove me to detention, and I slept there that night.

In the morning I was woken up by a woman talking to me gently, asked my name and what happened that night.

I started crying and said that I just wanted to die.

She drove me to the psychiatrist department of the hospital, where I spent the whole day talking to psychiatrists.

I was sent home, after that.

This was my darkest day of my life, and when I think back to the pain I was in and remembering the feeling that I wanted to end it all, I also think about how much that event gave me.

Even in the darkest hour you can find strength and truth in it.

Suicide thoughts I think is common, acting them out isn’t that common. But I think everyone can be in the state that they want the pain to stop.  

Before the feeble attempt to take my life, I had often had suicide thoughts, and a few times I had tried, but little did I know that after this event I would never have another attempt again.

The state had been informed by the police and the psychiatrist that I needed help, so I meet my social worker and she sent me to an organization that helped young mothers.

There I meet a psychotherapist who changed my life view on suicide.

I told her about the event, and she said quote.

“fay, do you have any idea how selfish you had been, how many people you would affect if you had committed suicide. Not just your family but also people like me, your social worker, anyone you come across”

How many people would be left with the thought, what could I have done to prevent Fay from committing suicide?

How many would be angry but also sad.

The main reason I wanted to die was because I had the notion that I was a nuisance to society, to people around me and that everyone was better off if I was dead. That’s the occurring thought that goes through my mind when I’m in that state.

And now this stranger told me the truth of things, and I started thinking how I would feel if a stranger had committed suicide too, how I would feel.

And I agree I would feel the same, I felt the same way.

I knew a drug addict for a short time while at work, I only talked to him a few times, he was a customer, and I was just being polite, but I started to like the guy every time he came by to  talk. Last time I had talked to him he told me he was trying to get off the drugs, and that life was good. A few moths after I was told by his brother, that he had overdosed. He had often talked about me to his brother, so his brother wanted to tell me why I hadn’t heard from him in a while.

I still think about him, and I’m still angry at him, and I wish I had known that he was in pain, and that maybe I could have helped.

I’ve learned from experience, that it doesn’t matter how much pain you’re in emotionally, suicide is never the answer.

Life will always get a little better. The sun will shine again.

I still think about these words from my psychotherapist, and every time the thought of suicide has crossed my mind, I hear the words, and I snap out of it.

I would rather be in a state of immense physical and emotionally pain, then to hurt people around me, by taking my own life, and knowing this made me keep on fighting.  

I haven’t talked to her in years, but if I ever see her again, the first thing I would do is give her the biggest hug.

She helped me get through the worst time of my life.

After the meeting with her, I started pulling myself up, I stopped going out to drink, started playing computer instead, and I got into gaming.

I went back to live with my mom, and it got easier being a mother for my baby daughter.

I got a better relationship with my ex, and we grew into being better co parents for my daughter.

I learned how to look at the bright side of things, when the days are dark, and have hope that it will get better with time.

Those days leading up to my suicide attempt was the worst days in my life, I’ve felt pain after, and life wasn’t always easy, but the way I was thinking about myself was different. I never ever thought the thoughts that I deserve to die, and that people are better off without me.

And changing that view about myself changed everything.

We all have dark days sometimes and how I learned to get through the worst ones is to talk about it. If you can’t talk to family or friends, even talking to a stranger helps.

It gives you perspective that you might not have on things, in either way it can help drown the negative thoughts out.

Like what she did for me, put some common sense into my irrational thoughts.

After the darkest winter nights, one day spring will come.

That’s what I say to myself if I’m in a bad place emotionally. I remember that time, and what I learned from it, and I wait for spring to come.

Its about having hope that it will get better.

And it always gets better, eventually.