Is
Suicide the Answer?
by
Larissa Kaye Batten
So
you want to die. Tell me about it. I know
what you're talking about. No really, I
do. I'm 32 years old, and I spent years of
my life wanting to die. I'm not here to
tell you what the textbooks and the
professionals tell those of us who have
been suicidal. Nor am I here to talk you
out of anything you might be thinking of
doing. That's really up to you, the same
way what to do with my own suicidal
thoughts was up to me.
So why exactly am I
here? Honestly? Honestly. To share with
you my own experience with the hope that
you might be able to get something out of
it. You may have a little trouble
believing that I was once like you, that I
once too thought very seriously about
dying. So why don't I begin by telling you
a little bit about me.
For over 10 years
of my life, I wanted to die. This is
saying a lot, because I'm only in my early
30s now.
Can you believe it? Yeah, you probably
can. For over one-third of my life so far,
I wanted OUT. I wanted ESCAPE, NO PAIN, AN
END, A FINISH, A FULL STOP, NO MORE, THE
END, DEATH, OUT, OUT, OUT, OUT.
Why? In
some ways, I think the reasons don't
matter. All of our reasons are different.
But I'll tell you my reasons anyway. I was
sexually abused by a relative as a child.
I never felt like I belonged. I felt
different, unique, alone, nerdy, scared,
shy, lonely, weird, and crazy. Becoming a
writer at an early age didn't help
matters. Creative people are different,
right? My family didn't show their
feelings too much, and the fact that I did
made me feel even crazier!
Then I developed an eating disorder,
became an alcoholic, abused pills on
and off, self-mutilated, got into
destructive relationships, was
acquaintance
raped while drunk, and developed an
incredibly strong hatred of myself and
life.
The solution? My solution? To find an
escape. My only goal in life.
So much for my wealthy background, Ivy
League education, and many talents
and dreams.
By the age of 17, I was on a death
mission.
I can't even tell you that I sat around
very much and thought about
"SUICIDE".
I was too busy doing things to kill myself
to spend too much time
thinking of how to do it.
Drinking and starving yourself to death,
driving drunk, going home with
strange, dangerous men, wandering strange
big cities at 3am drunk, dressing
like a prostitute, cutting my skin open,
loving and hating the sight of my
blood, deciding to get drunk and drown
myself in the ocean... Well, you could
say I was straight on my way to death.
Thinking about death? If there is such a
thing as going beyond thinking
about death, becoming so obsessed with
ending my life that it became a normal
and usual feeling for me, that was me.
Now do you believe me?
Now do you believe that I was just like
the rest of us people who could
no more deal with life and reality than we
could deal with anything at all.
Yes, I wanted to die!
Until I reached a point that I wanted to
die so badly that I hit the
extremely fine line between wanting to
live and wanting to die.
Do you know what I mean? No, maybe you
don't.
Well, I'll tell you. You might find it
enlightening.
I have come across many a fine line in my
life, but none so unbelievably
powerful and possibly deadly as the fine
line between wanting to live, and
wanting to die.
If you want to die right now as badly as I
once did, then you probably
have absolutely no idea what I'm talking
about. Maybe you've given up on life
altogether. Maybe you don't know about the
fine edge.
Do you?
If you've ever walked to the very edge of
a cliff, looked straight down,
saw death as close to your face as you've
ever seen, turned around to take
one last look at the possibilities behind
you instead of before you, realized
nothing could be so bad or final as the
death in front of you... thought that maybe
life wasn't so bad after all, realized
maybe, just maybe, just maybe, life
could change even enough for anything to
be better than the finality and numbness
of death, then you know what I'm talking
about.
Not a single doctor, psychiatrist,
therapist, medication, person, place
or thing on this earth had or could have
given me what standing on the edge
of the cliff did.
A choice.
A choice?
Who has a choice when all they want to do
is die?
I'll tell you, because I found the choice.
Which is why I'm sitting here, writing this right now, for people who
are like I once was.
A friend of mine is in the hospital right
now wondering whether she
should live or die. At least that's what
her actions are telling me.
I didn't even know there were that many
ways to try to die in a hospital
until I heard all the things she's managed
to try in the past week.
I was in the hospital once like she was. I
was starving myself to death,
severely depressed, having flashbacks of
being raped, and wanting to die more
than I ever had in my life.
Until I discovered THE CHOICE.
It might sound a little strange to talk
about a choice in the context of
desperately wanting to die, but it's the
only word that fits into this part
of my own story here.
See, I never knew I had a choice.
I never knew that there was an
alternative.
I thought the only way, out of the pain I
was in, was death.
I had tried all the destructive ways of
getting out of the pain that I
had the courage to try, but all of them
had ceased working for me.
Believe me or not, I never, never knew
that there was any other way out
of my pain other than something permanent and
final.
Until I reached the edge of the cliff that
I told you about.
So there I was looking at death straight
in the face, daring it not to
take me, and boom.
Yeah, boom. Just like that.
I wanted to die so badly that I finally
realized how much I wanted to
live.
I realized that it wasn't that I wanted
death per se.
I saw that I wanted life without pain.
I didn't want to live life feeling
miserable anymore.
I wanted life like other people had it.
I wanted to feel alive, and happy, and
joyful, like other people walking
down the street.
And then another very strange thing
happened.
I became aware of something I hadn't known
before.
Now remember, I have an Ivy League
education, so it's not that I'm not
somewhat intelligent.
But believe me or not, I had never
realized, until this point in my life,
how incredibly final death would be.
And all of a sudden, when I wanted to die
more badly than I had ever
wanted to die, I realized that I would
never have another chance at life.
That, no matter how bad I felt my life had
been up until this point, I
would never again have the opportunity to
live in any way whatsoever.
And so it dawned on me. Maybe I had a
choice.
A choice?
Yeah, a choice.
Maybe, just maybe, maybe there was some
way I could learn to live my life
without all the pain.
Even if it worked out that I decided
suicide was the best option
after all, I could always make that
decision later on. I could always go back
to that alternative.
But once I killed myself, I would never
again have the chance to have the
life I had always wanted.
A real one. A whole one. A good one.
I decided to live.
I decided to try life after all.
I decided to give life a chance.
And some years later now, I can honestly
tell you that making that
decision was the best decision I have made
in my entire 32 years.
Because today I have a life that is so
rich, and abundant, and beautiful,
and amazing, that it is almost hard to
imagine I ever wanted to die.
Except, as you know, people who spend as
much time as I did contemplating
suicide never forget that we once felt
that way.
Is my life perfect today?
NO!
I have plenty of painful stuff in my life.
Like stuff that many, many
people do not have to go through.
But even with the pain, I now have such joy, and light, and love in my
life that I don't even think of killing
myself.
I spend most of my time now thinking about
my latest dreams.
Because I'll tell you something.
When you have realized in such a short
time all the dreams I have
realized, you get the opportunity to dream
up new ones.
And when you spent as long as I did
wanting to die, to have a dream at
all is a dream in itself.
Speaking of dreams, it is my hope that
more will join me on the path of
those who choose life.
Bless you, my friend, because I know what
it feels like to want to die.
And now I know what it feels like to want
to LIVE.
I am grateful to say that I have been in
recovery for a good few years
now, and the life I have chosen keeps
getting better and better.
It amazes me to think I could have been
another suicide statistic.
Instead, I'm a miracle.
Thank you, friend, for witnessing my
miracle.
 This
article was excerpted from:
"Why Die? A Survival Guide for the Suicidal"
by
Larissa Kaye Batten.
Download this book
(for free)
About The
Author
Larissa Kaye Batten is the author
of "Why Die? A Survival Guide for the Suicidal". ? 1999 Larissa Kaye Batten.
She specializes in books & art for the soul.
This article is excerpted with permission from her book "Why Die? A Survival Guide for the Suicidal",
which can be downloaded for FREE from her website at http://www.spiritandsoul.com/life.html
or by clicking on the
book on the right. The author welcomes e-mail from readers. She can be
reached at
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