*If you or anyone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, please call or text 988; don’t hesitate, don’t wait, don’t talk yourself out of it, ask for help. Call or text 988*

As a seasoned counseling veteran in the trenches, on street curbs, in clinics, emergency rooms, prisons, jails, homes or outside a shelter; anywhere really.

the truth is: it’s always the same lines. The same belief system.

Curiously not one of my clients ever met each other. But they said the same things:

“Everyone would be better off it I wasn’t here.”

“I’m a burden to everyone, to my family.”

“I have failed too much.”

“I’ve gone too far. Everything I do is wrong.”

“I’m a failure.”

“I’ve never been loved. This loneliness, this misery is unbearable.”

“I can’t take it anymore.”

‘I just don’t want to be here anymore.”

The circumstances were different, the people, the scenes. But the common thread?

Awful unbearable pain that seems endless, never to stop. And it seems, like a way out.

The “Why?” is not rational. Of course not. Why would it be? It’s not rational to want to end our lives. We are designed to survive and endure. To bare the most difficult of wars, of suffering, surviving trials and tribulations;

But what happens when we face what we consider to be unbearable.

“Every man has his breaking point.” (Red; The Shawshank Redemption, 1994)

No one is allowed to judge what mental point we get to that says “ENOUGH.”

But some of us have our “ENOUGH.”

It’s an unbearable pain, be it devastating grief, loss, situations, trauma.

There may be a hundred reasons, maybe one.

No matter what. It’s real, its’ a fight, its’ a battle, it’s a war.

Regardless of anyone’s spiritual belief, why would that thought ever arrive? Blame it on a disorder, chalk it up to hereditary, say it’s just life. But ultimately, if we really are spiritual beings, then why would this come to so many? In such a powerful but subtle voice that would say the same lies to people who have never met each other? No one said it or heard it in a movie. They just ultimately, conclusively share the same belief of the mind….

“Everyone would be better of if I weren’t here.”

Where the hell did that come from? That’s right, I said it, Hell.

Where else would something like that come from? Certainly not from a loved one who couldn’t do without you.

This isn’t meant to be treated with insensitivity. I can honestly say, not in a rush to relate but an actual, been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. Yes, me, even me-I’m no spiritual guru or Yoda. Counselor for over 16 years yes, but very much a human that has known agony, faced the awful luminous shadow cast upon my life after repeated devastation: feeling alone in the waves, that kept crashing, sending me under, only to fight to surface and get clobbered again; wave after wave, darkness, bottomless; no end in sight. No shore to be seen and then a moment of what tricked me into thinking it was sanity, what if I just gave into the waves of suffering? Stopped fighting? Why did existence seem so excruciating?

I didn’t want to die. I just needed a way out. I wanted a remedy for the deep, white hot searing pain. I didn’t want my life to be over, I wanted the fight to end. I craved a day without war. I wasn’t an empty desolate, barren waste land, I was depleted, grief stricken and in level of emotional pain that I had never been prepared to handle. I woke drenched in sweat and terror, with flashbacks of my near death experience and trying to survive complex post traumatic stress disorder. Feeling as though I had been hijacked, bound into a chair against my will reliving my own personal hell via memory of all the awful things I had somehow by the grace of God survived and was still alive. But the pain, the unbearable pain. Emotionally fractured, nervous system in hypervigilance or shock, alternating between trying to function in front of people while actually dwelling in that deep vibration of excruciating pain that only trauma survivors know. There is a point of crying so often and so much to the point where your body and mind choose apathy. The sobbing and screaming turn to the deep weight, physically of being able to get out of bed being too insurmountable. It’s not even getting out bed really, for this only takes moments. It’s the awful reality and the truth that we face. That we are living with something we never imagined we would have to live with. It seems endless. It seems like we are never going to be okay again. That life is hell. That this is hell. That there will only be hell.

But the truth is. Our emotions aren’t facts. Our feelings aren’t always truth. They aren’t right or wrong, they simply are. No need to persecute our pain ridden state. Just realization and self actualization and identification. I don’t want my life to end. I want my life to have purpose and meaning. I don’t want to end my life, I want my pain to stop. I want the suffering to end. I want something else. Not just this. My past trauma does not predict my future. I may be suffering but what if my circumstances were different? What if they changed? What if the people that hurt me weren’t in my life? What if I could find peace and become healed?

Reframing is everything. The earliest recordings of when people began saying suicide was a “solution” happened at its basic core of existence that it seems like some kind of answer. Some kind of solution. But it is not. Its throwing in the towel on a future we’ve never loved and a block that was built to see this can’t be it?

This isn’t some blog to indict us into fear and religious conviction that we are awful for thinking or feeling as we should. This isn’t one more guilt trip. It is the reality that no matter how far gone we can believe our situation to be, no matter how crushed and broken hearted we are; there is no need to make a final decision in a temporary state.

The common thread is a voice that comes to so many. The one that kicks people when they are done. A subtle form of malice that tries to entice any beautiful soul into utter darkness with whispers of lies of condemnation. It says:

“You’ve made too many mistakes. The humiliation/shame/guilt/pain is too much. It will always be this way.”

And to what proof does that hold? What truth is there beyond a thought that becomes a belief which in turn becomes cataclysmic destruction and demise?

If for any reason you feel hopeless, that you or your situation is a lost cause, that your pain is permanent? If it’s been long enough, if you’ve felt that weight again and again. It may feel isolating, but I can’t count the amount of clients, of friends, of family have felt that way too. Pain is a universal language. And even though you feel isolated and alone, you don’t have to be.

What if all that we told ourselves was actually the truth? Not feelings, not harshly spoken words? But truth.

Sometimes we roll our eyes at the sayings “One day at a time.” or “There is hope.”

But the truth is, I have met many that fought through that awful myriad of lies and maze of pain and live a life of peace. That remember not wanting to live through it but have survived and are alive and well.

Often we see only our pain and are blind to hope. We can’t think of anything but trying to stop the pain, by any means neccesary.

We sometimes can’t, rightfully so, because of pain, that we really can live a better and different life.

You aren’t looking for your life to have an ending. You really crave healing. You aren’t trying to not exist. You’re trying to live a day without war. You’re depleted not a mistake.

Nothing you have ever done would ever warrant a life sentence of pain and suffering with no end in sight.

No matter how much you hurt, no matter what you’ve been through. It can change, you can heal and you can have the life that you want.
One where you can laugh, smile and be at peace. One where you feel like you aren’t at the mercy of anyone or anything. A life that you wake up loving and go to bed thankful for.

DON’T GIVE UP.

Please, hear me out. The answer doesn’t lie in suicidal thoughts. It lies in pursuing the life you were meant to and deserve to have. One of peace. One of prosper. One of truth. One of healing.

I know that it has been this way. But I know it doesn’t have to stay this way.

I am counselor and survivor, I hope for your healing, I pray for you to have joy. If you need counseling, please call and schedule to book for an appointment. A day without war.

*this isn’t one more bog that this is a mindset that condones or supports suicidal ideation. This is simply a validation to those that suffer and reminder to reframe, to reconfigure, to never give up. Text 988 for help*