Click here to submit your suicide experience for others to learn from.
| Survivor's Name | State/Province, Country | Age | Gender | Your Story |
| Kelly | Texas USA | 35-44 | Female | My mother Jo has been gone for 22yrs now. Its hard to even think its been that long I miss her so much still. Probably more now then when she 1st choose to leave us. She was sick all my life with depression and bipolar episodes. I knew nothing different. I thought it was normal for moms to act the way she did. Until I married at 18yrs old and became part of my N-laws family which took place in spring of '89 and my mom took her life in July '89. I was also pregnant with my 1st child. I was 8mths pregnant when she killed herself. I only remember the day July 23 1989. My older sister call me asking if I had talked to mom at all that day and that she couldn't find her. It was getting dark and we all knew mom didn't drive after dark. I knew it was bad just by that call. By the time I got to my parents home 2 different police cars were parked outside. Our father was at work and they wouldn't say anything except that we needed to call everyone we needed to NOW. So we did
except our father. When the confirmed that our mom had driven out to a dried up creek bed and test fired a gun she had bought months before and taken an over the counter sleep aid and shot herself. From that moment on I have no memories of anything for the next few days.
There I sit 22 yrs later and I miss her more today then ever. I have mothered 2 children without her. I have married 2 times and divorced 2 times without her. Became a grandmother 3yrs ago without her. I have had a lot of troubles over the years that I have had to go threw without her. I am mad that she left me here to do this alone. To birth my 1st child just weeks after she left me alone with no support during my 1st birth experience scared hurting and alone, so yes I've been really mad at her over the years but I miss her more then I am mad at her. I glad she isn't hurting anymore I know her life was hard sad and empty I'm happy she isn't that anymore, but now sometimes I am because of her choice. So with that knowledge I will suffer threw my hard times knowing that being here for my family is BETTER then not being here for myself and them. I miss you Mom and wish you happiness and all the peace you deserved when you were alive!!!! |
| Becky | UT 84049 | 45-54 | Female | My sweet son in law took his life 5 weeks ago. It was literally out of nowhere. He was healthy, happy and truly one of the finest people I have ever known. He saved our daughter in so many ways, her knight in shining armour. The two of them were perfect together. He left no note, no explanation. It is as if a bomb has gone off in our lives. We can't even begin to rebuild it because we are still sorting through all the devastation and rubble. I miss him so much it hurts, I see my daughter, a widow at 21, and my heart breaks because I cannot fix it and her pain is more than I can bear. At times I seriously cannot breathe. Then I am racked with all the questions as to "Why?". That is my daily life. Nothing else matters anymore. Nothing. |
| Doug | Texas USA | 45-54 | Male | My father committed suicide when I was 15. My parents fought all the time, and about once a year my mother would declare that she had enough, and would pack and head to her mothers house. That was what always triggered my fathers threats, and his rambling monotone talks of how things would be OK. That he has it all worked out and as soon as he snuffed it we would all be better off. He would scare me half to death by keeping a loaded .22 rifle in his car. The last time they looped out, and she packed, and he started in, I had just turned 15 and I was tired of being the adult in all this. I just was very detached from all of it. I was not rude or disrespectful, but all the times before this time, it would start a slow unraveling of me until they made up and it all got OK. Just this time I wasn't buying into it. I talked with him as much as ever, but I refused to listen when he crossed over into the macabre. This fight started on a friday night and by sunday it had all taken on this odd vibe I was not used to. Didn't matter. They could go to left field, I was staying here. I don't remember what was happening but he was taking me to my grandmothers at my mom's behest. He didn't seem to be as forlorn as usual, and I thought he was going to pull out if it. I told him if they divorced it would not be the end of the world. Yada yada. He got out and walked, not with me but frisked up on the porch like a small hyper dog. My grandmother, his mother-in-law, met him at the door and he took her hands and said something about loving her like she was his real mother. This was 1973 and it was not the dark ages, but people just were not aware of things and as perceptive as we are now. These things happen to somebody else and as odd as his affect was it just spurred me into deep thought of how incongruent things were. I walked across the living room and even though it was summer, I stood in front of a propane space heater with my hands behind me where they would need to be if it was lit. All just force of unthinking habit. But that was where I was standing when the shot went off. There was the sharp crack of the .22 immediately followed by the most blood curdling moan scream and he called out my mothers name twice. After that there was nothing but the most unsettling silence. Not a moan, no speaking, no nothing but the unnerving silence. That was from out there. Inside there was a little chaos unfolding. My mother was afraid he would come in and try to shoot her and so she kept back. My grandmother had come pretty well unhinged, but was trying to call the police. This was before they had 911 so she was fumbling with phone books and I know her first two tries out got wrong numbers. I still wonder what they must have thought. She was unaware she had the wrong number and just blurted out what had happened and how to get there. She kind of lived out in the country. Finally they were on the way. I never looked out the door or window and have no memory of what he looked like out there. The first cop that got there went to him and he just said,"why this man's dead." That was 35 years ago. It has faded over the years. There was a long time that It came to mind some part of each day. I mean 20 to 25 years. Somewhere around 25 years plus I started making it a day and then in a couple of years after that I could go days on end with out reliving it in some way. I wish I had better news for you guys that have just had the experience. If you can get counseling I would suggest it. It wasn't an option back then. Not for your average middle class folks. I am sure it would have helped but I'm not sure I would have sought it out. I got really tired of the pained looks in peoples faces when they were speaking to me. And after a couple of years I just quit telling people about it. That few seconds of that look. That awkward spot when they see you are not joking. I just found ways around it. But when you think back on it, and it makes you more angry then any other emotion, for me that was when it started to get better. We will all handle it in different ways but if anger is what you feel allow yourself to feel it and hold on to it. These people really sold us out in ways that others without this experience will never understand. You don't have to quit loving them. Just feel the anger when it comes. |
| Jordyn | ohio USA | 0-24 | Female | I'm only 16years old and I've already had some life changing experiences. I have been a cutter since the middle of 6th grade. Many people found out about what ide been doing to my self at the beging of my 8thgrade year so I had to stop. Once I went to hightschool I met a boy I really liked and then I began having more and more family problems. I got sick of everybody and I decided I would begin to hurt myself before anyone else could do it to me. Then I became good friends with a girl named Haley. She helped me through my hard time and helped me to quit when I thought no one cared about me or loved me she was there. Of you or someone you know is suicidal remember their is someone who loves you: "When there's nowhere else to turn All your bridges have been burned Feels like you've hit rock bottom Don't give up it's not the end Open up your heart again When you feel like no one Understands where you are Someone loves you even when you don't think so don't you know you got Me and Jesus by your side through the fight you will never be alone on your own you got me and Jesus After all that we've been through Be now you know I've doubted too But everytime my head was in my Hands you said to me Hold on to what we gotThis is worth any cost so Make the most of lifeThat's borrowed Love like there's no tomorrow"-Stellar Kart "Me and Jesus" |
| Steven | UT USA | 35-44 | Male | The first time I read this book I cried like a baby for at least twenty minutes after finishing it. What an amazing read! It's compelling, and pulls the reader along. Several years ago one of my most favorite uncles took his life in a similar manner as did the man in this story. My uncle suffered from depression as did the man in this story. So many people suffer with this real malady, and it is so great that a book like this is out there for people to see that depression and suicide are things that can be dealt with, and maybe see how much pain they inflict upon the survivors of the suicide. I miss my uncle terribly. Life is worth living. Stay here as long as God wants you to, and get help if any of the probems that are discussed in this book affect you or someone you know. They are real, and they are common. I know, I have chemical depression too. |
| Autumn | Alberta Canada | 25-34 | Female | I read the front page book review in the Lethbridge Herald and went to your site. I am grateful to see that you are taking your painful experience and doing so much good with it. I too lost a loved one to suicide. Twelve years ago, my mother killed herself in Cardston. She left behind ten children and a desperate husband. My youngest siblings were only six and seven, but I was already married and had a one year old boy and was well on my way to joining my mother as the third person to commit suicide in her family. I spent years being sick and medicated and then my Dad, in his desperation, found an answer for me that changed my whole life. Ten years later, I am a mother of four children and living a normal, healthy life in Coaldale. |
| Dawn | AZ USA | 35-44 | Female | Where do you begin with a story so dark a part of so many lives? 'My' suicide attempt was not really mine, as it has altered so many lives, both back then, and to this very day. The four children born out of my son's recovery from what I attempted to do to myself, are all living reminders of how what I intended to do to only myself, rewrote the futures of so many others. Those were such awful, dark days, after my divorce in April of 1996...so many excruiating memories, so much bitterness and rage at being tossed aside, like garbage, after enduring through 16 years of every sort of abuse there is, from the husband of my impetuous youth. After he was through with me, I had 'no identity left', 'no friends left', I 'didn't even have the company of my only child to comfort me' in my aloneness. He had succeeded in ripping everything away from me, just like he'd predicted years earlier he would do to me. So, I spent every day wishing I could die, just to escape the agony I was left with as my only companion. And, oh, I was so angry! The day of my attempt on my life was a 'black rage' day, in my memory...as black and dark as death itself. I wanted to make him pay, to make him as miserable as he had made me. And in my sick, delusional state of mind, making him listen to me as I plummeted to my death, and to have to be the one to identify my bloody, broken, body and explain to our son why I did it, was the'perfect punishment' for the likes of him! That dreadful night, the Gilbert AZ Police still talk about, as the wierdest, london-pea-soup fog, descended upon the city, a fog like no one had ever seen in the area, before or since. My plan was to drive to a location where I could jump to my death from the outside stairwell of a four story parking garage, while the man I used think of as 'my protector', would be listening to me hit the pavement below, from a cell phone. But that night, a miraculous, wierd fog completely prevented me from finding my way to this location. Finally, after hours of driving around in circles, and downing a couple bottles of medication I had with me all at once, I gave up, as I was feeling too weak and ill to continue. I let a friend talk me into checking myself into the hospital. As soon as I agreed to do this, that blessed fog lifted, and I was able to drive myself to the hospital. There, I was promptly arrested at my ex's insistance, and after 3 days in Sherriff Joe's hell-hole of a jail, I was sentenced to being barred from returning to Arizona for 2 years. This very odd sentence, by a City Court Judge, also was instrumental in saving my life, as it took yet another 3 suicide attempts over the next 2.5 years before I fully stopped wanting to die. Today, I am fully recovered. I now have so much to live and be thankful for, that it seems like someone else's story, a very long time ago, when I remember those terrible, black days so long ago. I can only pray that my story will aid someone else who is in that same horrible place of wanting to die, because of the abuse of someone they loved and trusted. I hope my words here will help you to realize that'THEY' aren't worth your precious life, nor one more minute of your thoughts or time! For what it matters, I have now been blessed to still be alive to witness my ex's utter destruction, financially and spiritually, by no less than the malignant woman he married after he dumped me! So, my friend, take it from me, there IS justice, there IS a God, and if you will just Get Out of His way...He is more than Good and more than Capable of avenging all our wrongs, and far, FAR better than we ever could ever dream of doing ourselves! So then, Go ON...forget them, and LIVE a happy life...All my love! |
| Holly | Alberta Canada | 0-24 | Female | I was 15 years old and about to finish grade 9. One night I got an eery phone call from my mother who just wanted me to know that she loved me (told me about 10 times). Little did I know that hours later I would be looking at her lifeless body and answering the question of whether or not I wanted her to be resusitated should she fail to breath on her own. I told the doctors that with her having only 2% chance of a normal life that I wanted them to let her go. She had wanted to go, so I did the right thing. My mother played with suicide for all of her life. It was kind of expected that she would eventually do it. My mother also suffered form schizophrenia as well. I suffered from her schizophrenia. I was her caretaker, because all her family disowned her. I was the one who took all of her burden on. So when she died I did feel relief, selfish relief. If you went through what I did you would not judge that sense of relief. No more midnight calls about someone trying to kill, or rape me. No more police coming to my school because my mother had told them she was going to kidnap me for my health. No more walking on eggshells, looking over my shoulder. Truthfully, I am now older with my own family, and I miss my mother. In all her maddness there was a deep sense of understanding. Sometimes I wonder if she actully had it right, while everyone else was wrong. I replay her last phone call, I relive her funeral, and I live forever with her ghost. I tell myself I was just a kid, but I still think there should have been more support for my mother, and for me. Maybe I could have talked longer to her that day, maybe offer ot go for coffee. I was too embarrassed by her illness to invite her to my grade 9 grad. What would have happened had I of done that? My daughter was suppose to be born on my mothers b-day. So I know she is with me. My daughter was born 9 days before. Suicide is such a horrible thing. I know that I have dealt with the issue for almost all my life, even if it was someone elses issue. It is hard, and at times it seems like no one really gets it, unless they have been through it. Death through illness, or car accidents can eventually be understood. Suicide will always leave the question why. I miss my mother especially now that I am a mother. I wish she was stronger, better, healthier. But she couldn't be. I understand it. It just gets hard sometimes not having a mother. I can tell my daughter about every detail of her birth, but I know nothing of mine. It wasn't important to me when my mother was alive. There are days that I forget about the suicide. But there are also days when it floors me so badly that all I can do is curl up in a ball and cry hysterically. I am still mad, hurt, and emotional and it has been 15 years. If you are reading this, please take what I say and remember it always. Suicide is so selfish. It destroys people, people who love and care about you!! I Miss my mother painfully, Holly |
