Dear Sir
Thank you for your response to my post 10 Things You Should Know Before You Kill Yourself and for sharing your situation with me. You are not alone in facing such terrible circumstances, I get emails like yours several times a week.
I used to respond to such stories about the kind of pain and trauma you’re going through with words of encouragement, reminding you that things will get better. But you know, most of the time, I secretly wondered if some lives weren’t worth living… If you’re trying to convince me you have a valid reason to end your life, you might be right. But before you rush off to buy a gun, a rope, or a gas bottle, please hear me out.
The thing is, the very fact you are looking for ways to ‘kill yourself in your sleep’ or ‘commit suicide without pain’ suggests there is a part of you that wants relief, that wants peace, that just wants the overwhelming hopeless days to stop. You don’t want any more pain, you want to be free.
Paradoxically, killing yourself can’t give you peace or relief — it is a painful, traumatic, violent business — a price that is far too high to pay when there is an alternative.
If you don’t have the right friends or the proper education; if you hate your job; if your marriage is in a shambles; if your bills are mounting; if you have convinced yourself people would be better off without you — if you find yourself stuck in the middle of a nightmare you would have never chosen for yourself, you can end it.
All you need to do is put a change of clothes in a bag and walk out the door. Keep walking and don’t look back. You don’t have to leave a note, tie up loose ends, or explain to anyone what you’re doing. When you get to a place where no one knows you – you can change your name, reinvent yourself and choose whatever kind of life you want.
Your new life might be better than the one you have now, it might even be worse making what you had before seem not so bad, but it will be a life where you’ve taken charge.
Of course, you will hurt the people you leave behind who won’t be able to comprehend how you could just leave them, but this pain will be nothing like the pain they would feel if you were dead. I would much rather my husband had run away to another city, or another country, than seeing the image of his cold, lifeless body every time I close my eyes. Anything is better than that … anything.
If your life sucks, end it — not by killing yourself but by walking away. Leave the loneliness, the guilt, the sadness behind you and set off into the unknown. It might not be easy, but it will give you the relief you’re searching for.
And send me a postcard when you get there …
Safe travels
Katie ♥
If you or someone you know may be at risk of suicide contact
beyondblue 1300 22 46 36, Lifeline 13 11 14 or Salvo Care Line 1300 36 36 22.
If only people were strong enough to do this rather than suicide.
I’m hoping some people will at least think about it …
I think about moving constantly. Sick of feeling isolated in a selfish world. Just don’t know where to go. As I’ve moved a lot already… x
Come to Sydney! I’d love someone to hang out with 😉
I so want to send this to my niece who attempted Monday night. She turns only 19 tomorrow. I wish she could escape her pain and start a new life. I wish she would stop the pain she is causing her family.
I think your message is powerful and could help these conflicted people to see there are always alternative choices.
So sorry to hear about your niece Bec. I’ll keep her in my thoughts x
Read the first post. don’t really apply to me.I’m not married. although i do have a gf. But a gf is a gf completely different from a wife. i have no kids. no brothers, no sisters, no friends. parents died when i was young. so I’ve decided to kill myself. no I’m not sad. I’m bored. life is boring. And I’m too lazy to keep living. yolo right??
Hi Tony
If you’re bored then I’d still suggest ending the life you have and starting a new one. It wouldn’t be boring being in a different city or country. I would pack up and move to a tropical island and work out how to live off coconuts or something. Please stick around. Especially as you have someone who loves you.
K x
You do realize that in order to do your idiotic plan of just getting up and leaving you need money right? i mean you can’t just get up and leave without money or you will just kill yourself slowly. besides that traveling alone on the road with no car (which is my case) isn’t very safe and would most likely get me killed. so you in fact are telling me to abandon my life to go die somewhere where no one knows who i am. you’re such a genius. obviously sarcasm
Tony,
its probably too late now, but in case it isnt
seriously, read your owm phoken words!!! its not safe to travel alone…. and you would most likely get killed ?!?
so killing yourself is much safer?
phok sake, join me into a great adventure, lets go ovethrow a government or something, if your to die, die with your boots on!!
Tony, I hope your okay, cause I also do not like to live, but I’m not gonna die in the the dark.
love you
Beautiful, and so true. Life is not that complicated. I have been suicidal (because of an eating disorder), and decided that, if I’m going to do it, might as well do a few crazy, brave things first. Maybe I’m still doing that. It’s been a while.
Keep doing those crazy, brave things ♥
I think people feel suicidal, because they don’t realize they have choices. I hated the life I had set up, over the past 10 years. I was in a job I hated, living in a town I didn’t love, in a house I didn’t want. My husband, daughter, and I walked away from it all this summer. I quit my job, signed my house over to the bank, and found a new job 1200 miles away. We’re living in an apartment right now, but we plan to live aboard full time by summer.
There are always options, and there is always a path.
Congratulations on your great big adventure. You’re another person doing crazy, brave things x
I want to do that more than anything. Even during the brief couple years that I felt happy I wanted to just take off. The problem is that the root of all the things that make me not want to live is that I’ve had social anxiety forever. It’s stopped me from doing everything. It’s the reason I started doing drugs when I was 13, the reason I couldn’t go to college, haven’t gotten married. Now I can’t even keep a job past the point where I feel people are getting to know me. It might just sound like a cop out but the one thing about suicide is that it makes people remember you even more, where I just want to be forgotten. I’m actually more anxious about being dead than I am about dying. What’s the alternative when you’re totally stuck, because being homeless in a new place doesn’t sound like it’s going to keep me alive?
Dear Bobby
I’m not qualified to give psychological or medical advice, but I imagine there are prescription drugs that help with anxiety. If you had a broken leg, you’d go and get it fixed, so if your mind isn’t well, then you should find some treatment. I’m guessing that once the anxiety is under control you might not feel as stuck.
Please talk to someone about how you are feeling. You always have alternatives, they are sometimes a bit more difficult to see when you’re feeling stressed.
Wishing you love, light and healing.
K x
Thank you!
Here’s the thing, suicide isn’t some random or rash act. Most Suicidal people are jaded but not necessarily crazy and are usually that way for a long time. Something trivial or mundane may trigger the decision to finally and successfully go through with it and get it over with. But the overall and general feeling that life is pointless and to simply be tired of living can go on for a while. As for the friends and family that everybody is supposed to take into consideration? Much of the time friends and family are busy with their own lives, and have NO understanding, concern or real patience for you, and why you feel your life is flat out terrible. Especially when you have things that all of Society and the American population tells you and insist are supposed to make you happy. Western culture is poison and people only like you when your smiling…then when you OFF yourself everybody acts surprised and put upon, saying how they didnt see it coming (which is Bullshit 80% of the time). But what an amazing person you were. This great beaming beacon of light that they all had loved all along and Blah, Blah, Blaaaaaaaahhh. If they cared so much, why didn’t they pick up on the warning signs and help, Suicidal people usually show signs before their death as their lives deteriorate, rather it be emotional, mental, physical or financial deteroration but 80% of the time these signs or cries for help are ignored. See, people don’t help BECAUSE ALL PEOPLE ARE SELFISH! Not just the ones who take matters into their own hands. People don’t take out the time for other people’s pain or problem- they are too busy and wrapped up within their own and turn a blind eye to anyone else in trouble…especially when your thinking about ending your own life death is scary, Suicide is scary. So all of us are alone in it really, that’s the reality. Now add Depression and despair into the mix, and you might just get a Suicide.
I couldn’t have put it more accurately.
Luxia’s comments are absolutely on the money. Clearly someone who is a part of Western civilization as well, as I am, so I can’t disagree at all with that part of the message either. The vast majority of people who do commit suicide are not doing it randomly, alot of thought and contemplation has gone into the decision. While the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back” is usually a catalyst for the final act, it is something they have been thinking about for some time, if not years. In all honesty once you get past your formative years life doesnt change much and then you work some mundane job (if your lucky) that keeps money rolling in to pay the bills (gotta keep up appearances after all) and you basically wait out the years til you can barely do the things you used to be able to do, if you can even remember how to do them. Sure you can try to fill the time with friends or family, but the real life version of what those terms mean often fall far short of the definition or idea of what they should be. Like life for the most part, rarely does how it is coincide with how it should be and for an unlucky many it doesnt even come close.
Agreed! Luxia I coulden’t of put it in better words myself.
I have had severe social anxiety for what seems like my whole life. I have been labeled as being weird” have lost all my friends and what is left of my family does not have the patience for my illnesses or me. I am tired of going threw the daily struggles of having nobody who cares or cares enuff to try to understand anyway. I have seen doctors, therapy ect… for at least 10 years now and I still feel the same. After being medicated going threw years of talk therapy> still no change in my anxietys or depression or thoughts of taking it into my own hands. I am getting older nothings changed I have seeked all the help I could possibly get. Which has left me hopeless an more ready to commit suiside then I ever been. In my situation The people around me would be better off without me an my burdens. Why should I continue to make the ppl around me suffer? Why should I continue to suffer this constant pain myself??? I shouldn’t! Im not saying this is the way out for everybody hell who am I really?… therapy an other forms of help have worked for many ppl just not me.
Hi Katie,
You are a beautiful person, thank you. You made me cry.
Sending you light and love Munir ♥
I’m a 17 year old male, I lately have been going through alot of stress with this woman i have been with for a year and 6 months. She has cheated on me, used me, lied to me, and she still continued to lie to me to this day. I had stuck around cause i fell deeply in love with her. Well let’s just make it plain and simple.. I would ask for the simplest things from her, for example, i would ask for a phone call before she went to work, I would ask if i could drive over to her job and see her during her break, and more stuff along those lines and she would always try to avoid me or those questions. She left me 2 days ago and lately all i have in life is my bestfriend, she keeps telling me that i need to just let her go and move on but it’s not that simple once you fall in love. I grew up as a child that got abused and treated horribly. My dad ran out on me when i was 6 and when i turned 13 i went to live with him and he abused me more than he did when i was younger. I made a mistake taking that path, so i ran away and came back to my mom. Well my mom is a gambler and is always gone all the time. I’m always home alone in the same house of memories for the past 17 years and it drives me insane. I really miss the girl i feel in love with, but i have no one but her and my bestfriend. I’ve been wanting to give up and just kill myself because whether it is a way to relieve the pain or not, i don’t care. I just want a way to get away from all this. I don’t go to school, i’m on online schooling and i have no friends, I’m very lonely all the time and i just wish i could have a way to get out of this situation. I am very lost in my life. I had turned to the Lord a few days ago and ever since i did that i feel like all this pain has increased more, i love the only person i loved and cared about, my best friend has her own life and i would hate to become a nuisance towards her because of all this pain i’m in. I have been bottling pain up my whole life and I feel that it is time for me to just give up. I understand i will be spending an eternity in Hell but what else do i have to live for? I messed up in school i’m 3 years behind my grade, i’m in a poor family, I have no job, no car, no friends, no family that cares, nothing to keep me occupied to keep it all off my mind. This all might sound like i want attention, well i do, but i want that attention from the girl i fell in love with and i cannot get that anymore. I never did anything wrong to her and she ripped my heart out and stomped my feelings into the ground. People have been telling me that it all is going to get better and i just don’t believe it will. I want her to know how i feel about her, i want to wait till she comes to pick up her stuff this saturday and i want to kill myself before her eyes. I have nothing to live for anymore!
So typical. Trying to convince people to live. Why do so many people put others into boxes? Not everyone that wants to die has options or will be missed. Personally I was considering dying about 4 years ago and decided to just keep trying and see what happens instead. Basically what you’re preaching. Well it turns out that it was just 4 more years of crap. There is no solution to my problem. Why the fuck can’t I find even one single website that can offer actual help instead of the opposite? You think you’re helping but you’re really not!
Thank you. This post and “why you shouldent kill yourself ” have made me reconsider
I’m so pleased.
Sending you love and light.
Kx
Whether it is better to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune…
I’m the gazelle being chased by lions. If I could just find a drop more energy to sprint over that hill, I’d be safe. But I’m tired. I’m so tired. Let me rest. The lions are closing in. Let them come.
Not all storms can be weathered. Your previous article allowed me consider ending my life without leaving the blood-trail that would cause more pain to my wife and friends. And I’ll be sure to leave a note that exonerates my wife. So, thanks for that, although I know that was not your intention.
I think it would hurt my friends more, actually, if I just walked away. Whereas killing myself would be a clean and decisive action. Everyone can just move on. Except me, of course.
I had reached out to a friend who’s mother had killed herself when he was a child, thinking I might some get perspective. He found his mother’s body hanging by the neck from a rope. When I got off the phone with him, he just called the police. No help there. I’ve called others, but everyone is so busy. Everyone has there own problems. Why burden them?
My mother used to mock an uncle I never met, who jumped off the GW bridge. That humiliation kept me alive. But now that my mother is dead, I don’t have that to fear.
It never used to occur to me if the world would be better off without me. But, in thinking about it, although some would argue otherwise, I have come to the conclusion that the world would be better off without me. Most people who I discussed my suicidal plans with, express how important I’ve been in their lives. Without me some say they would not be sober; some credit me for their career; some say they would not have had the courage to marry the girl they still love. One friend said my surprise visit to him in the hospital gave him the courage that day to fight for his life when the doctors thought his life was over. “I wouldn’t be alive if it were not for you.”
So, I’ve asked around, if I should kill myself. But, no one has truly convince me. I’m not sure if keeping friends happy and alive offers value when I feel neither. When I’m so tired of suffering the slings and arrows. Its the great existential question, is it not, to be or not to be.
I am just too tired of life and it’s diappointments and my failures. That seems like reason enough. I am 60. Lived long enough.
I am going to end this. It is really hard to think about but I can not live without my wife and son. She probably thinks I went out on her, I did not, but I did text a woman about it and she is going to leave me. I can’t go on by myself, I have had a lifetime of loneliness and longing for someone to love me. I messed up because I thought my wife did not, and this loneliness has been a constant struggle in my life. I just don’t want to leave my 4 yr old, I love him so much but think maybe he would be better off without me here to mess up his beautiful life ahead of him. I don’t know if I will make it through the night. I can’t just walk away I am not strong enough…
“Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It’s okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.”
~ Miranda July, ‘No One Belongs Here More Than You’.
I want to thank you for both this post and the one that linked to it laying out so clearly what happens afterwards.
I’ve spent all weekend reminding myself of what the consequences would be for my wife and children and it really wasn’t enough. Your words have helped strengthen my resolve to carry on and to get help.
Hi Jason
Thank you for sticking around. It makes a huge difference — especially to me.
I applaud your courage and wish you good fortune on your quest to find wellness and happiness.
I’m sending you lots of love and light.
K x
Just wondering, what about us friendless, familyless losers who remain unsatisfied after effectively starting anew? At what point is it acceptable to give up?
If it was me, I would volunteer to build schools in Africa or some other humanitarian project. I suspect that I might find some friends, feel like I’m making a difference and maybe see things differently.
I don’t know your circumstances, I’m not a health professional, I’m just throwing out an answer to your question.
Needed to read this blog. Thanks to the author.
Ridiculous, sometimes there are problems you can’t walk away from, such as chronic illness.