Strange, how little I know the people around me. And strange, how little the people the people around me know me. As I guess not many people would relate me to suicide thoughts, although I’m quite sure some people know. And what hit me today, and what also made me think for quite a while was the paragraph I found on a site about suicide:

Make no mistake. Suicide will have a devastating effect on those around you, and the effects will stay with them the rest of their lives. If in your mind you belittle this impact (as I did), you are fooling yourself. And to test it, just ask someone close to you how they’d feel if you got knocked over by a bus.

And somehow I know this, as that kind of stopped me from killing myself when I was in my early twenties. But what I never fully realized was the “for the rest of their lives”. Or maybe I did. As I remember being so low, feeling so bad, that even knowing how much other people would suffer, especially my mam, didn’t compensate for how I felt, how bad I felt. And no, I am quite sure nobody wants to kill himself or herself. For me it was the (emotional) pain I was feeling that was too much, unbearable. And I tried and tried and tried. Everything. But it didn’t go away. Although in the end it did, otherwise I wouldn’t be here right now, writing this.

And I read on http://lostallhope.com that the major cause for suicide is loneliness, so I am not alone in my suicide thinking right now, while feeling very alone, even lonely at the moment. And the strange thing is that things have been improving lately. Things have improved as I got some attention for my projects, even beyond my wildest dream. And my partner came back last year. But yes, him leaving again two weeks ago in anger, while I am doing everything, everything to make it work, to be happy myself, try to make him happy, try to support him and help him, love him, whatever, hit me hard, harder than I wanted to admit. And I was able to deal with it for about two weeks, but a few days ago it just hit me and I felt kind of devastated. As it seems all so unfair. And no, in the end it has nothing to do with the relationship, at least not directly with this relationship. It has all to do with everything in my life that seems to have gone wrong, with only a few, relatively short periods of ‘normal life’. It has everything to do with that it seems that I just can’t be myself, the joyful, loving and powerful Guus that I am.

And I read similar things in http://lostallhope.com and I may continue reading there a bit more, more about the loneliness stuff and the being yourself. And yes, it appears to be a good site to go to if you are thinking about suicide, whether you are really planning to kill yourself or not. So yes, I could write a bit more about my experiences when thinking about killing myself and maybe I will, but not now.

And I was hesitant writing this post, as I may hurt people, which of course I don’t want, especially as a friend of mine was reminded of the death of her son yesterday. But maybe that is also exactly what makes me, make us feel lonely. Not sharing our real feelings, our real thoughts. And my real thoughts are about loneliness, about being alone right now. And my real feelings are feeling lonely, and before writing this, useless.

But what really made me write this post is that I realized that if people don’t know about my suicide thoughts, I probably also don’t know about suicide thoughts of people I know. And I know quite a bit about suicide thoughts, as I had them several times in my life. And was indeed a few times also very close to indeed killing myself.

So if you are down or are thinking about suicide, please let me know, whether you know me or not. And no, I won’t judge you or even stop you or try to stop you. As having been there I know that sometimes the pain of living can be larger than the instinct we all have to live. And I know the instinct to live is gigantic, meaning that the pain must be bigger than that to even consider committing suicide.

But maybe you can just e-mail me, so we both can be a little less lonely. You can reach me at guus@inspiration-for-success.com.

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