Studying Suicide

11:17am                Writing Practice                      45°  Boise

Daylight Savings Time is upon us and my body, which resists rising early anyway, has to get used to losing that hour. It may take me a week to adjust but I'll do it. By summer when its warm and I like to sit on the deck to write, I'll be getting up at 8am and sitting down to my writing by 9am, which is perfect timing for the outdoors by then. Don't know how I'll manage this typing practice outside. I'll figure something out.

I went to bed early enough last night and had the light off by a little after 11pm, but then I was awake by 1am and up reading from 2-4am. That happens to me every few weeks and I'm OK with it as long as I don't have an early morning the next day. And since I don't schedule anything for my morning but this writing, it works out fine. I end up getting enough sleep but then I get up later than I'd like. Today I woke at 9:45 and didn't get up until 10:20. I've added a 5 minute SuperBrain Yoga practice into my daily preparations and so I have quite a morning routine going now. It takes all of 50 minutes to an hour to get ready for my day and I'm surprised that I can keep it up. I'm completely ready for my day by the time I sit down here --- it gives me a feeling that I'm taking good care of myself. I like that.

I havw a stack of library books on the dining room table and three of them are about suicide. One is Waking Up, Alive and takes the journey toward suicide with different people and then the recovery from the failed attempt. This is the one I wish I'd read after Stephen's first attempt. If I had educated myself about suicide at any point in my life, I could have been an actual help to him somehow. But I think I was busy being guilty and depressed and simply couldn't rise to the occasion. Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide is another one. I read the beginnings of both of them last night while I wasn't sleeping in the middle of the night. The third one is Why People Die by Suicide. No subtitle. It probably doesn't need one.

I've been thinking of my three suicide attempts. Yes, three. The last one was thoughts and visioning it, imagining what I would do. I caught it in time and managed to not go there all the way, but I was heading in that direction and I may as well just admit it. I would like to understand why I was so willing to kill myself those three times in my life and maybe if I can understand that, I can understand what happened to Stephen.

I've written out the beginnings of the first attempt, the real one. If my mother had not caught on and if I had been left to my own devices, I would have died in my bed that day and then no one would have understood. There would have been no nervous breakdown, no move to Portland, no Bob Willems, no Nathan, no divorce and loss of Nathan, no second attempt in 1978, no move to Honolulu, no John Sandknop, no Stephen .... no third attempt in 1991. In some alternate universe, I completed that suicide and a totally different timeline is playing out.

I've been feeling weird lately. Ever since I wrote about the first attempt I've been feeling disconnected from my life. I hand wrote the last part and still haven't gotten it transcribed. This is probably why I didn't do the research into suicide to help Stephen --- it makes my feel so sad and takes me back there, hopeless. And now here I am trying to write about it, trying to face it finally, and I look around my life and wonder why the hell I'm still here. It's part of the suicide effect. That part of my life is unexamined and unresolved. I'm not sure what actually went down for any of that, it's still a mystery to me in so many ways. And my mind is trying to shuttle me away from it now, trying to protect me, keep me from going there for fear of me taking one last shot at it and maybe succeeding this time.

What I know so far is that suicide is about loss and hopelessness.

Well that was interesting. Just as I was typing that last sentence, the phone rang and it was a Facebook friend who was frantically reaching out for help with her son who is suicidal. She claimed that I'm a warrior for justice and truth with this issue and that she feels strongly that I'm meant to help with the fight to bring sanity and light to the plight of people who are depressed and can't take it anymore. How can they get the help they need when no one wants to talk about it or face the real issue. The whole thing makes me scratch my head.

I'll continue with my studies and writing and remain open to direction from my guides and from Stephen. He's dead because I didn't know what to do to help him or get him help and this mother who just called is beside herself with that same problems only her son is right there in her house and she still can't get the help she needs. What does that tell me? That even if I had gone down to LA and dragged him home, I still would have had to take some kind of action and all this time later, I haven't a clue what action to take on behalf of a suicidal person who self-medicates.

This is the pits! What shall I do?