compassion

Day 385

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For all my mistakes , of which there are too many to count,
For all my ignorance, of which there is much too much,
For all my failings, big and small,
I need to forgive myself.

For not helping him look for his misplaced ear-phones,
For not letting him know how much I loved him,
For not spending as much time with him as I could have,
For not seeing through his silent anguish,
For not being with him in his deep despair,
I need to forgive myself.

For all the anger against the world and myself,
For all the disappointments in others and myself,
For all the days and nights spent in darkness,
For the greatest indulgence of all – self-pity,
I need to forgive myself.

For the sake of peace inside and out,
For the sake of those who care for me,
For the healing of body, mind and soul,
For the fulfilment of every moment,
I need to forgive myself.

To be able to move forward and make a positive change,
To not make the same mistakes again,
To be able to experience freedom,
To be able to appreciate who I am today,
To be able to value the abundance around me everyday,
I need to forgive myself.

Day 372

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A popular opinion is that suicide is selfish.

Here is a real suicide note written by a real person. Fortunately she was not successful in completing it and now is a passionate advocate for the understanding and prevention of self-harm and suicide.

(Please do not read this if you think it might act as a trigger for you.)

“Hey everyone,

Having never read a suicide note, im not 100% sure what they’re meant to contain, apologies, explanations, recriminations? I don’t know. I guess it’s kinda up to the author. Anyway, here goes my attempt:

Firstly, I want to say i’m sorry for any and all the pain this has caused. I find it really hard to comprehend that my death will have an impact on people but logic tells me that it will so i’m sorry for any hardship i have caused. I know i have no right to ask anything of anyone but please look out for each other, especially my little sister and I won’t be there for her. There are some organisations out there who help people who know someone who has committed suicide, the Samaritans are rumoured to be particularly good.

Secondly, i want to say that this was no-one’s fault. Please do not blame yourselves or anyone else for what I have done, it was my decision, my failure and my choice, no-one could have stopped or helped me. The reason I didn’t tell anyone is that I didn’t want to be stopped, I know that is selfish but it’s also true. Also, telling someone you are suicidal does not make the feeling go away it just makes the other person worry. Please don’t torment yourselves with thoughts like ‘she tried to tell me’ because I didn’t. I worked really hard not to let anyone know what I had planned. Also for those people who still talked to me about how I was feeling, i hate to say it but i started to lie. I’m sorry for abusing your trust in this way, but I had given up and I no longer desired to be helped. I still respected you and knew that you cared and would have helped if i’d have asked but i didn’t care anymore and telling you would have been a failure in my eyes.

Thirdly I want to try and explain why I did why I did what I did in order that you might understand and that it may be of some help. Life had become unbearable for me. I hated myself so much and so uncontrollably. Anything i did i viewed as a failure and it made me sick just to look in the mirror at myself. Whenever I didn’t have to be somewhere I would hide out in my room trying to pretend that I didn’t exist in order that i didn’t have to face what a horrible person I was. When I’ve spoken to people about how I feel about myself they assure me that others don’t feel the same, however that didn’t alter the way I felt about myself, to me, the fact that I was a horrible person was fact. This hatred isn’t a new thing but it is a major contributing factor to my suicide. I think the actual decision to kill myself came when I lost hope for the future. Life would never get good enough for me to want to live it. Feeling as much of a failure as I did I didn’t see how I could achieve anything in life. When someone asked me what I wanted for my future i listed a career i could be proud of, a group of friends i felt at ease with and a partner. I know these things may all seem attainable but for me, they all seemed impossible and all i could see in my future was pain, self hatred and failure so i chose to give up. To me, at least, suicide seemed like a logical choice, if my future was going to be so wretched and no different to the self hatred of my earlier years, ending it made more sense than living at the misery and then dying 50 years later of some humiliating disease. Im not asking you to say that you’re glad that I killed myself but im hoping that you may realise that for me it was a release. For a long time, thinking of people I would be leaving behind had stopped me taking this final step and coupled with that the bad timing. But then I realised that there was never going to be a good time to leave in such a manner so I decided on my date.

Fourthly, i want to say : I love you all. There isn’t anyone in my life that if I had the chance to say this goodbye out loud i wouldn’t want to say how much I love you. Everyone I know is amazing and I hope that the kindness people have shown to me you will now show to each other and support one another through the coming months. I really am so sorry for doing this and I hope you can both forgive me and move on.

Love and hugs,

——– “

Selfish?

Day 370

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Mothers and fathers who were bereaved up to 20 years ago still seem to be heartbroken. It sounds like it could be endless, this pain. Apparently it does change in intensity. While walking with one such parent I said, “Each day I start afresh, as though I have just found out. This horrible thing has happened. There is nothing I can do to change it. It is final. I have no say in the matter and it is so so sad!.” She said that now, for her, it is the same with seasons. When the summer comes, she thinks about her daughter and how much she will be missed during the summer. So it goes with every season. Is that any better? I have no idea.

There is no escape, no short cut, no magic formula. The only way to get past it is to go through it. Whenever my son found something really difficult, I would say encouragingly, “That’s what makes it worth doing.” I would lead by example and apply the same principle to myself too but now that I have been put to the test, I am not doing so well. Today was not a good day at work. It was inefficient, disorganised and boring! That made everything seem much worse. I love my job and have always been grateful for it. In the past I have spent more time working than I have to or need to. So much is changing. Will I recognise myself in a few years? Will my son recognise me?

Today I carried my compounded unhappiness around with me. It found expression at a most inopportune moment. It was not fair on my dear friend who happened to be there, peacefully getting on with her life.

I need to consider how to be more mindful of the potential impact of what I say on those around me.

Day 366

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The fact that I got through yesterday smoothly is astonishing. For the past 4 days we have been receiving messages of love, prayers and kind thoughts from our friends and family from far and near. Once again, many bouquets of flowers, cards and letters have arrived at our doorstep. More donations have been made on our Justgiving page. Is it any co-incidence that we have been able to tide over this very difficult time so peacefully? Do the thoughts and feelings generated thousands of miles away actually convert themselves into strength and comfort by the time they reach us?

I looked up the relationship between distant prayer and healing and found some very interesting scientific studies.

A triple-blind, controlled and prospective study by Cha et al, studied 219 infertile women undergoing IVF in South Korea. They found that the women who had been prayed for (in the USA, Australia and Canada) had nearly twice as high a pregnancy rate as those who had not been prayed for.

Lesniak described a study on a sample comprised of 22 bush babies with wounds resulting from chronic self-injurious behaviour. These animals were randomized into prayer and control groups that were similar at baseline. Prayer was conducted for 4 weeks. The prayer group animals had a greater reduction in wound size and a greater improvement in blood results than the control animals. This study is important because it was conducted in nonhumans. Hence the likelihood of a placebo effect was removed.

So, all I can say is a BIG THANK YOU!

This reminds me of the time when I was a medical student – I noticed that the stark difference between a psychiatry ward and other wards was the absence of ‘Get well soon’ cards! Sad but true, even today.

Day 363

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It was Tuesday. My day off work. It was bright and sunny.
We went to see the doctor for the last time.
We were late by a few minutes because I made him shave. I got a bit annoyed about the fact that we got late but then I hugged him and apologised.
It didn’t matter because we still had to wait.
It was our last chance to pick up on how unwell he was.
He was in ‘crisis’ but we didn’t recognize it.
Not even his doctor did.

We went to the bank, the fruit shop, the gift shop, the Oxfam charity shop and the post office. We had soup for lunch out in the open at the local organic food deli. Although we were together he was very much coming along with me. I loved that he was spending time with me. Sometimes I even succeeded in making him laugh. For instance one day he told me about a friend who spoke to him about his Mum being really annoying and pushy, to which I said, “Well. That seems to be the flavor of the month.” And he gave me one of his lovely sideways smiles acknowledging my remark. I felt fantastic whenever I could achieve that. It was not easy.

He went to his room for a nap. I called my brother in India. I cried on the phone as my heart was breaking. I felt helpless and powerless to change anything. Instinctively I knew we were missing something but I didn’t know what.

It is easy to identify psychosis in someone who is wielding a knife standing in the kitchen but not so in someone who makes no fuss and quietly sits in his room. Depressive psychosis is sinister.

The date has come back but the day is gone forever.
Our last full day together.