As I sit and try to find a way to address an issue that I have had such a personal relationship with throughout my life, I get overwhelmed with the many memories I have of moments where I did not want to live. As I stand still in my mind, I began to look back over my life and I see 7 year old me sitting on the bed with whelps on my arms and legs from a whipping that I had just received. And the blood from those scars screaming no one loves you; you have no reason to live. I remember my mind wondering why my mommy would leave me in a home where I could not see or feel love (SUICIDE). Age 16, I was in love for the first time, and he said he loved me except he claimed to love her equally and was only allowed to love me in private. He denied me to everyone and when I took a look around I couldn’t see a reason for living. Who would miss me? No one ever really loved me first anyway, mommy loved her heroin, sister loved her men and sex, and my foster dad loved his liquor more. Who really loved me first (SUICIDE)? So I sat in the kitchen on the floor, knife to my wrist sliding the blade back and forth with pain oozing from my eyes, and with a hurt clouding my heart. The thoughts of taking my life encouraged me to press the knife a little harder at least until I could see blood. I cried not genuinely wanting to die, but really just wanting to escape the pain that I was feeling. There are so many young people and adults that have some of these same thoughts and feelings and don’t make it. And then there are those of us that do decide to live. Initially my question to everyone was going to be, why did you chose YES I will live? And being someone who suffers from depressive thoughts often for whatever reason – thoughts that dying would be easier than living, I had to sit with myself and ask the question, why did I chose yes? At 7 and 16 I don’t know but at 26, I say yes to life because I believe that I can live. I know that it is not too hard and yes I will have moments where I feel sadness, but I have seen joy that comes in the morning. So here I am, ALIVE to show the people who feel like joy will never come again, that it does but you have to live to see it. So please share anything you would like to share concerning this issue of SUICIDE and suicidal thoughts. It is my hope that anyone struggling to live can find encouragement through our stories.
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Togivelove 
I was 15 the first time I tried to commit suicide. I could be in a room surrounded by family and friends and still feel alone. I was hanging out with friends or someone who I thought was my friend until he pushed me up against a wall and fondled me until he was thru, because i thought that it was something I had done i never told anyone until one day confiding in my older sister. She told my mom and my parents and his parents had a meeting. I will never forget how it was made to look like it was my fault.Not being able to cope with what I had made happen to myself i tried to take my life. I slit my wrist. It wasn’t my time. Again at 17, life to me just seemed so overwheming I waited til my mom went to bed, I went to the bathroom and took a handful of pills and collapsed inin her doorway. (i was trying to get back to my room) I woke in a hospital strapped to a bed and my mom bawling(sp) her eyes out. I just couldn’t handle it, made a promise that no matter hotow bad things got I would never put my mom thru that ever again. Now at 29, whenever I feel myself getting down or even a little lonely, I pick up the phone and call my mom and most importantly I pray. I pray that G-d takes away the loneliness and the sadness, i used to scold myself for being so selfish and sometimes i still do but I just thank G-d for being in charge and not letting that be my end because he wasn’t finish with me.
Thank you for being so intimate and honest.
For 9mo I was housed in a womb that fed me stories (through feelings and emotions) that I wasn’t wanted, I wasn’t good enough, I was dark and ugly before ever being granted the opportunity to form opinions about who I was for myself. This was all because young mommy internalized daddy’s display of fear and panic as a sign that he was angry with her for being pregnant again. While she carried me she noticed how unattractive (in her mind) she was, she was getting dark, bigger, losing hair and used this to justify her feelings about how she thought he felt even more.
These emotions were transferred to me by default all because of not fully understanding the inner conflict her husband was experiencing after news of a new baby being on the way. When in reality he was simply scared that he wasn’t going to be able to provide his family with the life and security that he had imagined for his life. He was a young boy from the hood trying to give his family a better life than what he had experienced. I was born into this world already programmed to feel rejection and self hatred because of a LIE. For 20 years I carried these emotions with me, never truly understanding why I felt this way about myself …I couldn’t remember when or where it started. As far as I was concerned I’d felt this way forever…unwanted, ugly, despising my chocolate skin (no matter how much I heard words spoken of its beautiful radiance), being in a crowd full of people yet feeling alone. In my opinion, I believe that often times what leads us to the thoughts and actions of suicide are often always rooted in a lie.
Through the victory that came with my life being spared I have come to know suicide in a new way. Defined it is the act or an instance of intentionally killing oneself. So, in those moments of apparent desperation, loss or emptiness I now kill the SELF that has attempted to rise up to tell me that my life isn’t worth living. The fact that WE MADE IT out of all of the many sperm cells and eggs housed within our parents is the greatest testament to the fact that WE ARE WORTHY and CAPABLE OF PUSHING THROUGH ! There is a purpose and plan for each of our lives and through these dark experiences if we choose to LIVE and give life to what our creator says about us we then get closer to the light – THE TRUTH .We are made in the image of the most powerful and supreme force of the universe and beyond ! Within us lies EVERYTHING we need to make it! LIVE LOVE & LEARN THE TRUTH ABOUT YOU! Thank you for this message and platform Ms. Nora Yolanda your love and life will help save many others! xoxo
Thank you for your comment.
Thank you sis for your transparency! While I’ve never attempted suicide, I have contemplated it more than a few times. Being a single woman in my mid-twenties with no prospective husband plays a role but mostly the feeling of unaccomplishment oftentimes sends me downhill. I tend to isolate myself from family and friends for months on end. It’s not easy to articulate feelings of loneliness and despair to those around you because I don’t want to come off needy so instead I just push people away, which in turn makes me seem like a jerk.
Thank you for sharing.
Although I never attempted suicide, I constantly thought about death. “Today is the day” I would say quietly to myself. I never had the courage to physically end my life, but my imagination did it for me. Like that time when I was 17, and I heard what I thought to be the worst news of my life, I stood right on the curb of the street during rush hour hoping someone would mistakenly push me into traffic. I could be driving and suddenly thought about driving into the guardrail at full speed. At one point of my life, I felt my purpose was to die. So I allowed my imagination to run wild. I know God heard my thoughts, so it’s not by chance I am still here. My purpose wasn’t to die but to save lives. “Make God laugh and tell him your plans” I always heard my mother say. Now at age 24, I know it was only God who didn’t let my “death thoughts” manifest, but replace them with his thoughts. God conquer my thinking with a better purpose and the vision he have for me. Who am I “God has answered”
—–This is what we lived for.
Thank you for sharing!
I’ve done the same thing over so many years…. I’ve spent hours of my life over the years sitting in my bathroom, staring at my wrists wondering if I could do it or not.
When I spoke with my therapist recently. I told her I had always been scared to actually do it – to take that next step. And that’s why drinking got so scary for me, because it took away that fear and made the reality of taking my own life away much closer.
I told her I’ve wished SO many times something would just happen to me. I would get killed in an accident, I would get cancer, an aneurysm… that I would just not wake up the next day.
Now sometimes I wish that I would just be diagnosed with some mental disorder – that I would be schizophrenic, or bipolar, or something where all I had to do was take a pill and forget anything was wrong.
I don’t actually WANT these things to happen – it’s all about escaping the pain. Some days it is SO hard, and it makes me angry that I feel that way – that I have to try so hard to just be okay. That I have to do mental exercises to convince myself that I am worthy, and I DO love myself, and I WANT to be here.
I get angry that I have to undo all of these things that were done to me when I was not in a position of power, when I was just a kid, that wanted love and safety.
Every day it gets a little easier – and a part of it is the power of connection. The power sharing your story – being vulnerable – telling people where it hurts. It makes us connected, it’s what brings us together and takes away the separation we build in our minds when we are scared of other people.
You rock girl 🙂
Thank you for sharing your story.
I had a few mixed emotions having reading this. It takes a lot for me to share what I’m going to share but I feel that I must.
After reading this I relived both some ugly, horrific emotions and experiences that I had when I was but a youngster. As a child I grew up so sad. I recall as an adult man looking at some of my childhood pictures and saw how sad I looked in almost every picture. What was I feeling that nobody knew? What was it that plagued me that I couldn’t interpret as a boy-child? Who was that lost and innocent little boy? Why was he so sad? Why was it hard for him to smile in pictures?
There were so many insecurities that I experienced basically before I left the womb of my mother. I entered into the world already programmed by the vibrations that conveyed a mental & emotional message of rejection to me while I was reposing in her womb.
Having been born, living & growing…seeing people come and go in my life who I loved and valued really made me feel I was the problem. I started hating myself and who I was, how I looked, my body type (bean pole…LOL), how I talked (high-pitched voice & talked proper), etc. I hated almost everything about my life with the exception of church.
Quite a few things happened to me as a young boy that I’m going to share publicly. Some of these experiences I will share on here for the first time ever because I believe it will help somebody.
I remember being 8 yrs. old and being molested by my female cousin who was 19 yrs. old. I was terrified of what she wanted me to do to her but I have to be honest…it was intriguing and pleasurable what she did to me. LOL. #keepin’ it 100…but it really AFFECTED me and in an psychological & emotional sense it INFECTED my spirit. I couldn’t understand why this happened. I didn’t know how to process things but I moved on. I was 11 yrs. old and went to the bathroom at a church where my grandmother was a member and there was an old man with white hair who snatched me into the bathroom and tried to touch me and had I not yelled out which caused him to run out, there’s no telling what he would’ve done to me. I was 12 yrs old, one of my male cousins did something inappropriate in my room and tried to get me to do what he wanted (I didn’t do it) and I started crying and it was then that my cousin hugged me and apologized and said he would never do that again and asked me not to cry anymore. At the age of 13, I fell into the hands of my supposed to be godfather who was extremely kind to me. He purchased my 1st expensive sweater. He was married but I didn’t know his wife. He would always pick me up and exposed me to some wonderful places that I didn’t know existed. Eventually, the unspeakable happened. He raped me and when I tried to resist, he smacked me in my face. I never told my mother what he did. I lived with this ugly secret while moving on. When I was 15, I had my 1st son by a female who was in her 20’s. When I was 16, a married woman in her 30’s had sex with me while her husband was literally over in the gulf fighting in the war. I didn’t know how to process all of these things.
At the age of 17 I attempted suicide because I hated myself and felt if all of those things happened to me, then G-d didn’t love me and I certainly didn’t love myself at all because I was ugly, fatherless, rejected, etc. I remember when I went into the bathroom of my mother’s house and took a shower, got dressed, and went into her medicine cabinet and took an entire bottle of valium pills, an entire bottle of Nyquil, an entire bottle of Cheracol D, and a full glass of my mother’s 5 pound bag of koolaid…LOL…After a while, I had to use the bathroom and my mom saw me stumbling down the hallway. I told her I was fine. Once I got back in my room, I got up on the bed and stayed there until I started slipping away. She called one of the brothers from the church and all I remember him saying to me was, “Colonel, what did you do? Colonel!?!?!” Well, I woke up in the hospital. They told my mother had they gotten me to the hospital 5 mins. later, I wouldn’t have made it. UGH!!! I hated that I didn’t die.
When it was time for me to be discharged, I acted like I was ok but a few months later I tried to kill myself again because I couldn’t escape the tragedies that I encountered that no one but me knew about. My 2nd suicide attempt landed me in therapy (that didn’t help). I remember when I was at a service and I was giving G-d praise and the spirit of depression and suicide came off of my life. I asked G-d to please heal me of this hurt, pain, anger, etc. Right in that service, G-d did it and gave me every reason to live. I knew more than ever before that I had a purpose for being here even though in the beginning I was an unwanted & rejected child. It was then that I knew my purpose was to help heal the hurting, depressed, rejected, oppressed, marginalized, etc. My life shifted forever. I begin to help people see the beauty within them by sharing love and let them know that they have to take the power back from that which controls their willingness to live. Take your power back from the rapist…the molester…that father that knew you existed but didn’t want you…that mother who rejected you before you were even born…that uncle who abused you with his words, etc. Nothing is worth you taking such a great investment in the earth such as yourself and allow people, things, circumstances and atrocities to make you want to die!!! The greatest victory to defeat any pain, hurt, disappointment or whatever, is to live. I recently shared with my ministry family, “Whatever you can’t change, outlive it!” Thanks Ms. Nora for sharing this powerful blog because it helped me to face some “crumbs” that were still under the table within my inner sanctum but the floor of my soul is now completely clean. I speak the words of David in Psalm 118:17, “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.”
Thank You Bishop for your honesty and courage.