This feeling that everyone in your life would be better off without you - that there is nothing to look forward to, that you are too tired to go on, that life is cruel and exhausting, that there is no reason to continue to live - how do you come to this feeling, and then believe it, and finally invest in it, with aspirin and vodka, a razor, a gun to the head?
There are so many layers of self-preservation woven into the human fabric...and yet they are overridden by grief, distress, psychological disturbance, fear, despair...agents too potent at times for the weakened human condition.
What strikes me most, however, is how powerless I am in the face of the intensity of despair and depression felt by another. Preserved as I have been from these depths of suffering, I have no words to touch them, and my natural inclination to give advice is thwarted.
"Life is a gift". We did not ask for it, and yet here we are - manifestations of the mysterious creative energy of God. As such, we are keepers of a treasure not our own. I will show my love of God - by my love and care of what he has created: my life and the lives of others. Though it be laborious and excruciating, somehow He calls us to journey back to Him, bearing the life He gave us. For some, life is deep pain - and I can only imagine the courage and grace it takes them to face it, and the glory they give God in struggling through.
For those who take their lives into their own hands, Mother Church is yet a true Mother and intercessor for her children. "We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives." (CCC 2283)
Perhaps the question we should rather pose is this: What makes a person want to live.
St. Jude and St. Dymphna, pray for us.
"...and my natural inclination to give advice is thwarted."
ReplyDeleteAt the level of suffering where suicide is a temptation, advice is not the help that is needed. If it's breaking through their inbound mental defenses/safeties, how would our words be more effective against it? The thing that people need in that state is love and authority -- the love to keep them alive, the authority to forbid them from killing themselves. And, of course, prayer; the one time a friend of mine nearly killed herself it was prayer that saved her more even than authority, although that helps, with love either way.