World Suicide Prevention Day and The Future

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

1-800-273-8255  Hours: 24 hours, 7 days a week

Website: www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

This morning, before noon, my husband and I sat next to our son and carefully looked over 20 trade schools on an Excel spreadsheet. We had been meaning to do it for about a month, but you know, life gets in the way.

We selected down from 20 to 10 and from 10 to five… we have five schools on his target list for what he wants to do, in short, to fix things. In long, to learn everything he can about electronics repair. Imagine our shock as we are helping him navigate this next chapter of his life. It wasn’t so long ago we didn’t know if he would survive age eleven.

In 2010, he was suicidal. We had to commit him to a hospital for his well-being. To keep him safe on that day, and one in 2016, where we also committed our daughter, were arguably the hardest days and the best days for their lives besides their kidney transplant days. Both of those days, in 2010 and 2016 marked the days of the beginning of mental health help that finally helped.

It didn’t always look that way. For months with both of them their despair was palpable to anyone who shared their space. Their anger and rage was targeted at anything and everything but mostly their father and myself. Anything would set them off, and their rages and screaming sessions would last hours. One to three hours a night until finally, the welcomed collapse from exhaustion for them, then tears from us.

Proper mental health treatment helped, but it wasn’t a quick process. The wrong doctor for him, who was against committing him and slow on providing medication (and possibly not a very skilled pharmaceutical doctor in hindsight) and for her, over several months, trying and stopping several medications until our amazing doctor found the right ones.

Our family has been through many horrific events. They’ve shaped and morphed out family into something we didn’t know we could or would be back when we dreamt of having a family.

Mental health treatment sometimes doesn’t work the first time. Or the fifth. Sometimes is a mixture of medication, therapy, alternative treatments (food changes, brain mapping, yoga/message, hypnosis, or anything else that has the potential to work) over months or even years, as with us. Our daughter has tried several medications, has a message monthly, and is currently doing some brain mapping to deal with the anxiety that causes a lot of her issues.

What I know is this… you can’t find out what works and how stable life can be if you are gone. Your loved ones can’t try to help you if you’re not here; if you die. Don’t give up on their help and don’t give up on yourself. If you’re brain is telling you you’re unloveable – like my kids’ brain chemistry lied to them about – please, you have to  know it’s a lie. It may be the biggest of all of the brain lies. Stay with us. Fight against the lies that tell you the world would be better without, because it’s simply not true.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

1-800-273-8255  Hours: 24 hours, 7 days a week