4 am

I told myself that I would not kill myself anywhere where my kids would have to find me. Last night when I was trying to go to sleep, I finalized my plan...

I always wake up in the middle of the night or get woken up by one of the kids. I decided that once I got them back to sleep, I was going to do it.

Well, here I am at 4am reading the paper that was just delivered. I am still kicking around going outside behind my building and blowing my head off. The only reason I am thinking twice about it is b/c I am not quite sure what will happen when I take my last breath. Where will my soul end up? Is there a Heaven? Is there a Hell? I have been told my whole life there is, and that people who commit suicide do not get to go to Heaven. I am not 100% sure I believe this. But, what if I am wrong? That is the gamble I am going to have to be willing to take, I guess. Right now the fear of a hell (should it exist) is the only thing keeping me alive...

 

I am sorry you are in so much pain that you are thinking of taking your life. However, if you are giving your children enough consideration to not kill yourself where they will find you, then why in the world aren't you giving them enough consideration to NOT kill yourself in the first place? To them, a dead mother is a dead mother...whether they see you or not. And you shouldn't think twice about this but MILLIONS of times. You are right for having that fear. It shows that you still have some reasoning going on in your head. You DONT have any idea where your soul will go, none of us does. I would say that is the most risky and tragic gamble that anyone can make. You need to seek help very quickly. Even if you don't care about yourself or your life at all, I am betting you still love your children. Are they enough reason for you to stay alive? I sure hope so.

 

I wish they were reason enough for me to stay alive. The truth is, I think they would be so much better off without me around. I am so messed up. I am a wreck. They have never had a great mom. I have either been using, depressed, or just a train wreck since they have known me. My oldest one is getting to the age where he is going to be able to start figuring things out.
I am thinking I should just get out before I do anymore damage to them. They deserve a great life with parents that love them, and are normal functioning people. I cannot give that to them.
They use to be enough, but they are not enough to keep me here any longer. I have myself convinced they would be better off without me eff'n up their lives.

I am still weighing my odds against that unknown. I wish I knew for sure what would happen to me after I pull that trigger. That is the only thing keeping me here. I am so miserable otherwise. It is only a matter of time I am sure before I decide that gamble is worth the risk and I go for it. I mean, I could die in a car accident tomorrow and I am positive that my soul will end up in the same place whether my death comes from my own hand or an accident.

 

You are WRONG about them being better off. I can speak from experience. I am 23 years old, my mother is now 51 years old. She was a terrible mother. Our relationship has always be strained. She was never there for me and has hurt me in more ways than I care to remember. BUT, do I think I would be better off without her? No. Even if she sucked at being a mother, in a lot of ways, she made me a better person because I was motivated not to follow in her footsteps. Now, my mother had drug and alcohol issues, as well as mental illness. I am not sure what you "think" makes you a bad mother but I am positive it isn't something so bad that you have to fix it by killing yourself. That would not be doing your kids a favor. It would only add to the supposed disappointment and pain that you THINK you have caused your kids. It is almost near impossible for children to fully forgive their parents for committing suicide. I have a best friend who is my age and her father killed himself when she was 16. She has NEVER been the same since and has NEVER been able to move past it. She and her family have struggled so badly ever since it happened. And mind you, he wasn't a great father either. Yet, his loss caused them a million more problems that they did not need. Please do not do this to your children. I bet if you went and said to them right now that you are SERIOUSLY planning to kill yourself because they would be better off, they would probably go into hysterics. You may think they are not enough to live but I am a firm believer that we all must be held accountable for our decisions and you made the decision to bring them into the world. You can't raise them all this time and then just cop out like that. It isn't right. If you can't be here for you, be here for them. If you think they deserve a "great life with parent who love them" okay, where do you suppose these great parents would come from if you were to kill yourself? If that happened, they would immediately be sent to family, or a foster home. I am not even going to tell you how low their odds would be of finding the "perfect" home because their lives would be completely flipped upside down as it is. If you feel like you are such a horrible mother, then why not change it from this point forward? I am extremely appreciate of any affection my mother can give me at all, even if it isn't consistent and even if I know it won't last. I may be a heartbeat away from hating her now, but what would certainly make me hate her 100 percent is if she did something as foolish as taking her life. That would just top it off...all these years of what she put me through and then she had to put me through such a painful and uncertain life of knowing that she killed herself. That would be unforgivable to me.

I know where you are speaking from. You are not thinking clearly. That is what emotional pain does to us. It tricks us into thinking things that are just not true or valid. It makes us justify doing things even though we know they are wrong. Why not TRY to get help? Just TRY? I hate therapy myself but I sure as hell need it and I make myself go. Even on days I know for sure that I don't want to live, there are a couple people in my life that I love enough to stay here for. I hold onto the hope that one day will my life will be better, and usually, it does get better. You DO NOT and WILL NOT have any way of knowing where you go when you die EVER. There is no way to find that out. I would think that even the most extreme Atheist would be a tad uncomfortable by that thought. If it is something you don't know, then WHY take such a serious and permanent gamble? I have found from experience that even when you can blame all your problems on outside circumstances and other people, there is ALWAYS work that you need to be doing as well. A lot of your pain and emptiness is coming from the fact that you probably feel like you need to do some growing and changing, but don't know how to or if it is possible. It took me years of making suicide threats and feeling depressed before I was able to see that I may very well be my own worst enemy and that I was the one who needed to change. You can never change other people or change a lot of circumstances but you CAN change the way you look at those people and those circumstances. Please consider all of this.

Do you want to talk about why you think you are "so messed up?" I am almost 100 percent certain that it isn't because you have made any mistakes that all of us make at some point or another.

 

Thank you for all you had to say. Some of that I guess I really needed to hear.

I am pretty messed up. I have been thru a lot, not saying I am the only one. I have made terrible decisions that will affect my life permanently. I cannot take those back, so I live with them everyday.

I have an amazing husband. One that other women wish they had. I am very fortunate to have such an awesome man by my side. But, we are miles apart. I feel like I don't even know him anymore. I have pushed him so far away that I feel like I will never get him all the way back. He lives in this "perfect world" here everything is ok. He grabs my hand and holds me close and smiles to others as we go by like everything is so great. My kids are awesome. They are so smart and healthy, and cute. We look like such an awesome and loving family from the outside. I do love my kids. very very much! I do love my husband. But, I do not give them all of me that they deserve. I am not able to open up to my husband. Instead I keep all of this inside. I yell at my kids constantly. I cannot stand it when they are noisy and fighting. Most days I regret having them.

My life is nowhere near where I want it to be. I know that all the changing probably needs to start in me, but I am not so sure it is worth fixing. I have got serious issues. I bet if I went to a shrink tomorrow they would diagnose me with some type of mental illness. I am not ok. And I know that. But my husband refuses to see that. He would not approve of me being on this site. He would not approve of me seeing a dr about my problems. He wants to go on pretending that everything is just fine. It is all gravy from the outside. Inside I am dying to end it all...

 

I am sooo happy to hear that you have such a wonderful family. I certainly didn't grow up in a family like that. Just so you know, in essence, every single mistake we make, no matter how big or small, we will always have to live with because we cannot change the past. You are not even close to being the first person to make a "permanent" mistake and will not be the last to get through it either. On the surface, it sounds to me like you are having serious marriage problems and believe me, I can understand how desperate those problems can be. You may keep all this inside but I can place a pretty fair bet that your husband at least has an inkling of an idea that you are not okay. He seems to be in denial. Sweetie, your husband does NOT have to approve of you being here, or going to a shrink. You are a grown adult and you can make those decisions all on your own. If he isn't okay with you trying to better yourself, then he has a bigger problem than you do. If he loves you, he will support you. It is not to say that it won't take time. He may very well come around. When people cling onto a false idea, it is hard for them to let it go because they find so much comfort in it. If he doesn't come around? Guess what, you had a life before him and you would have a life after him. Noone can live our lives for us, we can only account for ourselves. Let's say the worst happened and you ended up divorcing, you are still a person and you are still a mother, daughter, sister, and probably many other things. Being a wife does not make up who you are entirely. Just so you know, a therapist doesn't just slap a diagnosis on you. They meet with you many, many, times before even suggesting that you have a mental illness. Even then, in this modern world, the only reason a therapist would diagnose you in the first place is for insurance purposes only. Most of them do not work from the perspective that you ARE the mental illness, but rather work with the symptoms you are having. How do I know? I have a PSYC degree myself and have had therapy and given therapy myself. I have seen people a billion times lower than you are feeling right now, completely turning their lives around. I'm not gonna lie, it will not be easy at all. You may have to make some huge changes that not everyone will approve of. But if the people in your life really love you, they will eventually come around. I promise. When you cross these hurdles and get to a better state of functioning, it WILL be worth it, more than you can imagine. You have to give yourself a chance, you just have to. The fact that you are even here proves that you have something in you left to give. And kudos to you for thinking before you act! That is NOT a sign of a dysfunctional or terrible person. I think you are a very intelligent person who know when they need help but are in circumstances that make it seem impossible.

Don't beat yourself up for how you feel about your children. I am currently fighting severe pregnancy phobia as part of my OCD and I have severe issues surrounding it. I have always felt guilty for not liking children or wanting children but I know that the guilt comes from society and it isn't reasonable. We are told as women that we HAVE to WANT children and LOVE them. That sound great and it would be wonderful if we could turn our feelings on and off like that but we are not robots, we are human. Sometimes we feel certain ways that other people may find unacceptable but that is their problem. We are who we are inside and all we can do is try to change it. I have no doubt that you love your children. You just feel like you are very overwhelmed right now and you want some time and space to work on yourself. It is very hard to do that with a husband and kids...so therefore they frustrate you. That is okay to feel that way.

You talk about how lucky you are to have your family, and maybe you are. But they are also lucky to have you! Those children wouldn't be there if it weren't for you and your husband would not have the life he has without you helping to make it happen. I also think that maybe they are not giving YOU all that YOU deserve. Your children sound like they are too young to even understand any of this, so you should't place any responsibility on them for anything. But your husband would have to be blind and heartless to not see the pain you are in. I am sorry but sometimes you have to make the first move and get some dialogue started between the two of you. It may make him angry and dismissive, but you have to keep trying. You can still get yourself some help even if he never joins in. Remember, just because you have lived a certain way for your whole life, does not mean it has to always be that way. Even if you can't fix past mistakes, you can stop making them and live differently from this point on. Your mistakes do not have to consume you forever, they just don't. You really need to try to tell your husband about some of your feelings. I trust that you are intelligent enough to know how to tell him and when. Even if you can't bring yourself to do that, at least tell him that you are considering getting some help, you don't even have to explain any further. I really hope that will give it a chance because I have a good feeling about you.

 

Please see a doctor. Your husband will adjust to you seeing a doctor in time.

You do not want to traumatize your kids. They may not find you but they will see the horror in your husband's reaction. They will hear what happened and would spend the rest of their lives dealing with those feelings. They must be very young to be waking you up during the night.

Consider making a commitment to live until they are at least 17. They seek you out at night for comfort or some need. They love you, they need you.

You mentioned you may have a mental illness. Many, many people do. If you have NAMI in your town, maybe going to a peer to peer support group can help you. At NAMI.org you can find your local office. Or/And a visit to a doctor may help. Better to address a possible mental illness and get support than to think about ending your life.

I wish there was a magic wand to help your inner trauma (and mine); and the worlds trauma for that matter. Everything seems to be falling apart, not just us.

Take care. No mother is perfect, but children have a strong attachment. They need you.