“May [this] be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.”
galadriel, the lord of the rings
Suicide and hope…
Two words in our culture representing opposite sides of the spectrum.
The idea of someone dying by their own hands for many people means that the person must have lost hope. While the perception of someone filled with hope envisions a person filled with positivity. Filled with life.
In the end a life lost is a life lost.
Yet, the idea hope is lost on those of us who have thought of or died by suicide may counterintuitively be wrong. The reason most of us see someone who yearns for death as having lost hope is simply a measure of not being able to see a suicidal person’s perspective.
Through my own experience with wanting my own life to end I’ve found hope is not lost once you begin to take the idea of suicide seriously. No, from my own perspective it meant to find hope in the idea that I would be rid of the pain I dealt with in my physical form. For anybody else who has felt this it may be due to physical pain or emotional. Yet, either way, anybody who has felt such a way may find hope in an idea (religious or not) that such pain will end once their life ends.
So…
I must ask…
What do you feel when you watch this video?
Coming up short and losing out on what you thought could be is so very painful. Yet, as you can see with Derek Redmond you keep on getting up and attempting to finish. The more you do it by yourself though the pain becomes deeper and deeper until eventually you will either need to find help, help will come to you, or you will collapse completely never being able to see what would happen if you crossed the finish line.
Yes, we always respect the spirit of fighting to finish. We always want to do it on our own terms. Yet without help Derek Redmond likely does not cross the finish line of that race. For it to be his father I believe speaks volumes to who we are willing to trust in helping us along the way.
Oh, and Derek Redmond is now a motivational speaker if you didn’t know.
Fancy that!
Personally I have had a few little ideas that I have felt have saved me from committing suicide throughout the years. These ideas had to do with my loss of religion for the most part. First I thought that if I were to die by suicide then I would have no chance of things getting any better for me. Second, after I began having symptoms of schizoaffective disorder was that I would no longer be able to do good for those like me if I were to die (presuming that I can help to make the world a better place for those like me). Third though…
Well the third idea technically had been within me for quite a long time. The first time I started thinking of it in regards to suicide though was in 2012. As it goes…
Life is like walking along a sidewalk. This sidewalk is so very very long. Beauty (hope) can be found at any corner, block, any place you look really. Yet a corner on which you may find what you are looking for may be five feet away, five blocks away, or even five miles. Which can make it tough if you have to hike five miles for some hope. (Especially if, like me, you are obese).
In reality though you just have to be looking for said hope. If you cannot find any you need to look within and find why you are not seeing hope in what is around you. Maybe my metaphor is wrong for you personally. Maybe you need to be out in nature. Possibly, you need quite a few friends to help you along the way. We all need people to help us to get to where we want to go and furthermore where we feel we need to go.
I find hope in the many things I love. Sports, film, video games, etc. Yet, like anybody and everybody else we all need ourselves a Samwise Gamgee. One to tell us. One to help us. One to let us know…
“The ones that really mattered…”
-Samwise Gamgee
Schizoaffect92 
