Suicide is NOT the Answer!

"I want to die."

I said this to my husband or thought this every day for 5 months (from November 2015 to March 2016).  Even if it was the best day I had had in a long time, I still couldn't shake the thought that death felt like a better option for me.  I didn't want to go on, and I honestly thought it was only a matter of time before I would be gone.  Sometimes I prayed that God would take me so that it wouldn't be wrong, and sometimes I asked for my husband to pray for that, too.  I can only imagine the pain and fear that must have surrounded him during my darkest moments.

At first, it was just a thought, but after a few weeks, it got more serious, and I thought about the specific details of how I would do it.  One cold, November evening in 2015, I was in a deep, dark, bad place.  I thought that there was no way I could make it through the week.  In fact, I didn't even think I could make it through the next day, so I started formulating a plan.  As I was intently focused on these terrible thoughts, my husband recognized my silence and broke through my thoughts by asking, "What are you thinking about?"

More silence followed as I thought: How am I supposed to explain to him that I have reached this point of complete helplessness, hopelessness, and darkness?  How am I supposed to tell him what I am actually thinking?

After a few minutes, I very quietly mumbled, "I want to die, and I was sitting here planning it out."  Of course, he was worried.  Of course, he took immediate action to help me.  Of course, he wanted to do everything in his power to keep me here, to bring light back into my life, and to give me hope.

His five words of asking what I was thinking about changed my life.  I really think God must have intervened, because I don't think there is any other way that my husband would have known exactly what to ask at exactly the right moment, or that I could have shared the dark thoughts in my mind at that moment.

Over the next few months, through the valiant efforts of my husband and the help of a counselor, I was eventually able to overcome these daily thoughts and rise out of the darkness that surrounded me. God even allowed me to completely escape the heavy and strong grip of depression for 3 months this last summer.  It felt so good, so refreshing, so rejuvenating.  Some days during the summer, my mind would turn back to the 5 months of darkness, the 5 long months when I was sure that all hope was lost and that I would never see light again.  I was filled with gratitude that my husband asked a critical question at a critical time, so that I didn't act on the dark feelings that surrounded me, and so that I could get to that point of feeling happiness and hope again, something I was convinced only a few months earlier that I would never reach.

While experiencing this time of light, I was able to realize that light ALWAYS comes again, even if we feel surrounded by darkness.  Going through depression isn't going deeper and deeper into a cave.  It's going through a tunnel, where someday we will reach the end and there will be light again, even though everything is dark in the present.  The light always comes again, so we have to trust in future light, when there is nothing but darkness.

Now I am in darkness again.  Don't worry!  I'm not completely helpless or hopeless right now, but I am in darkness.  I am trusting in God that the light will come again and that there is always hope.  If you are in darkness, PLEASE do not give up on yourself or on your life.  Trust me when I say that the light always comes again.  It will come, and when it does, it will far outweigh the pain and darkness that led to it.  Open up to someone, anyone.  Get help.  We can trust in the future light together and help each other until we get there again.