Maybe telling you my experience will help you

[Xavier Perez-Pons]

Many years ago, I thought about committing suicide but I saved myself. And in order to try to save others I wrote the following letter…

Dear Suicide: Before you carry out your purpose, I would like you to read these few lines. The only authority I can claim to request this from you, is the fact that I do not need to put myself in your place to make you reconsider, since, once, I WAS in your place. I'm talking about something that happened many years ago; therefore, in addition, I can see your dilemma in perspective. So the one who speaks to you is the voice of experience. I know that you feel bad, very bad, that things could not go worse and that everything seems to have been conjured against you. There is no hope on the horizon. Maybe at this time you have given up, as it happened to me. To understand what I'm going to tell you next, you have to know that, months before having thrown in the towel, I had participated in a literary contest, but I had no hope of winning it. I already accumulated some experience in such failures and, well, why would it be different this time? In fact, a lot of months had passed since (just two days before the expiration of the manuscript submission deadline) I happened to learn about the contest; so I had already forgotten that pile of pages that I wrote in a hurry. Well, it was then that a seemingly insignificant thing happened. I passed by a bookstore window and I was struck by the title of a book: "Life after life" by an American doctor named Raymond Moody. Given such a title, I felt a logical curiosity in my situation and I bought it. Dear friend, may this brief letter have the same influence on you that the reading of that book on me! His author reported a survey he had conducted among patients who underwent a technical resuscitation; that is, patients who, after being declared clinically dead, had come back to life. And to his surprise, he discovered one thing that has since been amply confirmed by the medical community: that there is a recurring pattern of post-mortem events in the descriptions of those patients. If you've heard about NDEs (Near Death Experiences) you'll know what I'm talking about: the feeling of well-being and happiness, seeing your own body from above, the appearance of loved ones, a kind of dark tunnel through which one advances at great speed in pursuit of a white light that shines at the end of it -an intense light that nevertheless does not blind and that transmits a sensation of peace and unspeakable love.

By the time I finished reading the book, I felt still as bad as when I started it, but I did not want to take my own life anymore. I wanted to learn more about that strange experience called NDE, and I read other books that dealt with the same subject (Dr. Moody had published his book in 1975 and caused such a commotion among the medical class that many of his colleagues followed in his wake, so when I read his book there was already a lot of literature about NDE). All corroborated the study conducted by Dr. Moody. "So there really is an Afterlife!", I thought. And, well, for a desperate person, an Afterlife is the closest thing to a hope; so I abandoned my intention to take my life. I knew it would be a hard life; it would not be the happy life enjoyed by the people around me. Oh, but after this life, I expected another! And after all, I could use this life -even if it was a sad one- to do something positive, something that would be useful to others. And in my head, I began to plan for the future. After a week, I received news: the jury of that literary contest to which I had submitted many months ago, had chosen my work as the winner. And ... well, I do not extend more (the rest is already explained in other posts). I just want you to know that, whatever your decision, and even without knowing you personally, I feel for you a tremendous solidarity and empathy. Because you remind me of myself at an extremely difficult moment in my life.

240 views · 

[quiXilver]

Powerful stuff.  Thanks for sharing mate.

 

I'm put in mind of Rainer Maria Rilke.  Some of his insights have cut through even my deepest mental and emotional fogs, penetrating with realization and resonating with familiarity and kinship of spirit.  A couple seem to harmonize with what you have offered, so I'll share them.

 

 Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart.
Rainer Maria Rilke

 Go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows.
Rainer Maria Rilke

It is true that these mysteries are dreadful, and people have always drawn away from them. But where can we find anything sweet and glorious that would never wear this mask, the mask of the dreadful? Whoever does not, sometimes or other, give his full consent, his full and joyous consent to the dreadfulness of life, can never take possession of the unutterable abundance and power of our existence; can only walk on its edge, and one day, when the judgment is given, will have been neither alive nor dead.
Rainer Maria Rilke

 

 Yet everything that touches us, me and you, takes us together like a violin's bow,

which draws one voice out of two separate strings.
Rainer Maria Rilke

 You have had many sadnesses, large ones, which passed. ... But please, ask yourself whether these large sadnesses haven't rather gone right through you [that is, passed through you]. Perhaps many things inside you have been transformed; perhaps somewhere, someplace deep inside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad.
Rainer Maria Rilke

 

With love and respect...

[ant0n]

Thanks for sharing, Xavier

[highdesert50]

We all have a story to tell, and yours is a very powerful reminder that if we are willing to alter our beliefs, we change the way we perceive the world and hence our attitude. Appreciate the tremendous courage needed to reach out and share your story so that we don't forget that suicide is second leading cause of death for those in the ten to thirty-four age groups.