Though I hate to admit it, I have given up on life a few times. It started in my teen years, and I've relapsed into that line of thinking on a few occasions as an adult. One of the more recent instances of this was when I found out I was pregnant with my second child.
I was already struggling with the challenges of my first when we found out we were pregnant again. She was 4 1/2 mos old. I was not ready for another. I wasn't even convinced that I was ok with having the first one! I was suffering from PPD and felt like I had just thrown away any identity I had and that independence and freedom were history. While some of that is true, in my mind I made it out to be so much more.
I wanted out. I knew life had given me more than I could handle. I was done.
Many times I considered ways in which to end it. I thought about making it look like an accident so that family wouldn't suffer as much. I thought about driving off the road and just "forgetting" to hit the brakes. I thought about "falling" down the stairs. I thought about "accidentally" taking too many sleeping pills...
...and then I thought about her. I thought about how unfair it would be to her for her mother to run away like that. I thought about how hard it would be for her carrying the weight of that on her shoulders. I thought about how she needed someone to be here to teach her the things that only a mom who's lived through them herself can teach.
I thought about her, and I stopped.
1 comment:
Kudos to you for sharing that--I know it probably wasn't easy.
I don't know that I've ever given up in the sense of contemplating suicide. But I've given up in more of a literal sense--as in, I just quit caring and trying, and just muddled my way through the days. I went through a period several years back where I was living on my own, and dealing with some major depression. The depression wasn't pleasant, but in a way, it was comfortable. And it was easy to just hole up in my apartment and shut everyone out than to get out and have a life. Thankfully I had some great friends who were patient with me and wouldn't give up on me.
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