Hurt and pain

This is a song about somebody else, So don’t worry yourself, worry yourself, The devil’s right there right there in the details, And you don’t wanna hurt yourself, hurt yourself, Put your arms around somebody else, Don’t punish yourself, punish yourself, Truth is like blood underneath your fingernails, And you don’t wanna hurt yourself, hurt yourself, I could be wrong ’bout anybody else, So don’t kid yourself, kid yourself, It’s you right there, right there in the mirror, And you don’t wanna hurt yourself, hurt yourself, Looking too closely, Looking too closely – Fink

A month ago a women drove to the apartment of her estranged husbands girlfriend along with her two small children. She shot and killed the girlfriend in the parking deck of the apartment complex. She then drove seven miles, parked her car and killed her two children and herself.

Our local television station posted her suicide note yesterday;

To my parents and my sister, I am so sorry for the pain I am causing all of you. You’ve all always been there for me and I love you all so much. I know what I have done is selfish, but I cannot live with this pain any longer. I just cannot handle it. It is too much. It hurts too much. I will no longer be in pain and my children will no longer hurt either. I am so sorry. I love you all.

To Nate, I don’t know what to say. You gave me my first child. I will forever be greatful because of you. I never meant to cause you as much pain as this. I am sorry.

To Ben, you have caused me more pain than I’ve ever been in my life. You have caused my children pain. I hate you. I hope you rot one day for what you have done to me and my kids. You can no longer hurt us. We are at peace. I hope you live with pain and shame and guilt for the rest of your life.

The television station has taken some heat for making this note public. I understand that. This is and was a very painful event for the survivors. Honestly, I can’t even fathom the hurt and pain they are going through, the hurt and pain they will go through for the rest of their lives.

But this story, this event, this woman’s decision affected many more lives than just her family and friends, it affected mine as well. I didn’t know her. I don’t know anyone that knows her. But I know hurt and pain, I have experienced both and have caused both for people I love.

When I heard about this on the news hurt and pain flooded my soul, as a son, as a husband and the hardest, as a father.

I have written about suicide on several occasions over the last two years. Suicide has touched my life more times than I care to remember. But I do remember, I remember the hurt and pain each one caused and what I also remember is the amount collateral damage each suicide caused. This woman was going for collateral damage and sadly, for all involved, she accomplished it.

The news outlets spent a week answering the who, what, where, when, and how and speculated on the why. Her suicide note answered the why though I probably didn’t need to read her note to guess the why and what was going on her in life, I could read between the lines.

I have struggled with this woman’s actions and wrote about some of the issues I was dealing with back in July (What God knows). In the paragraph above I state that the “suicide note answered the why” which I guess in some small part it did, but my problem, my question is the much bigger WHY, why she thought this was the correct course of action, WHY.

As you can imagine many of the Facebook comments about this woman have been very brutal, christian people, or at least people who think they are christian have written some of the ugliest comments and again I ask myself WHY. Maybe they write out of fear, fear that they don’t have all the answers they think they thought they had. Maybe they write out of arrogance, that their “Faith” gives them some kind of protective shield that would prevent them from ever committing such a heinous act. Or maybe it is just ignorance, they don’t know what the hell they believe or how to articulate it they just know, somehow, that they are right and the rest of us, the rest of us doomed souls are wrong.

I could continue to write another 10,000 words here and I know I won’t get any closer to the answer or the truth. If you feel so compelled to offer a comment to my post in the vein of “God knows the answer” please save your breath, my brain cells and the time it takes my two fingers to type a response to blow-up your bullshit. Here is the bottom line, this woman needed help, my friend Tom needed help, my friend Steve needed help. God doesn’t have an answer or a response. God didn’t predict this. God didn’t let this happen. God couldn’t have prevented this. God had nothing to do with this.

As I have written before, I don’t fully understand the demons of depression though I have had a moment in my life where I stood toe to toe staring this tiger in the face with the same thought that life would be better for those around me without me in it. I am thankful, beyond thankful, that I won that staring contest. If you or someone you know is dealing with these same struggles, please, please talk to someone and get help. There is no shame in asking for help, we all need help sometimes. Our families, our friends, our community want and need us here, I know they do. I have seen it their eyes and I have felt it in my heart.    

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

“Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” –  Phil Donahue

 

About ends and beginnings blog

I am a frustrated writer and poet waiting to be discovered. A stand-up philosopher performing on a street corner near you. A Christian with questions but I don’t want to hear your answers. A Buddhist with a bumper sticker on my truck to prove it. A collector of quotes. A grower of lettuce. The Patron Saint of earthworms who name their children after me. A cyclist whose big ass strains the seams of his Lycra bibs. I am American by birth, Southern by the grace of God. My goal in life is to leave an imprint on the lives of the people I love not a footprint on the earth. I am a son, a husband, a father composed of 65%-Oxygen, 18%-Carbon, 10%-Hydrogen, 3%-Nitrogen, 3%-Diet Coke and 1%-Oreo.
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16 Responses to Hurt and pain

  1. Ah, me and my shadow. There but for the grace of God go I. Stared it in the face, sat in a motel room with the razor blades, contemplated how to pump exhaust into my pickup. Don’t go there anymore. I figure that at age 70 I’ve got this life pretty well dicked. Why make a mess? Why hurt my partner and my handful of friends? I don’t know what God thinks about suicide, but I sure as hell don’t want to take any chances pissing off God. My friend, it is a serious topic and we all need to be aware of clinical depression and all mental health issues. Sometimes just being a listening ear is all that is required.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. My struggle comes in prevention – if the person sees NO OTHER WAY out, is it wrong for us to talk them into sticking around, and how can we if that person is so deep in their darkness that light no longer exists? Are we being selfish to want them to stay in our lives? In the meantime, I would ask that those who want to die, stop taking others with them. Their children, other people’s children, the person / people they’re mad at…suicide is one thing, murder – suicide just…sigh. It all boggles my brain.

    Sending a cyber hug to you and wishes for peace of mind / heart / soul to those left behind.

    Liked by 2 people

    • Ms. Dana I am not smart enough to answer that question. If I were suffering from a terminal illness then yes I would rather not stick around.

      I have lived through the darkness, I have stared at the beast. I was hurt and in pain and had caused hurt and pain. What my mind told me at the time was that I didn’t have the courage to go through with it. Imagine that, defining it as courage. That part still hurts me but it helped me understand my friends suicide, not accept them, understand them.

      I worry about writing about this. I don’t know if I should. I hope that how I handle helps rather than hurts but it still worries me to bring the topic up.

      Like

      • Im glad you wrote it tho, because its honest dialog, no judgement just open, honest…we dont often get to talk about our darkness, we’re told its “bad”. But to be able to ask the questions, share the fear, wonder, confusion…to be able to say we dont know – I find that freeing. I hurt less, fear my own thoughts less knowing Im not the only one and can speak my truth to someone who gets it, who is just as confused as I am. I hope being able to write it out does the same for you and anyone who might read this.

        Liked by 2 people

  3. As a suicide survivor mom I want to say thank you for this. And thank you for telling THEM to save their breath. The last thing people in my shoes need is their brand of help and their ignorance. However, in the case of my son and myself, Phil Donahue was wrong.. I am not saying suicide is the answer but some problems are not temporary.

    Liked by 1 person

    • No some problems may not seem temporary but I think you and I can both agree on the first part, suicide is permanent. My mantra is “Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at will change” (Buddhist Proverb). How we see things is how WE see things and may not be how things really are or how they are seen by others. We get in that dark place, inside four walls and it becomes very hard to determine the difference between temporary and permanent. As always, thank you for reading and being in my universe.

      Liked by 2 people

  4. Scottie says:

    It has always confused me how strong yet fragile humans are. We feel pain, internal emotional pain far beyond the sum of what we are. It is hard for me to understand why it becomes too much for some and not others. It scares me that I don’t know if I am strong enough should that time come for me. Best wishes. Hugs

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Patty says:

    Sad, sad story…it was even on the news over here in The Netherlands. Knowing the feeling myself and being around people with those feelings and even serious attempts; if a person doesn’t want to be helped, there is not much you can do. However, I for one will keep trying and that’s why I wrote and write about this topic and depression at my website, offer a ‘listening ear’…Taking that first step to reach out and ask help is very difficult, but at that low point, you have nothing left to lose. But I keep on encouraging people to do so, cause to me, we all do matter and thus are worth it.
    So thank you, for writing a similar minded post.
    XxX

    Liked by 2 people

  6. I have to disagree with Musings of Meandering Spirits. All problems are temporary…. Even if a problem lasts an entire lifetime, the attitude and approach you take towards it can change the problem from how it started to how you will let it end. We can’t speak on the emotional pain of anyone and how “heavy” it is for some people because everyone is different and we all experience pain differently. But we can ALWAYS encourage, uplift, and love on our family and friends in dark places. That can make a difference.

    Liked by 1 person

    • I don’t disagree, at issue though is knowing when our family and friends are in a dark place. We can ask the same question “are you okay” a 1,000 times, a 1,000 different ways and if they don’t tell us the truth we will never know what is truly in their hearts. I know, I have been the person being asked and I have been the person doing the asking.

      From the outside looking in all problems do appear to be temporary but in that one second, in that one moment, when you put that single bullet in the chamber the problem, every problem, appears one way, and one way only.

      Liked by 2 people

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