My last post was in the main concerned with writing about what happened. This time I would like to talk about feelings. Or at least I would like to try to do that. I’m not sure that I will be able to, but I do want to try. So, here goes..

I know that I wrote in my previous post that my immediate reaction upon waking in the hospital was that I was glad that I had indeed woken up, that I was glad that I was still alive. And that is absolutely true. I was. In fact, I am. But, as always, things are never quite that simple and straightforward. Naturally there is a plethora of emotions surrounding the fact that I am still here today. And that is what I would like to write about today.

There were reasons for why I was suicidal in the first place, and surviving a serious intake of poison does not take any of those reasons away. All of the things I was dealing with before are still just as present now. In the words of the esteemed Dr. House: ‘Almost dying changes nothing. Actually dying changes everything.’

Although, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I am back at the exact same place I was before, nothing has got particularly easier. Yes, the happiness about being alive does help, gives me some kind of energy to keep trying, to keep at it a little longer, but, that isn’t in itself a magic cure. In some ways, the very fact that I am happy that I survived actually complicates things. You see, for me, ending my life has always been a viable Out, a thought that has been been my constant companion throughout life; I genuinely can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel that if things got too bad I could always choose to get off the train.

But what happens when you wake up, having very nearly fallen off the proverbial train and you realise that you’re actually pleased that you didn’t? Well, it means that you are suddenly in a brand new and very special kind of Scary Place. You are in just as much unbearable pain as you were before, but suddenly you haven’t got that Out anymore. So, somehow you have to find a way to live, without the option of dying.

I am not saying that I have left the option of death as an Out forever behind – as I wrote earlier – nearly dying changes nothing – including that, I suspect. But, for now, this option has been moved from being constantly right there on the table, sitting right next to my tea cup, to being stuck somewhere at the back of a bottom drawer.

I am not naïve enough to think that I will never again find myself sitting there at the jumping off place with both legs dangling over the edge, but I am also in tune enough with myself to know that this feeling, the feeling of actually wanting to be alive, is very very different to anything I have ever experienced before following a suicide attempt. And, I am – or at least I’d like to think I am – wise enough to recognise that this is a significant shift in me. And that I need to use that shift in some way.

But, how do you live without dying?

Well, the honest truth is that I don’t know; I haven’t got an answer to that. I’ve never been in this situation before, and I don’t really know how to deal with this.

So, for now, I am following a very simple rule: take each day as it comes and make no major decisions until I have some distance, until I can look at what has happened with some perspective. And I think the best way to get to such a place is through maintaining an open and honest dialogue with those around me.

That – and lots and lots of therapy.

Do be kind to your Selfs,

xx