“I’ll start by saying this: it took a long time to realize it, but thinking of taking your life – suicidal thoughts – are a lot more common than you think. Yup, you heard correctly! That may be a revelation for some; it was for me. I spent years assuming I must be “properly fucked up” or “mentally ill” to be thinking it in the first place.”
It was a mid-week winter night in Newport, around 10 o’clock. 20-something-year-old me had had enough. The feelings at this point were overwhelming, but the thoughts I’d had in the day had actually stopped racing. I was calm, calculated, and ready to take action. Things had begun to be too much for me for a while; this was a solution. A logical conclusion, I thought. I robotically descended the stairs and numbly sat on the slate floor next to the oven. I must have heard this was a way to do it – use gas. In a haze-like, depressed state, I began to twist the gas switch marked “oven.” Silence. A pause. I couldn’t go through with it. Well, I would have done if it hadn’t been for the fact that my wife at the time was upstairs, and I’m not sure how it happened, but I broke down in tears and gut-wrenching desperation. She was next to me by now on the kitchen floor, in the mental haze now – a mixed bag of feelings and emotions that are actually really difficult to describe. I’m sure others understand what I mean – a numb, overpowering empty resignation. She was next to me, and our two kids were in bed asleep.
Cut to about 20 minutes later. Following a phone call to 999 by my wife, I was being driven through the deserted Newport streets to the leafy suburbs of Caerleon. It felt like it was past midnight; I’m unsure of what the time actually was. We arrived at “St. Cadoc’s Mental Hospital” – I’m sure it has a more appropriate name than that now and probably then too. But that didn’t matter – I was “mental,” and here was a place dedicated to “mental people” like me!
There was time for some amusement in the whole saga, strangely. A mental health nurse greeted us at the door. He was male. My wife was taken by him; “he’s hot,” she suggested. I agreed. Even in the depths of despair, there seemed to be room for humor. Yes, I know what you’re probably thinking – “that’s a weird family set-up.” And you’d be right! But that was where I was at the time.
I remember sitting, waiting to see “the quack” in the waiting room. In the clinical white and blue setting, my thoughts wandered. Was I going to have to stay in this place? Was I one of the “mental cases” that frequented places like this? What was “wrong” with me? What did I have – a “mental illness”?
Here is what surprised me most about the whole experience under the glaring fluorescent lights of an NHS hospital in South Wales. The young male psychiatrist behind the desk said one of the most powerful phrases to me. No, he didn’t diagnose me with “depression” or some so-called disorder, one of the many contained in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). After a few questions asked compassionately, he looked at me kindly, stating a phrase that stuck with me – “there is nothing wrong with being gay.”
I knew in that moment that the years of fighting, the ‘pray the gay away therapy’, the physical abuse, the bullying and the denial had brought me here.
I didn’t meet a psychiatrist that night, I met a human. I needed to meet a human. And even more poignant was this was a man being a human – he wasn’t name-calling, kicking the shit out of me, or judging me.
He has likely no idea what that moment meant to me, those few words. It was life-changing for me. I know it’s overused, but it was a ‘light bulb moment’. I didn’t leave with a diagnosis or medication, I left with a sense that my world could be different, it could be better. I left with hope.
And of course, ending our own life can look like a solution and a very ‘logical’ one – the pain will be over, won’t it? Let’s not try to silence the debate about this.
Our thoughts are a signal to do something. And so very often we need others to do the something with – it took my wife to make a phone call and drive me to the hospital, and it took an NHS psychiatrist to speak the words to me – ‘it’s ok’.
I have had suicidal thoughts since. Not as many as I used to, but when life sucks, I have found myself with emotions, thoughts, and feelings that point to wanting a way out. It’s normal, for me sometimes. I now don’t panic and am not judgmental to myself, and I don’t personally reach for a diagnosis to explain why I’m struggling. Getting through takes time, self-compassion, talking to those that love me, and lots of self-care.
We have suicidal thoughts for so many reasons – feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness from crap that’s thrown at us in life – bereavement, divorce, no sense of purpose, or even when we feel we have it all and still feel low – the list goes on.
But I’m grateful for the signal that something might be wrong – that’s what suicidal thoughts are for me, signals.
I will now skip quite a few years since the fluorescent lights of St Cadoc’s Hospital to the many people I’ve met in my own work as a counsellor. I may not sit behind a desk with a white coat on, but the same human sentiment I met in the hospital on that day I try to bring into the therapy room – ‘I hear your pain and understand why you may feel like taking your life’.
I think we should all pay close attention to the signals in ourselves and those in others around us and act with compassion, care, and love. It’s why Helpu was founded.
I really hope that through hearing the stories from others who have been struggling and are seeking to help and support when it’s needed, we can create compassionate, caring, and helpful spaces like the one I found that night in Caerleon.
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