Posts tagged suicide

A semi-colon is where a sentence should have ended, but didn’t. I am alive right now, though I fully intended to be dead. 

I chose to not end my life. I am not going to delete my last post or any of my posts regarding suicide. They are very much a part of my life and I will not change it. I am not Winston Smith and this is not 1984, I cannot and will not change the past.

God has worked in me so much in the last year, I can hardly contemplate it. I find it difficult now, thinking back to that place where I was when I started this blog. It feels like that was an entirely different person. Because it was. That person and who I am now are worlds apart. I don’t want to die anymore. I don’t want to be in pain anymore either but I can be in that place without ending my life. I can see that now. God is joy and love and completion. Believing in His power and having faith in His grace brings about a byproduct of happiness. Because in Him we are who we were designed to be. Whole. Unbroken. Unburdened. Cherished. Following God does not make life easy. You can’t choose to believe if you just want to be happy. You can be, eventually, but sometimes that isn’t until people get to heaven. But it is worth it! God heals! He redeems! Life gets a bit more difficult, in fact, because you become bombarded with spiritual warfare and unlike in the past, you can’t use things like alcohol, weed or cutting to cope. Those things don’t fix your problems. Only God can. This year, He has proven that to me.

Once upon a time, there was this girl. She was not very good with her words and often had difficulties expressing herself. She was unable to share how sad and lonely she was because of this. God found that girl with little difficulty because He knew where she was all along. He lifted her up. Healed her broken heart. Surrounded her with His people and most importantly, He broke her curse of shame. He gave her the words to say and the ability to speak them. It may sound wrong or horrible that God waited to pull her from that pit. But that is not the case. If God had healed her sooner, her words would not be as sincere. God offered her healing many times before that but she never would take it. She knew she wanted it but she had no idea how much she needed it. People suffer as a result of a sin-filled world. God doesn’t call us not to suffer. He calls us to suffer with, in and through Him because that is exactly what He did with us. It’s how we become healed. How we become complete. We carry our burdens together so that we all may get rid of them and be with God.

God is the reason why I am still alive today. He has brought me the healing I asked for a year ago. He came through for me because He has much bigger plans for me than death by razor.

You can have healing, but you have to ask for it. I hope this blog has served a purpose. I won’t stop on it now. God still has plans for it, for me and for YOU!

If I had continued with this plan, I would have only another week and half to live. God redeems.

God is constantly working in all of our lives, whether we acknowledge Him or not, whether we want to see the effects or not, whether we even believe in His existence or not.

I’m not going to say my life has been more difficult than most, because I know that isn’t true. However in the 25 years that I have been alive, there has been much hurt.

I went to camp when I was twelve, where I learned about Hell and wanted to avoid it. I was told the gospel but did not grasp it.

When I was twenty, a friend of mine took the time to walk through the gospel story with me. That is when I was saved. I know that to be true in my heart now. However, it wasn’t until 4 ½ years after that, that God’s love, grace and mercy finally attacked my heart in a way that I will never go back from.

In the 4 ½ years between being saved and being healed, I was confronted with my past. It’s still a battle. But now it’s one I’m winning.

This is difficult to explain. In that 4 ½ years, I didn’t change my ways. I kept going to church, but I was still using drugs. I was still drinking constantly. I was still cutting. I was still being broken down daily by the enemy. Around my 24^th birthday, I was so beaten and broken that if anyone asked my religion, I would always reply agnostic.

I did believe in God. I desperately wanted Him and His message of love and peace to be true. I felt guilty calling myself a Christian because that is far from the life I was living.

I knew there was no hope for me. I didn’t want to keep wasting my time on living. But I still wanted to believe God could reach me.

I decided to allow myself one more year. One more year for God to come and find me. One more year for me to be convinced that life was worth living. One more year and I would opt-out.

God did find me. He picked me up and showed me all of the ways He has been with me all of these years. During the abuse and rejection. During my rebellion. During my deepest and darkest times. Every single horrible thing that I have done and has been done to me, has led me right here. Right into His arms.

I was meant to come to Praxis. God had that planned for me before my first steps, my first words, even my first breath. God knew that without a loving, living, accountable family to support me, I never would have seen Him. That family is Praxis. The people of Praxis are His tools that picked me up, pointed me in the right direction and pushed and pushed and pushed until I saw the way, the truth and the life.

They understand because they also have all been broken and were pushed by others to God, just like me.

If it weren’t for these people, I wouldn’t be alive anymore. Because in all honesty I couldn’t wait for this year to be up. And probably wouldn’t have kept on without them.

I was broken and will never be perfect, but I am healed because God found me, held me and showed me Himself in my own life.

My name is Kristen. I am Praxis.

So much has changed in the short time since I started this blog. So much in my life is different. In my heart. I feel like a new person. Of course it has only been about five months, so I do still struggle with some of the same issues, but I have not given up on them or myself. 

I made a decision that I posted on here. If you make your way back to that post on April 27, 2012, you can read what I wrote. 

I said that if things didn’t start to get better, I would take my own life on my next birthday. I don’t want to do that anymore. It’s not that I have more desire to live now necessarily. It’s because I really have seen progress. That’s all I wanted. I knew God would be able to shine a bit of light on me. Even when I didn’t really believe or want to believe in Him, I knew He would give me hope. 

The reason I am saying all of this is because I have made another decision. I have a post queued to go up on my birthday. It is basically a suicide letter. The whole blog is a suicide letter but it is more of a final post/introduction to the whole blog for my family and friends. I have no intention of stopping it from posting. Just like I refuse to go back and alter any previous posts no matter how embarrassing. That’s altering history and is a bit too Winston Smith, if you catch my drift. 

That post will go up. 

But I plan on following it with another post. A post that summarizes what God has done in my life in 2012. I plan to continue my blog even after that, however with that post I also plan on a spreading the link to my family and friends. The same way I would have if I had killed myself. They will be able to see the letters I have written to them. They will be able to see my testimony. With hope, they will be able to see a glimmer of hope for themselves as well.

Well, I don’t really know exactly what led up to it. But Sunday evening I had an anxiety attack which ended up being a panic attack in the end. I was stressed out about school and work and other stuff that I need to take care of. For example, I have been living in a dirty room for like the past month. That is just not cool with me. But I just can’t bring myself to take care of it. I haven’t been able to focus lately on anything. I don’t know how I spend my days. It’s like I black out for hours at a time and have no recollection of what goes down. 

Sunday afternoon, I started having all these thoughts about how I am basically useless at my church and how I don’t feel like I have a place there. I don’t know why, because I do feel accepted and I do things. Like photos and crap like that. I just started feeling rejected all of a sudden. Which seriously makes no sense. 

I was texting my pastor’s wife and she was telling me to pray and just relax to try and calm down before it got worse. I did feel better after a little bit. 

But then when I got to church for the night service, I started feeling really shaky. My heart was racing and my fingers were numb. I messaged her and she told me I was having a panic attack. I locked myself in the children’s resource room to try to cool down. It took about 45 minutes and lots of texts between her and I, and her getting onto me for texting her because I couldn’t focus on getting in the Spirit if I kept talking to her. I had been praying the whole time but when she said that I started praying really hard. Harder I think than I have ever before. 

I kept trying to recite to myself all of the things the God has promised in scripture. I was going over the list in my head of the things that God says about me in His word. That He loves me. That He is my father. That He wants me to push forward. 

This is what I kept saying out loud to myself over and over:

Okay. I’m okay. God loves me. God protects me. God doesn’t want me to be in pain. God doesn’t want this for me. God is in everything. God embraces me. God is my shelter. Nothing evil can hurt me, spiritual or physical. I’m okay.

By the end of the day I was completely exhausted. Still for a couple of days after that I felt like I had been rung through the ringer spiritually. 

But at the same time, and I don’t really know how to explain it, I felt more alive! Because that thing that happened, God got me through it. I wanted to just end everything right then and there, just so it would stop. But I pushed through, because that’s what God wants for me. He wants me to fight! 

I have now lasted 60 days without cutting.

But I am going to be 100% honest. (not that I lie on here, because that would be retarded considering it’s a blog.) I smoked weed yesterday afternoon with a guy from one of my classes. June was the last time I smoked before that. I don’t really feel guilty though. I felt so much better than I have in forever. I miss weed. A lot!

So right now I am struggling with whether or not I believe in my own heart that smoking is a sin. I know it can hinder my relationship with God. But so can everything.

Anyway. That is where I am right now. I think I am doing okay, considering the kind of week it has been.

I really, really want and need to post something new, but really have no idea what to talk about. I have a couple of things I want to write about but at the same time, I really have no idea what to say.

Things are going okay right now.

I joined a new gym, finally. I missed working out and it has gotten too hot to run around my neighborhood.

My counselor is going to help me find a new one. One closer to my area that has more experience with clients who deal with cutting and suicidal thoughts.

I’m really drunk at the moment. Feeling pretty freaking awesome.

That’s all I think. For now anyway.

I laid it all out. Told her everything. About the cutting, the drinking, the drugs and the suicidal thoughts. She was very supportive. It went much better than I expected. She didn’t freak out. She wants to help me and be here for me.

I don’t really know what else to say.

I just feel at peace right now. It’s a strange feeling. But I like it.

I hope it lasts.

What people don’t seem to understand is how close I am daily to just giving in and killing myself. I choose not to because my friends keep telling me there is hope. I don’t completely buy that but, fuck it, I’ll wait a little longer.

Cutting is not about suicide. Yes, sometimes the two do mix but for the most part they remain completely separate. I have been cutting for 13 years, but have only been suicidal for about 6 months. Like serious suicide. Not just random thoughts about death but to the point of planning. Cutting actually helps get rid of the suicidal thoughts. When I cut I feel happy again. Temporary or not, no one can argue that it isn’t real happiness.

dont want to be alive.

I learned something new today from my cousin.

Read more …

This is blog is basically going to be a year long suicide note for my family and friends. I want my family to be able to understand why I made that decision. They’ll be able to read this and finally understand the pain I was in. At this point, none of my family knows about this blog and it needs to stay that way.

Last Thursday was my birthday. I really don’t want to be alive anymore at this point but suicide is a permanent decision. My mom always said that it was a permanent decision to a temporary problem. Which I guess implies that the reasons people kill themselves aren’t a big deal. I have been dealing with these thoughts for thirteen years. You can’t tell me that it is a temporary problem.

As I do every year on my birthday, I think back to what has already happened in my life. How my year went and how I might want to change it in the year to come. This time I came to a decision. If my life does not get better in the next year and I don’t start being able to heal from the shit that has happened. Then next year, on my 25th birthday, I am going to kill myself.

Before anyone freaks out, realize that I am in a lot of pain and giving myself another year to ‘live’ is generous enough. I have no idea how I am going to do it.

I need my parents to know that if I do make this decision, it had nothing to do with their parenting. I’m messed up because of my uncle and other things, but really it all leads back to him. He is the one you can blame for my death when the time comes.

I’m done talking about this for now. Just keep in mind, Mom and Dad, it wasn’t your fault.

I have been having these thoughts lately. I used to think suicide was wrong. My mom always says that it is selfish.

It isn’t selfish.

The people who push people to suicide are selfish.

Sometimes ending everything is the only option. Fuck it. Fuck life. Fuck everything.

Leave it all. That sounds like a good plan.

(it was a good birthday.)

A friend bought me some tabs of Yellow Butterfly. As soon as I finish my last final exam… I’m going to get wrecked on them!

I don’t think I actually want to kill myself. If I did, it would destroy my mom. I couldn’t to that. But the closer I push myself to the edge, with thoughts or self inflicted pain, makes me feel more alive.

What’s wrong with that?

So to my friends who tell me they know best and God wouldn’t want me to do it, if you haven’t struggled yourself, then you can’t tell me that it doesn’t work.

Because it does. The argument as to whether or not it is healthy is irrelevant.

I know how far is too far.