Suicide not the answer

Page 4

The glass of whisky and the vial of sleeping pills sat side by side on the coffee table in front of me for what seemed an eternity.

The silence around me screamed as the howl of grief and depression roared inside my head. It was unrelenting. The biggest decision of my life sat in the contents of two containers. One by itself would get drunk. The other would probably really mess me up. Combining them would kill me as surely as if I'd stepped in front of a gravel truck.

Life. Or Death.

My choice. Right now. No turning back.

The finality of what I was considering didn't escape me. That was why the glass of whisky sat as long as it did and why I hadn't taken the top off the vial I had taken from my roommate's room.

The last desperate act of weighing the pros and cons of existence ripped back and forth across my mind as I sat there slack-jawed on the couch. Never moving. Hardly blinking but with tears running down my cheeks.

Tears not so much for myself but for things that would never be. Things of life and living I would never see, nor hear, nor feel. Things and places and people, which would be at once and forever denied me if I sat forward and in each hand picked up these two containers and poured what seemed my only solution down my throat. The one solution which was becoming clearer and clearer.

My father was dead. The first woman I had entrusted my life to was gone. I was alienated from my friends by my own doing. No job. No money. No hope.

All of this I weighed against what could be. The future and what it held in store. The silver lining that everyone and their dog promised me would come if I simply held out and rode my ragged and bloodies emotions to the light at the end of the tunnel.

There was no hope at that point. There were no glimmerings, no faint in the distant shards of light.

There was only The Dark.

As black as eternity, with its endless spirals of cold and despair.

I have not slept for nearly one month. My nerves were drawn and raw. Each thought and memory grated my open wounds like sand and salt being rubbed into the very core of my soul.

My will to live snapped.

I remember it so vividly. One moment I was being torn and clawed by the enormity of what I was contemplating. And the next thing I knew, I was reaching for those two containers and I was swallowing and chewing and gulping down that toxic mixture as if it was the only sweet and pure water left on planet Earth. And when I sat back and the tumblers fell from my hands onto the floor, for the first time in weeks, I experienced peace.

Not peace of mind. Or peace of soul.

But the peace one feels after struggling with something long and hard and finally coming to a decision. Not proud or rejoiceful; but happy that one way or another the battle was over. I could simply sit back and wait. My dying soul. My tortured mind cold at last, at long last, have peace.

I assumed the rest was easy. Committing suicide, particularly with something as slow-acting as sleeping pills, is something like pushing a knife through your throat half an inch at a time. You have a lot of time to think about it. Once I had committed myself to the act I didn't consider trying to halt the process; what I wanted was to be found in the closest thing to dignity that could be arranged when dealing with something of this nature.

So I put the glass and the vial back on the coffee table and got up and very slowly shuffled on to my bedroom, stopping every few feet to simply stare at things I knew I wouldn't be seeing again.

Then I simply lay down, got comfortable and waited. Waited for whatever if was dying was supposed to feel like.

I do not remember getting up in a daze sometime after my roommate came home. I do not remember falling against the wall and putting my head through it. I do not remember him applying CPR I do not remember the ambulance or the paramedics getting the and rushing me out of the house to the vehicle. The one thing I do remember though will sta with me the rest of my life.

One after another five cold points of consciousness appeared on my chest. In my mind that is. My thoughts felt as if they were trying to function in the deepest part of the ocean, with the weight of millions of tons of water pressing relentlessly down upon it. Sound filtered in through plates of steel, sounding shrill and tinny.

I heard an engine accelerating and sirens.

Amidst the sounds I heard words.

"Breathing passages cleared and oxygen on to.....arrest, arrest, he's gone.....we're losing him, we're losing him....."

There was nothing for what seemed the longest time and then my eyes opened up, flickered and shut again. When they opened again I could see the face of another human being looking down at me with a look of complete and utter relief in his eyes. There was an oxygen mask on my face and an IV bottle -- a bag actually -- attached to my arm by a tube and it was swinging back and forth from its stand as the ambulance maneuvered back and forth through traffic.

I felt shame and anger and an almost overwhelming hate for myself. But there was something else, something I had not felt in a long time. I felt the first flickering of light. It was not very focused, but it was there none the less.

My suicide attempt had failed -- thank God -- and my will for life had triumphed. I had finally reached the very bottom of human despair and self-hurt and I had lived through it -- barely. It took almost losing my life o realize there is nothing in this world that warrants taking your own life. Not death of loved ones, or rejection, or being fired, or a combination of all three.

All the ugliness of that period of my life has made me a stronger person. Still susceptible to doubt and depression, but strong enough to realize the best revenge is success.

(Emil Allard, 27, a non-status Indian living in Calgary, wrote this story based on his attempted suicide about three years ago. He hopes it will help someone who is going through a simiar experience, to continue hoping and to hang on. Allard, who was born at Eckville, has applied for treaty status and membership in the Bigstone Band. He says the suicide attempt changed his life quite a bit. Ironically, he now earns a living selling life insurance.)