Different Strokes for different folks I suppose
But if I was having mental health issues I’d try to remove myself from here, but I guess the experience (and the forum) are different for everybody
This. We all have our own ways of dealing with shit
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Was just going to post it… Great article, tough read.
The minds of our youth have never been more fragile I think. It’s strange given the shithole Ireland was so much of the last century. Emigration, ritual Ireland, the shocking effects of the Catholic Church et al. Modern living hasn’t improved mental health that’s for sure.
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I don’t mean to be pedantic but posting about suicide in a depression thread isn’t really correct as they don’t amount to the same thing.
I can see why you would post it there given that the depression thread was to the fore - maybe it is just a personal thing,
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A tough but great read that.
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Awful but brilliant.
I reckon it is a personal thing and perhaps foolish to say they aren’t related. I realise too it’s a sensitive subject and I’m happy to move it if so wished
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Jesus, am at the side of pitch at son’s match. Halftime and that nearly has me bawling reading it.
Had to stop reading when Redmond Sr said how being beside the poor lad’s dead body helped him. The immediacy of the grieving process after something like that hits home. Very tough read but definitely a story that needed to be told. His parents seem very admirable.
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Is “ritual Ireland” intentional?
No but it works too. It was meant to be rural
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True that.
Although one of the biggest posters on this thread is gone from us four years tomorrow
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Wednesday November 23rd:
I told my counsellor of a vague plan I had to take my own life. That on either my father’s anniversary or my uncle’s anniversary – they occur within five days of each other in January, I would go to the rail line near the water tower near Oranmore, drink a bottle of vodka and lie with my neck on the rail line and let a train decapitate me. My mother had to be called because the counsellor did not feel it was safe for me to leave the building on my own. My counsellor suggested that I should consider going to A and E. She would arrange two supplementary sessions for me before next Wednesday.
Thursday November 24th:
I had about six anxiety tablets left. I thought I would ration them until Monday and then ring the doctor to get more. I didn’t take an anxiety tablet this morning or afternoon.
I half watched the first two World Cup matches of that day. The second one was Uruguay v South Korea. After that finished, I had a massive panic attack. I went out to the shed in the back garden and started looking for rope and cables. I found some. My mother followed me out to the shed and said “you’re not doing that”. She hid the box. I had half a cigarette in the porch and then started lying down in the porch shrieking. I then crawled into the house and started hyperventilating, shrieking and screaming while lying face down on the stairs. This went on for about 40 minutes I’d say. Then I ran out of the house and walked into town. I stood for a couple of minutes looking into the river at the Salmon Weir bridge. It was about 4:15 by this stage I’d say and was beginning to get dark. Then I walked down the path beside the river and started staking out survival points, things I could grab onto, should I throw myself in in future. It started raining heavily by this stage. I walked over O’Brien’s Bridge and back home, soaked. The second half of Portugal v Ghana was about to start. I watched it barefoot with one eye occluded. Later that evening, I passed a motion for the first time in five days, but only after taking a laxative. I felt better after this.
I explained to my brother watching the Brazil game that my eye was fucked and that I was going to take my own life. The next morning my mother told me he could not sleep with worry.
Friday November 25th:
I had a shower for the first time in 17 days. I have not had one since. I had a phone counselling session. I didn’t get a huge amount out of it but the counsellor asked me to consider the effect that throwing myself under a train would have. She said she knew somebody who drove a train and had had that happen to them and had never been able to work again afterwards. I myself had a second cousin who worked for CIE or whatever it was called at the time who took their own life nearly 10 years ago. I considered that too.
Saturday November 26th:
I agreed to go for a drive in the car with my mother. Immediately after pulling off, we found the car had a puncture. My mam rang the AA to come out and fix it. Instead I went for a walk down by the river at Dangan. I didn’t think of throwing myself in and in any event the flow there is far too slow.
After Argentina beat Mexico, I read the article in the newspaper about Red Óg Murphy aloud. I didn’t get much from it. I didn’t believe his parents when they said they had nothing to be sorrowful for. My mother and I discussed why he might have done it. I noted that Gary Speed had taken his own life 11 years to the weekend and the 11 years to the day before this, Gary Speed had appeared on Football Focus and seemed in good form. I said to my mother that I believed that sometimes there is a devious aspect to suicide, that maybe sometimes the person at real risk is the person who seems alright rather than the person who was openly hysterical. I tried to convince myself that maybe I was the latter. I said to her that maybe the time to really watch me was when I seemed alright.
I speculated that maybe I was being openly vocal about my suicidal ideation because I did not want to do it. I said that when Messi had scored, and when Argentina had scored again, that I roared out loud. That it meant something to me, and that because I roared, it showed that I not given up on life. I said that if I took my own life and that if there were an afterlife, and in the afterlife I found out that my eye would have got better if only I had waited, wouldn’t I then feel awful stupid for having taken my own life?
I read aloud the article about Chris Doris who was abused at Blackrock. I speculated to my mother that maybe Gary Speed had been a victim of similar.
I explained to my mother that what I felt as regards my eye was what I imagined it must feel like for a woman who has been raped. I said that I felt I had been raped. That I had been physically violated. That I would never be the same again physically or mentally. That I would feel awkward voicing this feeling to my counsellor, because she is a woman.
I said to my Mam that I sort of blamed her for me not going to the optician. That I had been a mental cripple who needed orders, who needed a jackboot to save me from myself. I blame myself. This is a mental weapon I am using, a weapon of denial.
I said to my Mam that 10 days or so previously, I had typed “suicide Galway” into Google or Twitter and that by chance I had come across a poem called “Wait” by an American poet named Galway Kinnell (1927-2014). It was written by him around 1980 for a female friend who was threatening to take her own life after a failed relationship.
I explained to my Mam calmly and rationally that unless my eye improved back to 100%, to what it was, I fully intended to take my own life. I told her there is a beam in the garage which was put up some years ago to hang washing, it is not integral to the structure of the garage. And that she, or preferably my brother, should saw it down, if she didn’t want this to happen.
Sunday November 27th
I half watched football the whole day, typed here, and I can’t recall much else from this day. But I think I was alright.
Monday November 28th
I had a phone counselling session. Again I didn’t get a huge amount from it but it was better than nothing.
I rang the GP to get my prescription extended because I had two anxiety tablets left. I nearly did not ring because, well, I felt paralysed.
I was alone in the house for three hours or more. I remarked to my mother when she returned that she must have felt confident I wasn’t going to do anything stupid.
I think by and large I was relatively alright for most or all of this day.
Tuesday November 29th
I had my last half a sleeping tablet the previous night. I lay in bed until 1pm. I was awake from 5am to around 8:30am and then fell asleep again. I woke up around 10:30am. From around 11am onwards I started shrieking and shouting in bed. I flung my vape pipe at the wall and broke the tank on it. My mother brought me toast and I refused to eat it. When she left the room, I ate it. I then proceeded to watch suicide videos on my laptop – the one where a 12 year old in Georgia in the US broadcast her own suicide via live stream, and another one where some guy filmed his own hanging.
I got up at 1pm and shouted and screamed as loud as I could for 10-15 minutes. Then I went out to the front garage and shouted and screamed. My mother followed me out, but went back into the house after a couple of minutes. There is a wooden beam there. I took off my hoodie and half heartedly tried to tie one sleeve to the beam and make a noose with the other one for my neck. I stepped off the stool and stood on the ground on my tippy toes, the knot on the beam lasted about two seconds, just enough for me to feel discomfort on my neck. I sat down on the ground in the garage and then went back inside and stared into space for about an hour. I started coming round when the second half of Senegal v Ecuador started. I was reasonably OK for the rest of the day after that. I passed a motion for the first time in four days. I was very constipated.
Wednesday November 30th
I told my counsellor all the stuff I’ve typed here. I like her. She is extremely worried about me. She called my mother again and got her to come in. She strongly suggests that I got to A and E. I told her I am terrified of a being in a psychiatric ward, that my suicide attempts up to now have been half hearted and performative, for attention, cries for help. She is worried that these half hearted attempts will turn into real, serious attempts. I told her about the post on this forum where somebody has gone into the psychiatric ward called 5b in Limerick. I told her about a friend of my father who in the 1980s did multiple spells in St. Pat’s. I told her I had read about the experiments Ewan Cameron did on people in Montreal in the 1950s. “Things have moved on a lot since then”, she responded.
She has gently suggested to my mother that if I have another episode, that she could call the Gardai to escort me to the hospital. I am desperate not to go to hospital, not least because I want to see the Argentina match tonight and the other matches too. My counsellor says she will ring my GP, who I am due to see tomorrow. I am not in a mental space where counselling can do me much good right now.
I am afraid that if I go to hospital I will genuinely go off the deep end completely. There was a story some years back of somebody escaping from a psychiatric ward in the Regional in Galway and throwing themselves into the river. They died. I am afraid that will be me. I am not going to A and E today. I may consider going on Friday. Instead I’m writing this and vaping and waiting to half watch football. My uncle has just arrived in the house about 10 minutes before I hit the send button on this post. He’s going to insulate the attic. He is not on the same wavelength as I am. He has no interest in the football and will tell me I just have to get over this. I do not think I will react well to this.
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Poor you mate, sorry to read about this mate
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The fact that you’re desperate to watch a match is a huge positive.
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i hope it’s a good match