I missed this. Delighted to give him number 106.
Welcome back @Cheasty
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Good man @Cheasty welcome back and keep battling.
Any way to restrict the websites allowed to here and a few other places you’d get a laugh out of, and not the rabbit holes.
Also set up a gofundme or something I think it’d be great to gift you a trip to look forward to. I’m thinking an NRA convention in Alabama or likewise.
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Great to see you back @Cheasty. The radio silence for a bit was concerning. What badge do you get for a post with a hundy likes? A “Mighty Good Post Now” badge or something of that ilk?
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Sunday December 18
Watched the World Cup final. Went out to the local pub opposite the hospital around 8pm with my brother and two other lads, one of whom I’ve been friends with since around 2015, the other more an acquaintance I know from drinking.
I had four non-alcoholic pints. The acquaintance told of how he nearly lost his eye back in 2012, that he could feel something was wrong inside it and asked for a biopsy which doctors didn’t want to give him. It took him a few weeks to get one and he had to demand it. Sure enough it turned up cancerous cells in the eye. He had to go up to James’s in Dublin to get surgery, which he was awake for. He was informed there was a possibility of losing the eye. During the operation he heard the dreaded words, “opthalmology on standby”, but somehow he managed to keep the eye. But he had to have quite a bit of reconstruction on the skin around the eye and the whole thing dragged on until 2015 before he was finally sorted. The reconstruction of the skin around the eye is still noticeable, but he has his sight. Outwardly nothing looks wrong with me, the problem is inside the eye.
Wednesday December 21
I attended my weekly counselling session and told my counsellor that I went to A&E after our previous session. I told her I was dreading Christmas because everything shuts down and that I thought it was not a coincidence that I had had a suicide attempt on a bank holiday weekend. The counsellor told me she would arrange a phone session for the following week when there would be no in person session. She said she’d see me on the 4th of January. I said “I hope so”. She said “we will see each other”.
Thursday December 22
Had a feeling of despair from early in the morning. Was going to walk to the rail line but my Mam got home around lunchtime. I then had a bad episode. Went to A&E in the regional about 3pm, the second time I’d been to A&E. Saw a psychiatrist. Didn’t get much from it, I got a “care plan” which is designed to stop you from sinking into suicidal ideation but it’s mostly general platitudes based on your own words. Got home around 8pm.
Friday December 23
I could feel a quiet despair in me from early in the day. My Mam was out most of the morning. I got up around 12:30pm and immediately thought of walking to the rail line. My Mam got home around 1pm, but then went out again around 2:30pm. She asked me was I OK to be on my own in the house and I lied and said yes.
About 10 or 15 minutes later I left the house on foot to walk to the rail line at the other end of the city. I had it in my mind exactly where I was walking. I walked across Quincentennial Bridge, up Sean Mulvoy Road and out past the Bons Secours hospital, GMIT and Galway Crystal. I took a photograph of a bus shelter which had an ad with the slogan “Can’t Stop Now”. I walked down a road called Rosshill Road which is a bit off the beaten track with very few people around. By now it was after 4pm, it was beginning to get dusky, and it was now tipping rain. I came to a place in the road where there is a sort of crossing over the rail line, there’s a gate like a farmer’s gate where you can climb onto the line easily. I stood at the gate for about five minutes. I think at least one person may have passed by on the footpath behind me but nobody said anything. Then I climbed the gate and walked onto the line. I took a couple of photographs of the line and walked down the line towards the bridge where the coast road to Oranmore goes over the railway. At 4:29pm I made a Facebook post “At the railway to catch the bus” with the photograph of the “Can’t Stop Now” bus shelter ad and the two photographs of the railway line. “Catch the bus” is code for suicide.
I stopped about half way between the gate and the bridge and sat down about five yards from the tracks. After about three minutes I could see the lights of a train coming out from the city, it probably would have been passing Renmore at this point, about a mile or a mile and a half down the line. I walked onto the tracks and lay face down with my neck on the rail. I stayed there for about six or seven seconds and then got up and walked away into the sidings where the stones meet the embankment and lay down. About 40-45 seconds later I watched the train pass me, it was a commuter type train with two carriages, probably going to Limerick, I don’t think the driver saw me off to the side of the track. I was in a haze mentally while all this was happening. I think I was about 20% that I wanted to kill myself and 80% that I didn’t. The 80% won.
I decided to ring the Pieta House helpline and said I was suicidal and on a railway line. I described my location, I said to the woman I was near Castlegar GAA club. She said to stay where I was and that she would have to ring the Gardai. I said I was OK with that.
I lit up a cigarette, my first since November 30th, and contemplated the utter futility of my current existence and how I come to this point, and continued lying down with my back slightly propped up by weeds on the bottom of the embankment. All the while it was getting darker.
After about what seemed like 20 minute, I heard what sounded like a Garda walkie talkie on the road behind the embankment on the far side of track, but this sound moved on. After abut another 15 minutes I saw Gardai pointing torches down from the bridge, but I was a good bit away from the bridge. I started walking towards the bridge and sort of half shouted “hello” at them but they didn’t hear me. Then I lay down again, probably 40 yards or so from the bridge. After another few minutes I saw the lights of an engine coming from the direction of Oranmore, but I soon realised this engine was moving at crawl speed. I started walking down beside the track to the bridge and waited. As the engine came under the bridge at 1-2 miles an hour I walked out into a position in which I could be seen. There were two Gardai walking alongside the engine, one male, one female. “He’s here”, the male Garda shouted.
I started crying and sobbing, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry”. After about 30 seconds, they said to walk with them towards the level crossing at Roscam where there were more Gardai. I explained to the Gardai about my eye and that I was suicidal. They enquired if I had any next of kin and I said I had. They told me to ring my mother, so I did. It was 5:20pm and it was now pitch dark. My Mam was still out of the house at this point and answered the phone in a perky sort of voice. I had to tell her I was with the Gardai after being on the railway line. She didn’t believe me. I had to pass the phone onto a Garda who explained the situation. After a few minutes I had to give up anything that was in my pockets and I was brought to a Garda van and had to sit inside the cell part at the back. I could hear one of the Gardai in the front saying in an exasperated voice “what the fuck was he doing?”
The van moved off and pulled in at the big new Garda station opposite GMIT and I was brought in. The lead Garda told me I was not under arrest. I sat on a bench for probably an hour and was then brought up to a room. My Mam arrived and we talked for about an hour. She was in tears for a while and then angry at me. The Gardai told me a doctor was on the way, she was coming from Tuam. When the doctor arrived I apologised to her for making her come from Tuam. She said it was fine and that she had things to attend to in the city anyway. After talking to her for seven or eight minutes she said I needed to be admitted to the psychiatric ward. She said the care plans you get going home from A&E “aren’t worth the paper they’re written on”. I said I was fine with being admitted to hospital. Then I was brought down to the bench opposite the main office part of the station again and given a cup of tea and a few sweets and Penguin bars. There were maybe five or six Gardai inside in the office part. One of them asked me did I want to go out for a smoke. I said no but then he told me that he was going out for one anyway so I said I would and he gave me a Marlboro red, the smoking area was a big yard with wire mesh over the top of it. After we came back in I went back up to the room again and the Garda who was accompanying me put on the Connacht v Munster rugby match on his phone and let me look at it. After about ten minutes they told me they were bringing me to the hospital, so it was back into the van and the cell at the back of it. I heard one of the Gardai in the front calling me “the mystery man”, then they started talking about that 16 year old girl who died of meningitis in Limerick.
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I’m glad the 80% won. It can’t have been easy. I imagine episode you referred to earlier wasn’t easy either. I hope the stay helped and I hope you continue to seek help. There’s plenty for you in this life, but you need to stay away from the dark recesses online as they take you places you don’t need to go. You’re a good lad, with great intelligence and potential and you’ve a good heart. Give yourself a chance.
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That’s a powerful piece and really resonates, I hope you’re time in the hospital was positive and you’re perspective on your outlook has changed for the better.
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That’s a very emotional read. Fair play for having the courage and honesty to write it and share it.
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Are you in the mood for a bit of banter? I need to ask
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Powerful stuff lad. Well done for getting help and hanging on.
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Powerful writing. Great that the 80% prevailed.
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Great post. I was going to say something half-witty like ‘bullet points please’ but to your credit you used paragraphs quite well.
Glad you came away from the tracks, delighted you are still with us. Tomorrow is another day.
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Glad you checked in. You need to know that is an option now going forward. That is your fallback in times of crisis
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I haven’t ate a penguin bar in years
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They’re probably shit now anyway. That’s the way it’s gone nowadays
I’d prefer a Cadbury’s Snack
Just one or the entire six?
@Cheasty you might think your mind is fucked but reading that made me actually think I was there with you. Your memory recollection is exceptional. When you get through this there’s some kind of career in writing or creative writing for you. You’re a natural.
I’m also glad the 80% won.
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For a few days I was rooming with a chap who had a suicide attempt over Christmas. Terrific fella, the last kind of chap you’d expect would be in a psychiatric unit, we talked for hours about each of our problems, which were very different but shared great similarities in the way that we each blamed ourselves for them. He discharged himself against medical advice because he felt he needed to make important decisions about his family’s future and time was of the essence in regard to these decisions (I don’t want to give too much away about him). Two nights later I was talking to two lads in the canteen when he walked back in after being unable to get out of bed that day and mentioning suicide to his wife, his wife had made him come back in.
If his wife was listening to me I’d already be back in there by now.