It is only when watching Andrew Solomon’s TEDTalk 2014, « How the worst moments of our lives makes us who we are », then another one, « Depression, the secret we all share » that I heard testimonies from people who had had depression, telling about similar things than those I experienced when I was younger.

 

One of them, said M.Solomon, told him she was hearing a voice in her head, while trying to cover it by singing to herself the same song over and over. A voice that was telling her : « You are nothing. You are nobody. You don’t even deserve to live ». And she said that was when she really started thinking about killing herself.

 

It struck a chord. I kept watching. Listening to all theses testimonies, among them Solomon’s own, no less impressive than the others.

And something struck even deeper, when, once the talk ended, I revved back to precise moments, precise sentences, and watched them over again.

These were adults that had been through the worst moments of their lives, and they had to cling to life with all their might to get over it. They had to find support among their families, their friends, their spouses. They even went on medication for years. They needed, in short, all their strength, all the help they could get to survive.

It happened to them when they were adults, with relationships, support, means to fight.

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A question I’ve never been asked, a question I’ve often asked to myself, a question I may truly find the answer to only on the day of my death, is: what made me reel back from the edge of suicide, and giving my own life another chance?

 

The peculiarity of all my suicidal attempts is this : every time I found myself only inches away from a death I’d planned carefully enough to know that once I’d go on, I would not be able to go back – every time I faced the certainty of my own death once I’d decide it, I stood on the ledge for a varying amount of time, and managed to talk myself out of it.

Some wouldn’t even call that a true suicidal attempt. For them, to attempt suicide, you have to flail yourself in such a situation, to fall so far beyond all self-help and control that you have no means whatsoever to reel back by yourself, should you want it, and have to be saved by someone else to survive.

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