I’m feeling sad today.
There’s another article in the local paper about someone killing themselves at the local train station. Someone has died on the rails in the town more than once a fortnight over the past 2 months. From what I understand (through what’s been written in the press) all but one of them wanted to die, that one was apparently trying to pull someone else from the tracks.
I can’t imagine feeling so low that death is the only option. At least one of those people has school age children. How do they cope? Will they ever understand why their parent chose to die and leave them?
What is it about my town that’s doing this to people? The paper implies that the tracks on this town have the highest rate of deaths in the whole country.
These people are doing this in front of other people, how do they feel seeing someone standing on the platform at one moment and then jumping off in front of a train the next?
I know there’s no answers to these questions. I wish that these people had been able to get help and support. I’m sure there must be help around, maybe these people didn’t know where to look.
May 1, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Oh, that is so sad. I can’t imagine what brings people to that point myself.
May 2, 2008 at 12:42 pm
That touched on something I wrote after Mark Speight took his own life… it is truly sad that some people see death as the only way to stop the pain in their life and cannot get(or seek) help to deal with it.
Sage
May 3, 2008 at 11:59 am
It seems impossible to come to terms with why someone would feel that life is not worth living and go the extent of taking their own life-I’m doing my psychiatry placement just now and I find it difficult asking questions about suicidal thoughts and plans but recognising any of these thoughts is so important in trying to help someone see that there is still hope no matter how bad things may seem.
May 3, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Just posted a very long reply to this, but the computer lost it – mega grumpy!! Have tried to summarise below what I was saying, but it is inferior to my first explanation.
I did once know what it was like to feel that way – thankfully now I can’t. I’ve written about my own experience of depression. Once you’re over it, the ‘rationale’, the intensity of emotion and everything cannot be summoned.
People who are depressed often do have a family, friends, a support network and know logically where they could go to get help. But when you’re depressed you often don’t feel like you can seek help. It’s humiliating to admit to the way you feel. You feel scared people will just tell you to shrug it off. You feel guilty about putting your emotional anguish on to someone else. Moreover, you feel unworthy of any help or support in the first place.
The whole attitude towards mental illness needs to change. It’s not shameful, it’s not petty. It’s not a case of talk + hug = everything OK. There needs to be more understanding and less stigmatising.
May 7, 2008 at 8:32 am
I feel really badly for the train drivers. It must be so hard to know you were driving the train that killed someone and there was not a thing you could do about it.
August 28, 2008 at 10:17 pm
I know some days I wake up and feel it’s not worth it, but then as the day goes on you snap out of it, I cannot imagine if that feeling stayed with me all day 24/7.