Story From owning a mental health support chat to being part of SS

[ForgottenAgain]

Several years ago I developed a chat room for anyone that was depressed or mentally ill. That chat room was live for 7 years and had a thriving community. I personally chatted to a lot of people, came across a lot of hardship, lost some members to suicide and had to deal with the ocasional trolls.

Suicide as a topic was always dealt with compassion but the narrative would never go into accepting someone wanting to commit suicide. Because the users were young, several were tweens and teens, but mainly because I didn't believe a person should have to go through the pain of dying when their life was already awful.

I never saw suicide as a valuable choice for anyone except for me, because I live in my own head so I have my own hypocrisy, but also because I care about people deeply. That's why I made the chat room in the first place, I didn't want people to suffer alone. I always lent myself to others - helping the elderly, watching them decay and pass away, helping the young people at the chat, watching them improve, get worse, improve again, disappear and reapear.

Whenever I felt suicidal, the only person that truly helped me was my psychologist. No one other service worked - suicide hotlines made it even worse as they negatively react as soon as you show you're really considering suicide.
The truth is - there is not really any actual helpful service when you're suicidal, unless you're lucky enough to have a good therapist but even still, they're not available any moment you need them. SS is the only thing that is available and that can actually help you either to ctb or reconsider. This website has been more useful than my 3 times a week appointments at the psych hospital. Has been more useful than the nurses or the psychiatrist, simply because of how open it is to discussion and the community that makes part of it.

Now it has been several years since I closed down the chat, couldn't keep up with the management anymore and needed to focus on myself for once. Now I'm here, I'm just a member, and, from someone that managed a website and a community, I deeply appreciate SS' owners strength and dedication to creating this place and keeping it up and running.

I would have been alone without SS. I wouldn't know how I could ctb and the implications. I wouldn't feel the impact it has on others like I've seen with some members here.

I came all the way from owning a chat room for helping people to being part of a community about suicide. It's unexpected how things play out.

Thank you for this place.

 

[Deleted member 65988]

Thank you for sharing your experiences, it's always interesting to see just how much SaSu does compared to the usual places people go to for help irl and this place does more for them in turn but that isn't to say those other places don't help at all but rather that they lack a lot of what you see on this forum and perhaps a general rethink has to be applied to how suicide is viewed however that's so far away from happening.

 

[Beyond_Repair]

What you've expressed is part of the reason why this site is so valuable to me. Suicide is so taboo and being able to talk about it openly without criticism or judgement has been more therapeutic to me than anything else has been.

Just having your pain acknowledged, and being able to relate to and acknowledge others pain without feeling pressured to help or "fix" in some way has given me so much comfort. I don't want to make other people in my life feel "put upon" or obligated to do something or say the right thing when in reality, there is really nothing they can say or do that will help. I think most people on this site understand this.

When someone's seriously contemplating suicide and no longer seeking outside support, they are at the point where interventions aren't likely to be helpful. Having resources like this, that give you access to practical information, is more helpful than being shamed, or being restricted and having more rights taken away.