Often l feel I'll never have the required courage and should just buckle up and get on with it, but this lasts approximately two days - much time is spent in that limbo, feeling like my own suicide is an inevitability, but also being completely unable to take the final step. This makes it as impossible to fully live as it is to bring about my own ceasing to exist. It's a very frustrating and dissipating place to be, it has to be said.
I am not particularly religious - and I am certainly not and will never be Catholic (a tale for another day), but perhaps they were right in one sense in terms of the existence of purgatory. They just had it wrong in terms of order of operations, so to speak.
Can only speak for myself (perhaps you can empathize or even relate): but when the thoughts of suicide are a constant in the back of your mind and often are conscious thoughts - I can't say I'm "living". I'm in fact (imho), stuck between living and death.
So I ask myself: what is holding me back? Is it delusional optimism and hope that things just might turn around, or is the fear of the unknown?
One of my favourite documentary makers, Jon Ronson, did a documentary (easily available on YT) on this minister in the US who travelled all around the world to advocate (and I mean this is the truest sense of the word) and instruct those who want to commit suicide, regardless of their reasons. He would offer them this vhs tape of what death would be like and told them to "enjoy it". It made death look like a DMT trip. The authorities were onto him bc he became incredibly sloppy (advocates for physician assisted suicide were disturbed by him and wondered out loud whether he derived pleasure from seeing others die) and he and his partner kept a bottle of N on hand in the fridge, just in case the authorities arrived.
The funny thing: when I tried to find out what happened to him, I discovered that he died quite an uncomfortable death in hospice.
So, if this man who presented himself as so sure as to what awaits us wasn't convinced enough himself, what should that tell us?
Lastly, I follow a handful of hospice nurses on social media and they all offer interesting perspectives on death and all are convinced there is an after life. I guess for me: I too am afraid what awaits me, especially given how/when I want to die. The shame component continues to remain supreme, unfortunately.
I just think of all the wonderful people right now who have families (especially young children) and if there was a way for me to give them my time remaining, I would do it in a heartbeat.
