Alyce describes how she copes with suicidal thoughts.
Transcript
I’m not depressed. I do go through suicide thoughts, and most of that is caused by I want to escape. I just want to get out of it. So I was advised to go for a 20-minute walk; not 10 minutes, it has to be 20 minutes and I have to get out of the house and relax. I believe in God and if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here today because when I do have a bad situation, I’ve taught myself to go to bed and tomorrow things will look better, but also I find for me I’m safe in my bed, and nobody can hurt me. So, that is my sanctuary and I can go there and wait for the pain to pass. Sometimes I can’t do that; I will sit in my car in the garage put my music on as loud as I can handle it and sit and cry. And I find sometimes things just get overwhelming and they pass easily.
Like I said, I do pray to God—there’s a lot of people don’t believe in him, but right now that’s the only person that seems to save me. Because when you get to a certain point, especially when you can’t tell the difference between right and wrong, you’ve hit that—yeah, you’ve got to get help—but you’ve got to, you got to come to your senses, and it’s hard. And I was really close one time, very, very close. And I had all these ideas going through my head on how I could escape this world. And when it became a reality, I knew something was wrong and I did seek help. But at that time, what did I do? I think I went to bed. I took Gravol and went to bed. But that’s the closest I’ve ever come to… but I was lucky because I was able to still have enough common sense—you know how you’ve got the good and the bad in your head, and your conscience. I have a guilty conscience all my life. So my conscience finally said, “No!” You know what I meant? It was that close, but I had enough common sense to say, “Wait. You’re still…this will get better.” And I started convincing myself and saying “It’ll get better. Okay, let’s think of something else and tomorrow… you can do this tomorrow.” And tomorrow never comes, but I was able to snap myself out of it and if I’m correct, I had written to […] my friend and then I took Gravol and went to bed. I had to sleep it off, and a lot of times you wake up in the morning and you forget a lot of it. I even forget most of the time. I wake up and go “Hey, today’s Tuesday… and oh yeah, I was in a bad mood last night wasn’t I?”
More from: Amazing Alyce
More content
- Trying to find the right balance – AlyceAlyce needed to find an affordable city to live in with her husband. With a friend, she made a list of possible cities and chose one.
- Providing support – AlyceWhen Bill had an accident, Alyce slept for two weeks on the floor beside the couch to make sure he was ok.
- Legal issues – AlyceAt her local caregivers support group, Alyce learned about wills, power of attorney, and other legal issues.
- Impact on health (2) – AlyceAlyce describes how she copes with suicidal thoughts.
- Impact on health – AlyceAlyce was admitted to hospital and treated for what everyone thought was a heart attack; it was during her second admission that she learned it was stress.
- Effects of care recipients’ behaviour – AlyceFrom time to time, Alyce’s husband has bouts of anger. While he would quickly forget that an argument took place, Alyce had a hard time letting it go.
- Adapting to new roles and key issues for spouses – AlyceLosing her husband at an early age really hurts. Now, Alyce feels guilty not being able to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.