Day 26: this has been good for me…

Before I get started on the question given me for Day 26…I just want to say this 30 day challenge has been really good for me. As a person who likes to create, write, whatever…to have agreed to post consistently on my blog for 30 days has been a challenge. Guess they weren’t kidding when they called it that, a challenge. To think of something everyday and express it in such a way as it was interesting enough that readers would want to check it out more than once, was a great exercise and I learned a lot.

For those of you who were interested enough to walk with me through this, thank you.

No really…thank you sincerely.

Now to the question. Today it is…have you ever thought of giving up on life and why?

Wow, this one might upset a few people, my family and friends, and I hesitate to write about such a personal thing. However, I have gotten some notes from people who have appreciated my honesty in some of the other questions that were fairly personal. My answers had encouraged them to look at something in their lives and had made a difference. So in the hopes that knowing someone else has felt like ending their life for maybe similar reasons, you are not alone…I got through it, you can too…here goes.

First let me say, thank God, I didn’t do it. A couple of years ago, a dear friend DID decide that shooting himself in the head was the way to take care of all of his problems.

The devastation that followed in the wake of that decision was mind-boggling. We all loved him so much, little kids who had looked up to him like a dad or brother, were crushed and wounded for life. Parents are still trying to make it through the day and friends are still shocked and shaking their heads that he did it. No one saw it coming…why and how does someone get to the place where they think that is the only thing left to do? We could tell afterwards that he had planned it. He had paid all of his bills the week before and had long conversations with people that he was close with. He had been thinking about it…what a secret.

For me, it was old stuff that had built up over a long period of time. Deaths of loved ones, relationships that were taking their toll and I think a slight chemical imbalance had me thinking kind of wacky and hopeless. I remember standing in the shower, crying and banging my head on the tile wall and thinking, I can’t take this anymore. I just want to take something, lie down and call it quits. It would be so easy…but it would be so selfish.

Number one, just the thought that I would think that way with a six-year-old son depending on me for everything, scared the bejesus out of me. That afternoon I called a doctor and asked for help.

I never condone the taking of pharmaceuticals to solve a problem but he put me on a mild anti-depressant for about a year and I got my life back.

I reached out to my friends for help and I started allowing myself to love my horses again. Of course, I had always loved them but now they were becoming my therapy. They had become my job and there were times when they weren’t fun anymore. They were just work.

Anyway, I am so far away from that girl now. I love my life and I look back on moments like that and I know it was part of God allowing me to get so uncomfortable that I would finally do something to change my life. Counseling helped as did my faith that there was so much more for me to do than what I had done up to that point. One of those things is…learn to find joy in all things. Not just those “happy ” times.