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Suicide & Me, A second chance…Part 1.

By Shawn Collins (Founder)

For me life has been a difficult journey but one in which I have thankfully learned a great deal. Often I think of how things could have been if only I was born to another family, but then again I wouldn’t know what I do now. Suicide is something I have battled with twice in my life and both times I meant for it to happen.

Many people who have suffered in this way will understand what I mean when I say contrary to common opinion that to take one’s own life is the bravest thing any person can contemplate and attempt. The reason in my opinion is that you consider every person in your life and the guilt you feel for putting others through your pain, you feel that you would be doing everyone a favour and taking yourself out of the picture becomes the only choice that seems to make sense.
Others who read this and have not seen the same battle will find it hard to comprehend and understandably so, I personally would not wish this on any human being. One of the reasons I’m writing this is to make just one person think twice, that would be a personal achievement for me and one that is worth it to save just one life but ideally stop people having to reach breaking point in the first place.

My own journey from the brink to having a full family life started back in the early 80’s where I found myself in the so called ‘CARE’ System. I spent time in a children’s home for 2 years waiting to be adopted, was finally chosen by a family whom I thought were great. Life in the house with my new found family began with me being given so much attention and money spent I couldn’t believe my luck given that for 4 years I had been in 2 foster homes and 1 children’s home. Time went on but it became apparent my new found parents were not getting on, I had created a rift somehow and soon found myself back in the care system. At that time, I believe is where my real problems began, a young man growing up with so much confusion was hard to bare and my whole personality change from one that was polite and caring to an absolute to put it blunt, pain in the Arse. I felt depressed, unwanted and unloved whilst growing into a teenager and soon began to develop dark thoughts of taking my life to make everyone around me happy again, I felt I was the cause of all the problems therefore I should take myself out of the picture completely. That’s genuinely how I felt.

At age 18 I came to that breaking point, I found myself falling out of an all-night rave at 6am coming down from the Illicit drugs consumed the night previous feeling that I had to stop this nonsense, make everyone happy and just end it all. Things all around my life was so bad from finance to being homeless to taking to many drugs wishing and wasting my life away, it came to a head for me and the time was now. I got myself home, or should I say friend’s sofa and sat crying while thinking how am I going to do this so that I do it right… I proceeded to the medicine cabinet and found all sorts of tablets not really having any clue as to what they were for, I didn’t care to be frank. I took countless pills followed by Vodka to make what I thought was a sure fire lethal cocktail. I don’t remember to much more after that until I came round again being nudged ironically by my mother of all people, I leant over and was violently sick I guess bringing up a lot of what I had swallowed. I just remember thinking, “it hasn’t worked”. I spent days feeling awful but also very reflective on the previous day’s events. I felt terrible about what I had done but at the same time battling with my mind considering another attempt.

Part 2 Coming soon….