Suicide Prevention | Depression | Life Lessons
How To Find A Life Purpose After a Suicide Attempt
Five steps to uncovering a will to live when family & friends have disappeared.
After surviving a suicide attempt, I fight depression and mental health taboos by writing about suicide prevention and asking inconvenient questions on life. Let’s stop pretending it is sunny when it rains. And let’s deal with the rain until the sun comes back.My depression lasted years, growing year after year. And during that time, I isolated myself, a bit more every year. Eventually, it led me to commit suicide. A highly determined friend figured out what was happening, found where I was, and sent emergency help. After a stay in the hospital, I started rebuilding my life with the help of a psychologist and a psychiatrist.
I feel better, now, than I did before the suicide attempt. Perhaps the prescription drugs help. Maybe it’s because I am back to work, full-time, on an exciting project with people I enjoy working with. I don’t know. But there’s one thing I know.
I am alone.
In the years leading to my suicide attempt, I was an ass. I pushed away people, although I was in desperate need of friends. I locked my family out of my life— not that I had much of a family to start with. I was self-destructing and I can understand how it was intolerable to live or work with me.
The suicide attempt in itself turned out to be the door that got me to a better state of mind due to the insights I gain while the last bit of life was flowing out of me, and thanks to the professional help I received afterward. I compare this period of my life to the following. For years, I was falling off a cliff (deep depression) and eventually hit the ground (suicide attempt). I am now hiking back up (life) on a better path — one that suits my abilities.
In that sense, my suicide attempt was the door that led me to a new life. A better life, in fact. However, it also isolated me.
Many of the few friends and family members who were still in touch with me ran for cover once they heard the S word. Suicide is not something many people know how to deal with — or want to know about. My son flushed me out of his life, saying that I picked the easy way out. Maybe he was right. And he hasn’t spoken to me since then. Perhaps it’s better for him. I was bad news.
I understand the need to flush toxic people out of our lives to protect our own life. However, perhaps there should be a balance between flushing unhealthy people out and providing support to individuals in need of help. But that is a different topic I have already discussed.
What I am struggling with at the moment and want to address in this article is the difficulty in finding a purpose, a reason to live, when you end up alone.
At one point, I came to the conclusion that everybody around me, even the whole planet, would be better with me feeding the grass. Clearly, I no longer felt I had any purpose in life. Today, no matter how good are the drugs I take, I need to find a purpose, or I fear another fall off the cliff may be around the corner.
The Role of Family in Rebuilding Your Life After a Suicide Attempt
For obvious reasons, I am interested in documentaries and TV series involving depression and suicide attempts. In a sense, I am trying to make sense of my own experience by comparing it to what others went through — and what is the perception of such in our society.
Obviously, scripted TV series, movies, and novels are to be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, they can be food for thought.
[Spoiler alerts!]
Kamikaze on HBO
Recently, I watched the mini-series Kamikaze on HBO based on the novel Muleum by Erlend Loe. It’s the story of an 18-year-old girl, Julie, who lost her family (father, mother, and brother) in a plane crash.
In theory, she has what most people dream of: youth, beauty, and a lot of money. But material possessions do not help her deal with the fact that she is now alone.
She goes on a wild trip around the world, taking one flight after another, hoping she will die, just like her family did. When that fails, she aggressively pursues other actions to end her life, until…
Eventually, after nearly dying in the desert, she finds herself in an African hospital where the guy who loves her, Krzysztof, comes to visit her despite the fact she told him to get lost so many times. She is now pregnant. When he asks her who the father is, she answers: “I don’t know. But I’m not sure I want to know… Because… This little thing and you… You are the only ones who matter to me.”
Krzysztof accepts to act as the father to her child, and to stay with her.
In other words, Julie gets off the suicide bandwagon because she has a baby and a reliable boyfriend. That is what got me thinking about my purpose with no family in the picture.
An impressive part of this story is how much of a hero Krzysztof is. While traveling the world, Julie repeatedly gave him the middle finger (figuratively) when he called. She systematically pushed him out of her life. He asked her to let him in. She refused. And yet, in the end, he is there, by her side, loving her.
I wish my ex-wife were like that! I’m guessing that faithful, supporting lovers like Krzysztof are pretty rare in real life.
Juliette & Avery in Nashville
In the Nashville TV Series that ended in 2018, Juliette Barnes (played by Hayden Panettiere) is a train wreck going from one self-inflicted drama to the next. Eventually, she tries to commit suicide. She gets out of it alive because her manager saves her and dies in the process.
Every time you think Juliette is out of the wood, she finds a way to get into trouble again. But at the end of the series, she chooses to abandon her life as a country star to live with her kids on a cozy farm out of town. Family is what gets her on the right track, finally!
On top of that, her husband Avery Barkley (played by Jonathan Jackson) joins her in the last scene of the series even though she mistreated him in more ways than we can count through the whole six seasons. He is the hero of that series if you ask me!
I don’t know many real-life spouses who would take that much abuse and still “be there” when you finally get your head screwed on properly.
Family is what saved Juliette. So what can one do if there is no family?
Lessons from ‘A Star Is Born’
As I have discussed in a previous article, family is what drove Jackson Maine (played by Bradley Cooper) to suicide in the 2018 version of the movie “A Start Is Born”. Jackson commits suicide, convinced that he is doing what is best for his family, namely his wife, Ali (played by Lady Gaga). Ali’s manager convinced Jackson that his mere existence was hurting his wife.
So… Family, family, family. It leads some to suicide. It saves others.
While researching the topics of having a purpose in life and the role of the family, I read numerous articles explaining the importance of maintaining an equilibrium between a successful career, a loving family, and a solid social network — three legs to a life stool. It all sounds good, but… What if you are missing one leg? Or two? Or all of them?
Not everybody has a successful career. Many people are stuck working in boring jobs because they have to buy groceries. And what if there is no family and friends on top of that?
Why Finding a Purpose?
I started researching this topic because I thought I needed to find a purpose in life after a suicide attempt. I didn’t have family and friends anymore. But that led me to realize that finding a purpose is essential for everybody. I should have worked on that a long time ago. Perhaps it would have helped me prevent falling into depression.
Only around 25% of American adults claim to have a clear sense of purpose about what makes their lives meaningful, according to an analysis in The New York Times.
It appears to be more critical for me because I simply cannot go back to drifting aimlessly through life as I did before the depression hit me. I remember being on my hospital bed and telling myself that I would find something meaningful to do with the rest of my life. When I opted for suicide, I put an X on “the rest of my life” and, consequently, every day past that point is a gift I wasn’t expecting to have. Therefore, while getting back to life on my hospital bed, I figured that every day for the rest of my life should be lived for a good reason.
Yet, when I got out of the hospital, I had to find food. And shelter. So I fell back into working for a living. But now that my career is back on track, these existential thoughts are coming back. I do not see the point of being alive if it’s just for the purpose of keeping me alive.
So I researched ways to find a purpose, and I made the following list as part of my New Year’s resolutions.
5 Steps to Finding a Purpose in Life
A significant theme of “those who discover their life purpose is that they use their mental and creative energies to serve something larger than themselves. That is, they’re like the lover who simply gives love for its own sake, without regard for getting something in return, without asking to be loved back or viewing his actions as a transaction or investment” (~Psychology Today).
It’s really about “others.”
In a typical family, I suppose people fulfill their need to help others by being there for family members. Or friends. But not always! Depression and suicidal thoughts will get friends and family members running for cover. Regardless, the most substantial part of a life's purpose appears to be connected to what we can do for others.
For me, in a sense, it would mean replacing my family with others — not to the full extent of what a family is, but in the sense of contributing to something other than the well-being of my food supply.
And here is my to-do list:
- Start Conversations With New People
- Consider Injustices That Bother Me
- Explore My Interests Outside of Work
- Donate Time and Talent
- Discover What I Love To Do for Others
The first step is a no-brainer. I need to be more aware of my surroundings and start conversations with new people. I bet there are many people like me out there – alone and longing for connections. This could lead to opportunities to find something useful to do with my life.
This first step also involves smiling and saying ‘hello’ to strangers. For many of them, it may be the only smile and hello they get all day!
To accelerate the process of finding something useful to do, I will take the time to make a list of injustices that bother me and another list of my interests outside of work.
From these two lists, I will pick organizations or events where I can donate time and talent. In my case, simply donating money won’t cut it as it would still leave me alone on my couch, wondering about the meaning of my life.
I will donate time and talent to as many different organizations as I can, and through that process, I will discover what I love to do for others, and then, I will make that my purpose.
How does that sound for a post-suicide-attempt game plan for a lonely guy with no family, no friends, and no purpose in life?
What is your purpose in life? How did you find it? Please let me know in the comments below.
More about my journey with depression and a suicide attempt.
Today, let’s reach out to at least one friend to check out on them before it’s too late.
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“A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.” ~James Keller
I published this story in A Windy Life, a publication on Medium.
