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.

Photo by @felipepelaquim on Unsplash

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…