Suicide is NOT the Solution...

When I had just turned 22, I did something very similar to this with my right arm. My cut was a bit straighter. I did it with a blade I took out of a disposable razor. It was a real mess. The scar still shows. It runs from the inside of my wrist about 70% of the way to the inside of my elbow. It has a slight twist from my twisting my arm as I made the cut. I think it took about 26 stitches to close it up. I lost a lot of blood because I hit a major artery. It had something to do with a girl.

That was 25 years ago.

Bipolar is deadly. No joke. Here's a graph that tells it like it is:

I'm writing about this tonight for three reasons.

The first reason is that I've been thinking lately about how depressed I really was over the last year. I have been thinking about (but not dwelling on) last May when I was living for a month in a little studio apartment across the street from the Atlantic Ocean and seriously considered slashing my throat. It was the month after I came off my meds and I was having a string of "bad luck" in my life. I was debating whether I should do it in bed or in the shower. I decided the shower was better because it might be awhile till I was found and if I was in the shower I'd be a lot easier to clean up after I was gone.

I shit you not.

The second reason I'm writing about this is that I was at church tonight. Sometimes when I'm in a public place with a short-sleeve shirt on (or a long-sleeve shirt with my sleeves rolled up), I become a little bit self-conscious. I worry a little bit that some one might see my scar and freak out or something. Of course, they wouldn't freak out in some obvious way. It would be more subtle than that, but the result would be the same.

Rejection.

It has become a much bigger deal to me since I have become a pastor, because the Army of God tends to shoot its wounded, especially its pastors.

The third reason I'm writing about this tonight is because tonight, somewhere in the world...all over the world actually...there is some one...more than one, but many, people who are thinking about killing themselves. Last night a friend of mine who is a pastor was involved in an intervention of a suicide attempt by another person.

Ask him, ask me...it's not worth it.

I don't have any ink. Instead I have a scar. It's faded with time, but it will always be there. A constant reminder to me of what suicide is really like. I'm ashamed of it. But I lived to be able to see it today.

Reach out. And when you reach out, don't reach to make a cut. Reach out to get the human touch, the human hug, the human embrace.

Somebody, no matter what you think, wants to love you.

Just like God.