WARNING: Reading about how people can have thoughts of suicide can be triggering. If you are feeling vulnerable it may be advisable for you not to read any further.
I never thought of myself as one who would want to take my own life, until one day, it all became too much and I wanted to end it all. My life was going nowhere; I had written my book “Do You Mind If I Buy Myself Some New Underwear?” self-published it on Amazon and thought I could move on with my life.
The reality was vastly different. What they don’t explain that clearly about self-publishing is, apart from taking your document and converting it to an eBook format, which can be quite costly; you also need to market it. I should have realised from my nanny agency days that marketing costs money. In many ways, I thought once the book was published my pain would be ended. I imagined a brighter future. I was mistaken. For one thing, as much as I wanted to forget about the book, I periodically earned a couple of pounds from Amazon and was sent a notification when the money was due to be paid.
Looking back, I now can see that there were a series of events that led up to the point where I wanted to end it all. When I received the news about my husband being taken ill and then the eventual trip to the hospital, I was on autopilot. The only thoughts I had was what would happen when he was released from hospital. He was a dreadful when he had a cold, so what would he be like if what had caused him to collapse was more serious? It never came to that. I went to the hospital a married woman and came home a widow. All thoughts that I had about yet another attempt to reset my marriage had disappeared. I had a funeral to sort out and needed to check the finances.
I took comfort in the cloak of widowhood, but there were clouds on the horizon. I started to go through my husband’s documents on the computer and the reality of what he was truly like started to sink in. At the same time, I was dealing with life events. One of which was my then landlord, who had been very supportive, telling me he needed to sell the house we were living in. It was, in all fairness too large for my son and me, but I felt secure there. We had good neighbours; it was a safe bubble that we were living in.
Reality started to bite when my landlord gave me a four month extension on the lease at a vastly increased rate. Then the viewings started, my stress levels rose and the pressure increased to find somewhere to live. I had never rented anywhere by myself. The job I had when I met my husband came with accommodation, previous to that I had lived at home or worked as a live-in nanny. So here I was at the age of fifty-five looking to rent a place to live in my own name for the first time in my life. I didn’t have a “regular” job, I was, by then self-employed, and that did cause problems. Some places required a guarantor, which I didn’t have.
If all of that wasn’t hard enough, where we were going to live was also a problem. My younger son was living at home and wasn’t in a position to find a place on his own. I had no idea how fortuitous that was to be. Eventually, going against my better judgment I settled on Nottingham. My elder son was about to start university there and it was where my in-laws lived. At that point, I was still seeing them as family as I hadn’t got to the point in my journey of facing the absolute truth about my husband.
I approached my in-laws to see if my son and I could go and stay with them for a night so that we could see some homes in the area. My request was turned down flat. By some miracle, a house was found that my elder son went and viewed and my soon to be landlord accepted my application. I had rented a house all by myself.
It was hard to move, we didn’t know anybody, apart my eldest son and he was busy at university. My in-laws didn’t want to know us. On top of everything else, we had power problems shortly after we moved in. It wasn’t a great start. By the beginning of the year, my son and I started looking at moving. We spent several weeks, eventually deciding that we were better off where we were.
On and off since my husband had died, I had been putting my thoughts down in writing. At the cremation service for my husband, I had mentally re-written the tribute the boys and I had written. Strange memories entered my head at night, so strange I thought I was going mad. I told my son, and he told me I wasn’t going mad. Those strange memories were the reality. Memories that I had blocked out for years, not wanting the face the truth that I was in an abusive relationship and not just a bad marriage.
New words entered my vocabulary: Coercive control, emotional abuse, financial abuse, narcissistic abuse, narcissistic personality disorder and more recently, reproductive coercion. It pushed me to the edge, but I didn’t seek help because I still didn’t believe I was a victim of abuse. My book took many a turn and as I wrote, the truth seeped out. Rather than write as Leigh, I wrote through the eyes of Abby and it was Abby who finally made me confront the truth. I had been in an abusive relationship from almost the moment I had met my husband. More importantly, even when I had seen the signs, I put them all down to a dreadful marriage, one that I was determined to fix. Even when I confronted the truth, there was a part of me that denied it.
Outwardly I appeared to be fine. Inwardly I was a mess. I had started to tell those few people that I knew that my late husband was an emotional abuser. There were some words of comfort, but there were many nasty words. The implication was I had made it up, or at the very least I should put the past behind me and get on with my life. Let me tell you here and now you don’t just get on with your life after being abused. Yes, you can move forward, but those memories of the abuse last a lifetime. Even to this day I am still remembering his actions and realising what a truly despicable man he was. It wasn’t just his actions towards me, but to the boys and to the cats.
Feelings of guilt kicked in. Why didn’t I see him for what he was? Why didn’t I leave him during those brief moments when I saw that I was in, what I believe to be a bad marriage? How was all this affecting the boys? Would they have had a better life if I had taken them and the cats and left my husband? The what ifs and the guilt took over my life.
While I had the book to complete and find a way of publishing it, I had a purpose in life. It was easy to write about my life through Abby’s eyes, but when the writing stopped I had to face the truth. I could no longer hide behind Abby. That is when my thoughts of suicide started to creep in. Slowly at first, not every day or even every week, just random thoughts about how I should go about taking my own life.
We don’t live far from the River Trent and there is a weir close by. Having seen the weir and how easy it was to get to, my first thoughts of taking my own life was to go to the weir. Drowning seemed a sensible way out. I have a fear of heights, so wouldn’t want to jump off anything high as first I would have to climb up. Cutting my wrists I ruled out as I wince at anything sharp. Getting hit by a train or a tram didn’t appeal either. I would have had to have travelled some distance to get to a train and the trams in this area, while I could have been hit by one, the chances of surviving it were good as they don’t go at any great speed during this part of their journey.
It was a slow build up to the point where I just exploded one night. I had reached my limit; I wanted to end it all. My finances were in a mess. Some money from a couple of pensions that I had discovered when going through my husband’s documents had all but disappeared. My book, well that was languishing on Amazon and I had been turned down for many jobs that is if I even had a reply. This didn’t surprise me as my CV had more holes in it than a sieve!
I broke down late one night. I took my rings off and told my son he could have them. I openly told him I didn’t want to live any more. He was calm and let me rage and cry and slowly he brought me down from my personal hell. I didn’t even attempt taking my life that night. What I did later on was to count all the painkillers I had, wondering if I took them I could end my life that way. It seemed the best way to go. I put my son through the living agony of not knowing if his mother was still going to be alive in the morning. His brother, who had been told about me wanting to take my own life, suggested that he remove all the tablets from my room. For whatever reason, he refrained from doing so.
Since that dark late night, I have had many thoughts of taking my own life. As I have discovered, once that particular genie is out of the bottle, you can’t put it back again. Thoughts of how I can end it all are constantly with me, particularly in stressful situations. But even living with and thinking about suicide hasn’t persuaded me to seek counselling. Somehow I get through each day, I live with anxiety; some days it is worse than others. Now I can predict what kind of day I am going to have and to be honest there are times when I don’t want to get out of bed.
I worry about the slightest things and the smallest worry can escalate into a major issue in my mind. It is times like this I want my life to end, for the pain to stop. I don’t want to constantly keep looking back on my life and see just how he manipulated me, had total control of my life. There are days when I spend the entire day playing the blame game. I blame me for everything that went wrong. This then transfers to the what ifs. What if I had done this or that or seen through him? It is exhausting.
When I look back over the past few years it amazes me that I am still here. Now this is going to sound a little strange, but when the original lockdown began, I didn’t fear it: I embraced it. Isolation is part of control, in the case of the pandemic, it was done to save lives. In an abusive relationship, it is used by the abuser to exert control over their victim. For once, I was able to put all those years of isolation to good use. I didn’t feel threatened by it; I had an excuse not to move forward with my life. For a brief time, any thought of taking my life disappeared.
As we have come out of lockdown and our lives are returning to something like normal, those thoughts of ending it all have started to reappear. I feel threatened by the outside world. I need to move forward with my life, but I don’t know how. If I stay as I am, how will that affect the boys, if I take my own life how will they cope? Will they feel the same guilt that I do when I think back about my life and how I should have got them away from their father? Somehow I have to find a path forward so that I can start living my life without being a burden to the boys. Yet at the same time, I have to learn to live with the thoughts of ending my life without them dominating every moment of my day.
Recently, I did one of those questionnaires that estimate how long you have to live. According to it I have just over 23 years. I would like 27 or more, that way it will have counter balanced the years I was with my husband. Only these years, rather than at the end I look back upon with regret, I look back and say, yes I finally lived my life to its fullest when I turned sixty, now that would be an achievement.
If you do have suicidal thoughts please contact:
Samaritans on 116 123 – They are available 24/7
www.samaritans.org