Snatched from the brink

By rights, my last entry should have been my last but I was snatched from the brink by the kindness of a stranger against all odds.

As I hope I’ve proved with my blog entries on my condition and my personal life in recent days, I have always been honest and up front with you, my dear readers, and so I hope you will believe me when I say that yesterday night was supposed to have been my last (if I had been successful in my suicide attempt).  Friends I have made online tried to talk me out of my attempt but failed.  I had two visits from the police that failed to come to anything.  My doctor and the local mental health team similarly failed to change my mind.  I was utterly determined to end my life.

I had my method all planned out, the medication that was to have been stage one of my attempt was gathered around me and I was just completing my preparations before I made my attempt.  My suicide note was already prepared earlier in the day and I had spent the last couple of days gathering all the documents necessary to conclude my affairs in this life and facilitate an easy transition for my soon-to-be ex-wife.  I said goodbye to my beloved cat, Merlin, and shut him into the living room; it was a very painful decision to make because I really wanted to hold him as I succumbed to my fate but I knew the sight of him might deter me from going through with my plan.

I was within minutes of enacting the plan I had so rigorously planned when a person I had never met before that evening saw my pain and reached out to me.  There was no reason why this person felt the need to reach out to me except the decency of being a human being unwilling to see another in pain.  We had exchanged contact numbers even though I knew that I would probably never need to use it and it was within minutes of starting my attempt that I noticed three missed calls and a text message on my mobile phone.  This kind person had left a message on my voicemail service in an attempt to reach out to me but my phone had been put on silent so I was not in a position to talk.  I did, however, read the lovely text message that my saviour had sent and we conversed by text for around two hours.  It was that conversation that put doubts in my mind and I ended up not going through with my plan.

I woke up to find another message from this kind person and we had another brief text conversation during Sunday afternoon.  Again, there was no need for this as I was a complete stranger.  It is this wonderful person’s actions that have given me a little faith in the human race because of what I can only describe as the pure motive that motivated the intervention.

I hope what I say now will not offend my friends who tried to convince me to cease my attempt but, in a way, their motives for trying were not pure because they were protecting a friendship, protecting someone with whom they had some form of relationship beyond simply being members of the same species.  My doctor and the mental health team were motivated by professional duty.

My rescuer, however, did not know me from Adam and we only met for the briefest of times yet felt that intervening was the right thing to do after seeing me in pain.  I cannot see any possible impure motive in my rescuer’s actions.  There may be some unseen impure motive but I’d prefer on this occasion to believe that there are none.

I was snatched from the brink by someone who has now made me question my hostility towards the human race and has given me the tiny bit of hope I need to carry on for a while longer, the idea that someone can care enough for a stranger to reach out to them in their time of need and save that stranger’s life.