I wanted to Commit Suicide But I Didn’t

By Melaine E. Hall

These digital Classics are abridged and adapted into reading leveled high-interest, low readability illustrated chapter novels including the complete story in 10 short chapters. This high-interest low-readability title is appropriate for all ages. Introduce students to great classic literature while improving comprehension, vocabulary and fluency.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melaine E. Hall
• Release date: Feb 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781545756614

Book preview

MAY 14th, 2018 – the day

Monday morning, day after Mother’s Day. I am still here. I am not supposed to be here. Today is May 14th, 2018. It is also the 63rd wedding anniversary of my parents, who were married May 14th, 1955, at St. Paul A.ME. Church. I had not realized until I started to compose this narrative. Last night, I was going to have a final cup of tea and sleep peacefully into eternity. I was going to enjoy my tea at midnight and not wake up in the morning. Six minutes. Life can end from one second to six minutes. No more pain, NO MORE PAIN! No more suffering, No more tears. No more being told to wait. No more, I will call you back or I will get back to you. No more, asking a request for anything and hearing, No! No more asking that feels like begging. Not my style. No more. Why should I have to ask when you know there is a need? Covered in the request of forgiveness for taking myself out of here, out of bullying, chaos, deceit, injustices, lies, manipulations, and racism I am forced to live with and watch whether I want to or not. When you do not have a choice in a matter it is not a choice. We were created and designed with free will. I had no doubt that I would meet and see my maker. I convinced myself that HE would understand. He knows. Kiss my loyal felines goodbye. More loyal than humans and faithful too. Concerned for their well-being and how they would survive life without me, I would leave a note requesting they be kept together. After all they are family - three brothers. I do not believe they could survive without one another. My sleep would be blissful. I cannot be angry one more time for waking up. Questioning Almighty God, the creator of life, why am I still here? Here to answer the calls of others as I have always done and do. Who helps you when you have helped everyone else?

People get it wrong when it comes to suicide. They are very judgmental, not opinionated. They will argue and waffle between a conversation no one is comfortable having. Then they want to categorize sin and debate, which sin is greater? Like suicide and murder/suicide is more palatable. Taking your own life is no less than committing any other sin, except for the only biblical excuse for divorce and perhaps blaspheming Holy Spirit. Even, God hates divorce. I am divorced. He left. Ask him why. Doubt he will tell you the truth; he never told me. Sin is sin. Does not matter if you are coveting, fornicating, lying, stealing, or worshiping idols. There is great judgement and lament about the mother who decides to end the lives of herself and her children. She sees no other way out, steeped in despair and pain. Last time I checked judgement is God’s job. Honestly, she believes, thinks, she is protecting them. Some would classify this as being evil or mentally ill. Judgmental, any way you slice it. A mother in desperation, depressed, her brain sees it as a way out of whatever debilitating circumstance she may find herself in, with her children. A broken heart full of pain and broken promises. Then there is that 1% that is just evil. Am I evil for feeling this way? One might hang or shoot themselves. Eat or drink poison. Overdose? Accidentally. Some say suicide is murder, self-murder. Hear me clearly. It has nothing to do with the method and everything to do with stopping the pain. READ THAT AGAIN. Ending pain that seems to have no end. I thought about it when I became divorced. I would rather have died than to live my life as a divorced woman. I would be lying if I told you otherwise. I don’t wear lying.

Let us pause for a moment and think about the girl or boy in middle school being bullied. I do not even think they give conscious thought to dying, as much as stopping the pain that assails them consistently and nothing is done about it. Forced torment they MUST live. Added to this, no one seems to understand the evil of husbands, ex-husbands, lovers, fathers, brothers, uncles, and cousins, who domesticate violence. Then there are known/unknown perps who violate the very souls they prey upon. There is no prescription for such maladies. I have even found myself rethinking the right to die. There are rights for everything else. For example, the rights of LBQGT and all it represents. Their belief, a right. The Bible says a sin. The Supreme Court, rights. Perhaps we should have the right to determine our own final demise. I reflected on my own battles and struggles with chronic depression, racism, and suicidal ideation all my living life, and feelings of hopelessness, like nothing else matters. Black lives matter. All lives matter, or do they? Let us pause and look at members of society being murdered. People have been murdered for being arrested while Black, driving while Black, jogging while Black, shopping while Black, sleeping while Black, talking while Black and walking while Black. From babies to consumers of society for skittles, a toy gun or fake, twenty-dollar bill. I ask you, what is left? Don’t I have a right to live?

I do think depression can be generational, passed to a fetus in utero, as well as chronic or a chemical imbalance, where the brain does not produce enough serotonin. Low serotonin levels are often caused from consistent panic mode or stress, giving way to the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness when a problem is not resolved and there just does not seem to be a solution. Walking around in a fog you cannot control, do not understand let alone where it came from. There is an abundance of tears or no more tears and nothing to cry about. Just a soul tormented and a soul wrenching longing for calm, freedom, and peace. A constant inner conflict for the pain to cease and it does not. The pain does not end. Depression can also be a characteristic of PTSD/PTSS. (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder/Syndrome) from unresolved trauma.

As a believer in Christ, I believe that asking for forgiveness in those final moments qualifies your entrance to heaven, having met the acceptance of salvation and all other pre-requisites. Without it, I would be respectfully doomed and ushered to hell. I would not slide into heaven like a ball player sliding into home-plate or collect $200.00 for passing Go in a game of Monopoly. I reflect on this journey trying to understand how I arrived at this space. Frankly, I do not recognize a specific experience, experiences, place, or time. Being born? My whole life has been a struggle and continues to be, painfully so. An indoctrinated church girl, always for God just stepped away for a minute. I got saved three months out of college and rededicated my life. All the other lies I had been told did not work. I was on a quest for truth and nothing but!!

Does the struggle ever end or just become a continuum of life’s downs more than ups? You ride the merry-go-round of life waiting for it to stop and it never does. Real news, fake news, real people, fake people like a tsunami cyclone that you are the eye of and lost in the middle. Quicksand swallows you up without a lifeline to help yourself out of the darkness you cannot explain, do not understand and no one else has time for. A deep hole, you are unable to save yourself from. Frozen and immobilized, you blink to keep the sunlight out of your eyes when daytime arrives like the billboards and flashing lights of New York City. Even sunshine is painful. Lack of control for things out of control. Other people playing God with your life without understanding. They follow a systematic formula that does not apply to every situation. God forbid they should take in account an individual’s needs!

Let me start from the beginning. Helpless - I despise these black holes I find myself in almost without warning. I am in quicksand up to my neck. I cannot save myself. I have no desire to save myself. I have no will to save myself. Exhausted from saving others. You assist and aid everybody. Who assists or aids you? For, real! My children, The Twins, have a godmother. She and I grew up together. She would always lament because I was on antidepressants, and she had known me when I was not. She knew me when I was bold, confident, independent, rebellious, secure, and free or so I thought. She knew me before I knew myself. She watched me grow and I watched her grow up. She knew me when I was NOT medicated. She would always tell me, You don’t need no medication. This might have been true, but I needed something. Love, perhaps? My attempts of doing without the medication were always unsuccessful and I would end up on something else believing the lie of minimal clean side effects. There are no such things as clean side effects. All medication, for any reason, affect you – one way or another. Anti-depressants effect the structure of your brain, quiet as it is kept. They can cause irreparable damage you are not told about. I never took it as prescribed. I did not want to become addicted or immune. After twenty-three years of medication by big pharma, how am I better?

JANUARY 18th, 2018 - FLASHBACK

I had been waning. My decent arrived with the departure of my cousin John. John died suddenly on January 18th, 2018. He was 48 years young and had a heart attack brought on by kidney failure. John and I did not grow up together. He grew up in Barbados, West Indies where my family hails from. He resided in Toronto, Canada with his wife and two daughters. He was Dad’s favorite nephew and we got to spend the most time in our lives at dad’s funeral in 2011. After Dad’s death, we grew close. He would call and talk to me on the phone. Our conversations turned into phone marathons as we talked about life and growing up in our dysfunctional families, respectively, worlds apart. I ministered to him about my relationship with God. He ministered to me about the lack of relationships within our dysfunctional family. He educated me about life in Barbados with my having been born in America. He caught me up to speed on family history I was unaware of. These calls became my lifeline like an antidepressant, Geritol, or vitamin pill. The only difference… the calls were laced with genuine love. No matter what either of us was going through, we always soothed one another’s angst. We became each other’s cheering squad. By the time we were ready to hang up the phone, we were ready to face life again, with all, of its challenges, deficiencies, struggles, more downs than ups. We would conclude our conversation with prayer, tell one another, I Love You!, laugh and hang up the phone.

Getting through the holidays was difficult enough, in that, it was the anniversary of Dad’s death. My dad and I were estranged for thirty-six years after my parents’ tumultuous divorce, six months before my eighteenth birthday. God brought dad back into my life in a more consistent way for two years before his demise. He choked on his supper while in rehab the day after Christmas, December 26th, 2010 and suffered anoxic brain trauma. He never regained consciousness. Ironically, growing up, we had never spent a Christmas together our entire lives. I took the train on Christmas day, determined to celebrate Christmas with him. Who knew it would be our first and last? After the episode he was transferred to the CCU. I kept him here until his birthday, February 23rd, 2011. I had the arduous task of taking him off life support. I resented this and this shadowed my depression. I’ve never been angry with God for trials throughout my journey, but for some reason I couldn’t accept that He continually woke me up to have to face another day. I simply did not understand what He allowed. I threw Dad a birthday bash so all his friends could come and say goodbye. At midnight, he was taken of life support. Dad lasted longer than predicted. The doctors assured me it would not be long. Shows how human they are and how much they know! God has the final say. He finally passed two days later. I was in the process of having him transported back to Boston. His life had been in New York. We were all devastated. He was funeralized and buried on March 7th, 2011. Already depressed, I went into a year-long depression and continued taking care of Contessa, my mother. I was both of their full-time caregiver for ten arduous years. Numb, I still could not believe he was gone. I could not understand how God would allow him back in my life only to leave once again ever so abruptly. Our two years were spent doing things we had not done during his lifetime. We shared in two birthdays (his), Easter, Father’s Day, and one Christmas. I was ever so grateful and thankful for the time we had but saddened that it was so short. We were just getting to know one another as we tried to cram thirty-six years of estrangement into two. General Goat, GG for short, was gone. I called him general cause he loved giving orders, and goat because he was stubborn as a mule and he lived in unresolved chronic pain brought on by life. The west Indian in him, I guess. I later realized his harsh stubbornness masked his unresolved anger, hurt, pain and unforgiveness. He told me on his death bed, one day, you will understand.

I had promised Cousin John I would come and visit. My passport had expired. I needed a new one to be able to travel to Toronto, Canada. On New Year’s Eve at midnight, following Watch Night Service stream, I sat at my kitchen table and began filling out a new passport application. I was going to visit, this year, 2018. Mega-bus has service, to Toronto, and I knew I wouldn’t find a more reasonable fare. I don’t enjoy flying anymore and have not flown since 2010 when I spent Thanksgiving in Atlanta with family. I was inappropriately searched by a TSA Agent at Atlanta’s Hartfield Airport on my return home for not removing my blessed bracelets. Contessa was with me, I guess they thought I was a bandit smuggling in something. This was my promise to my beloved Cousin John – a plan I never got the opportunity to execute. A reason why one should not put off until tomorrow, what one can do today.

January 7th, 2018… I was preparing to attend a winter Power of God conference at church, the weekend of Martin Luther King’s birthday. That day, we visited for almost four hours on the phone. Little did I know that would be our last conversation this side of Glory. He was elated sharing with me the online business he had created. He wanted me to find a spot for myself so we could share in the profits. He thought about me. He included me. He looked out for me. He treated me as family, something I was not accustomed to. I was touched in my heart. He genuinely loved me. I knew it and he showed his love to me with his actions. In that conversation, we also discussed my finally completed web site. I had been working on the website the whole time I had been caretaking both mom and dad. So, to finally have it completed was a big deal to me. Originally, the website was completed by a student program. I was excited to have a platform for Divine Praise, the ministry. As he previewed my site, he said, You know ‘Cuz, this is nice, but I believe it could be so much better. More effective. Very much, more interactive, and user friendly. You have a lot here and you have done a lot of stuff. Let me see what I can do. Make improvements. I’ll talk with my people here and overhaul the entire site. I believe you’ll love the improvements. I was overjoyed. I was like, You would do that for me? He was like, Why not? We family! I could hardly contain myself. Always feeling so alone in my stuff. Always feeling criticized and unsupported for things I did and did not do. Always feeling like no one really gives a damn! I have always walked to a different drumbeat. He went page by page, taking notes, and questioning me about the things presented and my vision for the site. We concluded our conversation and when I hung up the phone, I was over the moon. We agreed we would talk as soon as I returned from my conference. This would give him time to put something together for me to evaluate.

I travelled to New Jersey, Bethany Baptist, a church I had grown to love. A new prophet had been invited to speak. I wanted to be in house instead of live stream and experience his prophetic mantle first-hand. At this juncture of my spiritual journey, I was once again exploring studying the Prophetic. Many have spoken against it. Always a student on the foot stool of life and ministry, he did not disappoint. The conference was an impactful experience. Truly a sacrifice. Winter had been relatively mild from onset. I needed this break.

I was managing a situation. The occupant of five months was asked to terminate. In her five months occupancy she became problematic in ways I could not have imagined. I met Rose through Leigh a former colleague and mentor. She had fallen on hard times and being a woman myself I could relate. Women supporting women. I am my sister’s keeper. The property located in an urban section of Boston had been deemed unsafe due to an increase of crime and gun violence in the community. With gentrification, the market in an upswing, there were many challenges. Rose agreed she would occupy until she figured out what she would do next. At least she was not shifting between hotels and motels. Appearing grateful for the opportunity, this would assist me in my caregiving recovery management until I became more stable. How much trouble, could a professed Christian, single woman with a service dog be?

I have a soft heart and I love animals. Rose owned a dog named Caden. Caden was a well-behaved dog, spoiled rotten. Rose took, Caden everywhere. Even to work. When she had to leave him behind, I did not mind dog sitting. Since, I had a dog of my own named