I must make you aware that I am not a clinician of any kind. I do not have any qualifications in the mental-health sector, but what I do have is unwanted experiences of attempting suicide three times by means that should have done the job effectively. I do not have the answers to your pain; I only have my experience to share with you. I will describe the depth I had to reach before I contemplated suicide. This will give you some insight as to how much the body and mind has self-preservation, a security system in place if you like, to protect you from such an act of self-destruction.

The people who took their lives cannot come back and tell you how they felt prior to exiting this life or why they did it — how they felt even. But if they could, I would bet a bottom dollar that they would tell you they were not in their right minds at the time, figuratively speaking.

I am a compulsive writer. When I am deeply depressed, I write. In a way it is like a lifeline for me to write how I feel at that moment. Imagine being very, very drunk and then writing how you feel at that moment. The concentration is acute as you have to make the brain perform a task when all it really wants to do is black out. The handwriting change, as it is hard to write when the head is not “with it,” so my writing looks very childish, but has the essence of how I felt at that moment. When you’re up and flying, the perceptions change and you see things very differently. Sometimes the writing is illegible, but can be deciphered. I know I have this burning need to explain to my sons why I am killing myself. So I write my way through the experience as I wait to die.

I beg my sons to understand even a tiny bit of my pain. So this is what this book is really about. If you have lost someone to suicide, then this may be worth reading. They did not have the same reasons why they died, but the pain — the whole barrel of emotions that we experience — is there, one hundred fold, crushing us. You are then lost in the depression until it lifts again to free you for a time.

This subject is important to me because I think there is little understanding about suicide. This is my story of doing just that: committing suicide. The fact that I failed is irrelevant; for all intents and purposes, I committed an act that should have killed me.

And so this book, I hope, will give you some insight as to the last moments before the act itself — taking the drugs — and then waiting to be released. The defining moment, if you like, of what the mind is telling you, this is common in most suicides.

I myself was incapable of thinking rationally at the time prior to my self-destruction. So it may help you to know that the person you lost, was for a while, lost to reality for that time. I was lost to reality for that moment too. I never gave my beautiful sons a thought other than practical stuff. However, I did survive where others did not. In a way, I want to say that they didn’t do it consciously to hurt anyone they loved. They were lost and couldn’t find their way back in time.