Hurricanes and Blackouts: How it Feels to be Suicidal

 My state just went through something brutal: a Category four hurricane on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina that rampaged throughout the north shore and the New Orleans area, killing hundreds, and leaving thousands homeless. It took years to come back from and to be hit on the exact same day is insult to injury. 

This was my first ever hurricane. I didn't know what to expect. The Sunday afternoon before the storm actually hit, the lights went out and we sat in the house and my heart pounded with every gust of wind that smashed into the windows. I sat in fetal position on the couch just waiting for something to happen. It was pitch black. The generator that was keeping the news going drowned out some of the noise, but the winds howled so loudly. When the spotlight was put on the trees, it looked like a giant was stirring a pot frantically trying not to let the bottom burn. It was terrifying. Later that night, water had crept up the road and for a while it was just at the mailbox, but whenever my boyfriend's mother came running in at 5 am telling us "get up, get up. The water is closer." It had come up even closer to the and I had never seen water come up the way it had, I just knew that we'd have to load seven dogs into the attic while the water flooded everywhere in Hammond. Luckily we received no damage to the house, I got a little water in my ceiling of my apartment, the only big thing was a large pine tree over the fence and branches everywhere. We had no power for about ten days and just the never ending feeling of panic, chaos and hopelessness was overwhelming. I didn't know how things would go back to normal after seeing whole cities leveled, tin peeled off roofs, and trees spearing windows. Trees over every street, in some places no road was visible.  How could we come back from this? 

I say all of these things so you understand what it's like. But as I was wondering what I was going to write about I realized that being in a hurricane was similar to how it feels when one is suicidal. Whenever I was having suicidal tendencies, I was numb, with a cold swirling of emotions that left me feeling incredibly empty. I would go back in forth, much like the trees between "I'm a failure", "people don't want  me." "I wouldn't be missed." These thoughts howled undisturbed throughout my mind, yet I could never see them. My mind, everything around me was pitch black. I was blind to anything that could ever help me fight what I was going through and I felt like I was surrounding by things that crept up slowly, like the floodwaters, coming to choke the life out of me. All you want to do is escape, but you are failing at escaping. You're stuck in the middle of wanting to commit and actually attempting. You can't wait for it to be over, but it just won't stop. This was what it was like for me. This is what it is like for millions of people that suffer with suicidal tendencies, thoughts, and attempts. 

Then there's the aftermath of the hurricane. The sheetrock littering the fronts of yards, branches piled ten feet high in hopes that the debris removal would come by soon. The dejected faces at the grocery store, hoping to find the last loaf of bread to feed their children a sandwich because their food is spoiled and they can't cook because the power is out. 

Everyone is going through their own take in the storm that we call life. Some people only have slight water damage, some have a tree on their fence that's easily taken down in two days, and everything is back to normal. Some have it the worse with their roofs blown off, or having to gut their house because the water saturated their homes. Some don't even have the means to buy food for their families. Everyone has different issues, but we all go through a similar feeling whenever we're suicidal. We feel hopeless. That's how I used to feel. 

So remember, you may never know what someone is going through. You may never see it. Be kind, check on your smiling friends, the jokesters, the quiet ones. Give them a kind word, a listening ear, a hug that lasts a little longer. Sometimes that gesture can be the difference between someone being here tomorrow and not.