Introduction

Why do they leave us?  There is so much guilt when someone we love completes suicide.  People don't understand how they feel.  Really feel.  Depression, which is the overwhelming reason people kill themselves, physically and mentally hurts.  I would like to try to show you what goes through their minds.  I'm not an expert, but lost my older son almost 4 years ago when he was 31. In all the research I've done since then, I think I have a better idea what he went through.  This came out in poem-form.  I think Preston is helping me with these because I was never into writing poetry and he wasn't either as far as I know, but here it is just the same:

I HOPE YOU UNDERSTAND

I'm tired, so tired of living  
Pretending all is well
No one seems to understand
My life's a living hell.

The pain you can't imagine
And there is no escape
It is gnawing, unrelenting
Sealing up my fate.

It feels like burning acid
Courses through my veins
Mocking, evil demons
Dance within my brain.

Sleep eludes me every nite
I dread each coming day
My soul is dying bit by bit
While others laugh and play.

Dark, haunting images
Are always at the fore
My reality is hopeless
I can't take it anymore.

People say they love me
But I know it isn't so
Anything worth loving
Left me long ago.

I am empty of emotions
I have no more to give
All searing, stabbing, choking pain
I've lost the will to live.

I wish I didn't have to go
I know you couldn't tell
The blackness that descended
Nothing could dispel.

I wanted to be happy
I pleaded, begged, and cried
But forces kept the light away
And now my soul has died.

I cannot face a future
Filled with emptiness and pain
So I am going where I hope
To find my joy again.

~Joni in memory of Preston 1976-2007