Your sister is either a very disturbed person or else she's just not taking you seriously.
Unless she has mental problems of her own, she doesn't really believe what she's telling you.
If you were to take your life, she would have a hard time forgiving herself.
This might sound very sweet to you at the time, but it isn't sweet in the long-run, because you're supposed to be growing up and living out your life and not cutting it prematurely-short here in your teens.
One of my friends grew up in a family of three kids (two sisters and a brother). From the time that she was four years old, she would have epileptic seizures.
When Diana was just a few days away from turning 19, she received the worst "birthday present" of her life. Her big brother--whom she idolized and loved to pieces--was killed in a freak horseback-riding accident.
A few days later, she overheard her mother lamenting, "Why the healthy one? Why not the epileptic?"
Of everybody in her family, Bill had been the one who had always been the most-accepting of her--epilepsy and all--and, now, he was gone.
Diana felt very alone, and understandably so.
She spent a lot of time at my place that summer and asked my folks if they would adopt her. Of course, they couldn't do that, but they certainly became great second-parents to her.
What if Diana had decided that her mother was right and had gone the route of suicide?
Not only would I have lost a good friend, but the future would be so much different, too. Two of my godchildren (Julie and Michelle) would have never been born--not to mention their own kids. I never would have met Diana's husband, Howard, and his own four kids from two previous marriages.
Diana also wouldn't have been there two years later in 1973 when I was going through my own depression and considering dropping out of college. She told me that I would be a fool to drop out of college with all I had going for me--so I stayed in. It was Diana's words that brought me to my final decision between staying in and dropping out. I'm currently writing a book about that, and the story (told in more detail) is part of it.
I went on and got that BA degree--and, then, took some other courses after that. It was in one of those courses that I had the chance to hear a classmate tell about the surgery he'd had done seven years before that to stop his petit mal epileptic seizures.
When he opened the floor to questions, I asked him if this would also help people with grand mal seizures.
He told me that it didn't at the time that he had the surgery but to keep in mind that seven years had passed so that it probably would by this time.
I couldn't wait to tell Diana the news!
The surgery still wasn't being offered in the US, so she would have to go to Canada to get it.
She checked it out with her neurologist, and he told her that he'd never heard of this surgery but that it would be worth checking into.
When he checked into the surgery, he learned that it did now include grand mal epilepsy and that it was going to be offered in the US before long, so he would be putting Diana on a waiting list right away so that she would be among the first to have it.
The surgery was still a few years away for her, due to a number of factors, but she finally had it in the summer of 1985.
Howard was sitting in the room waiting for her to come to--and he said that his first sign that everything had gone all right was when she opened her eyes and complained of being hungry.
A whole new world opened up for Diana!
She was able to drive a car for the first time in her life and to hold a well-paying job. She was even able to finish high school (after having to drop out at age 16 because she was missing too many days of school to remain a part of the student body).
She was seizure-free for over a decade and, then, started having isolated ones after Howard had a near-fatal heart-attack that were controlled by medication until she was able to undergo more surgery a few years ago to rid herself of them again.
But, back in 1971, I'm sure that she felt a lot like you're feeling right now.
Had she responded by taking her life, the world would have been much more empty today.
Please hang in there!
AJ wants U 2 meet The CanMan!   |
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