The Other side of Darkness

By: Marc McMahon

*Suicide Is Not The Answer!

There’s a place that is so distant and dark that few have ever seen it and lived to tell about it. So lonely and cruel that those who have returned were too ashamed to speak of it. A place I once thought to be my great escape, my final refuge, a peaceful bliss. Imagine if you will somewhere that leaves you feeling an emptiness you never knew existed. A near heart-stopping void that chills you to the deepest part of your being to your core, the heart of your soul.

A second heart you never knew you had until that moment, the most horrifying place you have ever set foot in. Ice cold air that when inhaled makes you feel like someone ripped your lungs right out of your chest and set them ablaze. A searing knife, melting flesh as it stings its way through your soul.

Then the realization that this new level of emptiness, this loneliness, wasn’t really just an emotion passing through, but more like the one feeling you would be tormented with for all eternity. A perpetual living hell wrapped in a cloak of tranquility. Satan’s backyard disguised as child’s playground. The grand entrance to Disneyland leading into a cemetery. A nightmare that never ends, a darkness imprisoning you in absolute horror. A place where you can neither live nor die, trapped, by choice!

The biggest lie I ever believed had taken me to this place. The year was 2002, and I had just been released from my first inpatient Psychiatric stay at the local Hospital. I was miserable, strung out on cocaine, a complete wreck when I was brought into that hospital just ten days prior. I had called an ambulance on myself because my heart was beating so fast and so hard that it was actually starting to hurt my chest. Out of fear that I may be having a heart attack I called 911 and had an ambulance dispatched to my aid. Ten days later when I walked out of the Behavioral Health Unit (a.k.a.- Psych Ward) to face life again on life’s terms, reality slapped me in the face.

I stepped off the bus 45 minutes later in the small town that I grew up in only to realize I had nowhere to go. No one who wanted me, not a soul to call that cared to hear my voice, literally alone. An empty broken shell of a man. I stood at a phone booth, phone in one hand fifty-cents in the other when I realized for the first time, that the selfishness of my disease had rendered me completely undesirable not only to the family but also to those I used to call friends. It was as if I was the only leper in a healthy colony of humans.

So what was I to do? All I knew was that I was completely isolated, alone, and unwanted and those feelings at that moment were more than I could bare. So I reached out to the only person I could, my nurse at the Psychiatric unit I had just been released from just a couple hours earlier. She must have heard the desperation in my voice when I told her my situation. She asked me to come back to the hospital right away and stay some more. She made me promise her I would not harm myself before I seen her and I did promise. With tears streaming down both my cheeks I hung up the phone opened my backpack and pulled out my bottle of Seroquel to commence suicide attempt number one.

I ate as many of those pills as I could I just wanted that emptiness I felt, that unwanted dirty feeling to go away as soon as possible. I remember thinking I am going to walk around this block until I fall down dead. And I wonder I thought am I going to drop in front of my favorite bar or on the other side of the block in front of the fire station. To make a long story short I fell down thank God in the driveway of the fire station. When two medics sitting in the lobby of the fire station seen me and rushed out to help. The two of them carried me inside and checked my blood pressure it was 60 over 40 technically dead. I was rushed to the E/r where barely conscious I was greeted by a team of doctors and my faithful nurse from the psych. unit. Ten minutes later as my throat swelled shut I gasped for what I figured was going to be my last breath when I realized I really did not want to die. I just wanted the pain to stop.

That’s when Satan laughed at me and said: “only true despair lies on the other side of death!”

**Suicide is the big lie, it is not an escape from all of life’s pain and misery. It is really only the beginning!

About the Author: Marc is a 48-year-old Author, Speaker, and Soldier in a war to loosen the grasp that Substance Abuse has on our society. He is a Father, Son, and friend to all those seeking refuge from this incorrigible disease. Marc resides in the beautiful Pacific Northwest where he enjoys, writing, hiking, and kicking the disease of addiction in the teeth, every chance he gets. As Marc always likes to say, “be blessed, my friends!”