The Vibration of Fear and Mass Panic

But first, here’s another excerpt of Erik’s AWESOME book, My Life After Death: A Memoir from Heaven. Get your own copy HERE and encourage your family and friends to purchase their own copy. It’s available in all conceivable formats.

THE END OF ME

I’d thought about suicide before.

In fact, I thought about it a lot in the couple of years leading up to when I decided to end my life. I even researched on the internet all the ways I could do it.

The year before I succeeded, I tried by taking an overdose of a medication called Provigil, but I wasn’t successful. I think I must have died for a little bit then, though, because I saw my deceased aunt, Denise, who’d taken her own life, and my friend Ally, who’d died from an accidental gunshot wound just after our high school graduation. They were sitting on either side of me, holding my hands. Their presence gave me comfort. It also gave me the sense that I was in a different place, better than the one I was in at the time, and I remember it feeling so good. I knew I wanted to go back there.

The day after my first suicide attempt, Pappa and I were standing by his truck. He asked me why I wanted to die. After all, the sky was blue and beautiful that day and everything seemed calm. Nice. Happy. I told him that I just wished I wasn’t here anymore. It was difficult to explain, and I know that that reason couldn’t even begin to express how I was feeling or why I wanted to die, but it was as close as I could get. Eventually, I’d get my wish.

On the last day of my life, things started out like any other day for me—a ride on a roller coaster. Ever heard that expression “I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up?” Well, mine only went down. Or, more accurately, my ups never lasted long enough and my downs felt like they’d go on forever. When I woke up that morning, I remember thinking, “Damn, another day,” but once I got out of bed, I felt this strange peace and calm. It was fleeting, though, because those familiar periods of inner darkness soon took over and sent me into a tailspin.

It wasn’t like I’d planned, “This is going to be the day. This is going to be the moment.” I didn’t wake up that morning and say, “Today is the day I’m going to die.” It was more of a combination of circumstances and triggers that led me to make the decision I made. That morning, my parents had found out that I’d pawned some of their stuff to buy this awesome hunting rifle. It even had a scope. I just wanted something exciting and new to make me feel better. They were so dis- appointed in me, and I was tired of making them feel like that all the time. To be clear, this wasn’t the gun I used to end my life; this was just another object in a long line of new toys and experiences I chased after to try and fill the hole that my disease (bipolar disorder; I’ll talk about that more later) was carving away in me.

I’d bought a pistol a couple of months before because I wanted to go to the range for target practice with my friend Valentin. During those months, I thought about the gun quite a bit. I knew it was there, hidden away in my room, and the thought of it was almost a comfort. It was right after my parents fussed at me that I made up my mind to kill myself again, but this time with the pistol. I knew that shooting myself would guarantee my death while the overdose of pills didn’t. When my mom, my sisters, and my aunt Teri were about to leave for lunch—a lunch they would never have, as it turned out—I got up from the sofa in the living room and walked upstairs to go to my bedroom. They asked me if I wanted to go with them, but I told them no because I didn’t want my sudden determination broken. I wanted to end the pain forever, and I was sure that this time I’d be successful. I felt a sense of resolution. Like surrender, but not in a bad way.

Once I was in my room, I started to pace. I think well when I walk. So I paced back and forth for a while and then sat at my desk, contemplating. Aunt Teri walked down the hallway from the guest room and stopped in front of my open door. She asked me if I wanted to come, but I told her I just wanted to chill for a while. I could feel her hesitation. I knew she wanted to convince me to change my mind, but I guess my blank stare was a sign that I wanted to be left alone.

Then, Maria, our housekeeper came in to make my bed. I totally tuned her out, and I must have given her the impression that I wanted to be alone because she finished quickly and hurried out of the room. After she left, I started to think about the clothes I was wearing and how uncomfortable I felt in them. My clothes felt like a second layer of skin that I wanted to shed. I guess my actual skin felt that way too. Everything felt too close and too much.

Once Maria had left, that strange sense of peace I’d woken up with suddenly came over me again, and that peace expanded and expanded until I felt much larger than life. It was a really enticing feeling. I wanted to be consumed by it.

Along with that peaceful feeling, I remember my mind filling up with emptiness. I know what you’re thinking. That sounds like a contradiction—“filling up with emptiness”—but that’s how it felt. As I sat there, memories of the shitty-ass things that had happened in my life flashed before me, slicing through the calm: people being nice to me but then talking behind my back or times when I’d helped my friends and then realized that they’d never return the favor. I kept thinking things like, “That’s fucked up,” and “That’s not fair.” After a while, the emptiness took over completely.

I didn’t think about how people would react to what I was going to do, and I didn’t want to think about how upset my family would be with me. I didn’t want to think about the hurt. I just wanted to get the result I was looking for: an escape.

I knew that if I really thought about it analytically, my consciousness would get a hold of me and pull me out of that inner peace I was desperate to hold on to. I wasn’t interested in that. I was in such a calm place that when I thought about my mom and my dad, it was really about how much I loved them and how they were there for me and how much they supported me. I wasn’t thinking, “They put me here,” or “This is their fault,” because they didn’t and it wasn’t. I wasn’t thinking, “They didn’t do anything to help,” because they did. I was so far away from blaming anyone. That moment wasn’t about any of that.

When I heard my mom, sisters, and aunt leave the house, I remember thinking, “This is it. Now is the right time.” I kept the bullets in my closet and the gun in a drawer under my bed. I knew that if I kept the gun loaded and my parents found it, then I’d be without both, so I kept them separate. I loaded a bullet into the gun and sat down at my desk again. From that point on, I was on total autopilot. My mind was still blank, and it was almost like I had already separated from my body. Have you ever been driving in a car and then suddenly you’re at your destination and you don’t know how you got there? That was how it was for me. I was in a trance.

I usually fidget and wipe my hands on my legs when I’m about to do something I’m anxious about, but I wasn’t even doing that. I was so relaxed. My hands weren’t even sweaty. I felt no uneasiness. I knew what I was going to do. I had thought about it tons of times, and I knew how fast it was going to be. I had this image in my head that the gun would just blow away everything that was bad. It wouldn’t blow away my family; it wouldn’t blow away my connections. It would just blow away what I couldn’t get control over. I didn’t really see what I was doing as resulting in death, even though that sounds stupid, I know.

I saw it as an answer to blowing away that side of my brain that always seemed to work against me instead of for me.

I didn’t think about where I’d end up after I died either. I just thought about darkness, and I knew I would be happy. I didn’t doubt that at all, but I can’t explain why. It wasn’t like I thought that some god would come get me or that I’d fall into the arms of an angel or whatever, but it wasn’t like I thought things would be over or that I’d disappear either. I thought that if there was something after death, good. If there wasn’t, it’d be better than this. I saw it as a win-win situation. When I think about it now, I wish I would have given more thought to how my decision would affect the people in my life, but all I could think about right then was that all my pain would be gone if I just pulled the trigger and I would finally have relief.

My last thought before I did it was, “Okay.” That’s it. No good-byes. No thoughts or questions or worries. Just, “Okay.” I placed the barrel firmly and without hesitation to the spot on my head that I knew would do the job. I felt peaceful.

Then, bang.

Elisa here. Phew, that was so hard for me to transcribe.