“I just wanted to go to sleep and not wake up the next day, so that I could feel peace. I didn’t want to die; I wanted to end the pain that had been making me suffer for years, a pain that lingers and never ends. I couldn’t take it anymore: I felt like I couldn’t go on, that I had no help. I saw no way out but to take my own life,” 25-year-old Lidia Cabrera recalls.
“But you can get out of that hole,” she continues. “I say this because, for years, I saw myself in a tunnel where everything was completely dark. And now, even though I haven’t erased the black from my life, I see the full range of colors and I allow myself to have gray days.”
Lidia was bullied from a very young age. She was later diagnosed with an eating disorder (ED). She has tried to commit suicide three times. The last attempt left her with long-term health issues — she left the hospital in a wheelchair — and was assessed as having a 43% disability. She recounts all of this to EL PAÍS three years later, with astonishing serenity. She found the strength to move forward, like the other three people who agreed to share their rebuilding process with this newspaper.
September 10 was World Suicide Prevention Day. And this year’s theme was “Changing the Narrative on Suicide,” so that organizations, societies and governments can engage in “open and honest discussions about suicide and suicidal behaviour,” as this subject has been highly taboo until recently. The goal is to “break down barriers, raise awareness and create better cultures of understanding and support.”
It’s estimated that there are more than 720,000 suicides each year worldwide, with each one profoundly affecting many more people. According to the World Health Organization, suicide is a public health problem that isn’t due to a single cause: it’s influenced by multiple factors, be they social, cultural, biological, psychological, or environmental. And the person who commits suicide doesn’t want to end their own life — rather, they wish to end the suffering that they’re experiencing.
This is how Javier Corral, 48, explains it: “I wanted to go to sleep so I wouldn’t think. In my case, what saved me was a small detail that managed to divert my attention from the enormous problem that made me want to leave this world. One day, I slept for so long that, when I woke up, my two dogs had defecated in the house. I told myself, ‘I can’t allow my dogs to suffer because of me. As long as I have them, I’m not going to do this.’”
“Obviously,” he clarifies, “I still had suicidal thoughts, but at that moment, [the incident] helped me have a distraction from what was occupying my thoughts and causing me pain.” Javier, an actor, has attempted suicide twice: the first attempt occurred when he was 13 years old. The second was during the Covid-19 pandemic. “I had no family [he left home at 18], a tour was canceled [he is an actor] and, suddenly, I found myself in a shared apartment with no roommates to share expenses with, no money, no support, no job. My daily obsession was finding a way to get ahead. I was caught in a loop, watching the applause on terraces for the medical staff [working through the pandemic] and repeating to myself, ‘It can’t be that no one cares about people who feel alone at home and might commit suicide.’ I felt like the world was against me, or that I was against it. My brain told me: ‘Why don’t you leave [this world], since you already tried it once, when you were a kid?’” he recalls. That memory hadn’t surfaced in 30 years.
Sometimes, it’s just small details that provoke a reaction, like the one Corral recounts. He’s still grateful for – and gets emotional remembering – the words he heard from his psychologist… the only one of the several he’d seen who made him feel like he was in a safe space. “He validated my emotions, made me sign a contract in which I committed to him and two other people of my choice to stipulate the time – one, two, three weeks – in which I wouldn’t take my own life. He wrote down his cell phone number and told me I could call him whenever I needed [help]. I didn’t have to, but that reassured me. He also told me – and this was what helped me the most – that, despite having a clock on the wall and more appointments to keep, he wouldn’t [end the session] until I’d finished telling him everything I felt. ‘I’m not going to allow someone to commit suicide on my watch,’” is what he recalls the psychologist saying.
For Jordi Batalla, 57, the phrase that made him react was uttered by his brother after his second suicide attempt. “He looked at me from the chair next to my bed in the hospital: ‘Jordi, I fully trust in you and [I know] that you can get through this. What you’ve been through must have been really hard for you to reach this point… I can’t even imagine it, but I [believe in] you.’”
Cristina Espiau, on the other hand, shares something that doesn’t help. “It’s difficult and complicated for those around us to know what to say [to those who are suicidal], especially because, in certain situations where impulses rule, you neither see nor hear what’s around you. It doesn’t help to be told ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way.’ No, it’s not like that: I want to stop hearing voices, but no matter how much I want to, I can’t. And that makes my day very difficult,” she confesses, on a hot August day, in the living room of her home in Barcelona.
Cristina, 25, has attempted suicide numerous times. She’s been hospitalized nearly 300 times. She suffers from schizoaffective disorder: it took nine years for her to be correctly diagnosed. This caused her an ordeal of suffering because, with the wrong diagnosis, her medication was also incorrect. “I never wanted to die, nor did I plan to; I wanted to stop suffering,” she sighs.
The correct diagnosis has allowed her to treat her psychotic episodes and pursue therapy. “Just because I’m better doesn’t mean I don’t [hear] voices or that I don’t get very anxious sometimes… but the way I handle it is much healthier.”
How does one get out of that hole?
“For me,” she replies, “there are three things: a good diagnosis, with good treatment tailored to that diagnosis, as well as one’s willpower. In other words, the daily practice of staying on your medication and applying the tools [the experts] give you. I’m proud of my perseverance and effort. It’s hard, but it can be done.”
Jordi Batalla – who, when he was 28, attempted suicide twice within the span of two months – recounts how he managed to get out of the cycle. “You have no way to ask for help. You don’t have the strength or the confidence to do it. You don’t even know how to do it. There’s no way out: you just want to end the suffering. It’s a daily pain in your heart.” The words of his brother Ramón – who was his inspiration – gave way to “that glimmer of light” at the end of the tunnel. “Up until that moment, I had ignored everything: the psychiatrist, the therapies. I wasn’t interested at all, because what you want is to let go.”
From that moment on, Jordi agreed to work with a psychiatrist who helped him work through his fears. He believes that the “main reason” for this fear lies in what he experienced at the Maristas Sants Las Corts School, in Barcelona. “There, we were [supervised] by real animals: you would be bullied and you would also [bully others] at the same time. I created a series of defensive shells to survive. But there comes a moment when you can’t take it anymore. After a few years, you say, ‘That’s not me.’”
Among the terrifying things that he remembers was when “a teacher brought a gun to class and wanted all the students to pass it around.” Jordi was 12 years old at the time. He also remembers classmates “hanging from their belts on the coat hangers, crying their eyes out while the teacher laughed.” Corporal punishment – in the form of “hundreds of slaps” – was also doled out.
“I lived in constant fear of everything. For example, if my brother [got on] a plane, I thought it was going to crash. If I heard a noise in the house, I thought someone was breaking in. And so on and so forth. Every second of my day, a new fear appeared. The psychiatrist made me keep a list of my fears. And, next to each one, he had me write down a positive thought. For example, the fact that flying is the safest mode of transportation. He explained to me that living in fear makes your thoughts negative, so you have to try to counteract them with positive ones.”
“[My] list got shorter and shorter. He made me see that we all have fears in life, but that they can be channeled in a way that doesn’t hurt you.”
Even today, Jordi notes, when a fear pops up, he tags it with a positive thought. He now has two daughters (he’s told them about about his suicide attempts) and has explained to them what to do if they see a classmate who distances themselves, socially isolates, or doesn’t want to hang out or talk. “That person probably doesn’t know how to ask for help, or they can’t. [You need to] ask a trusted adult for help on their behalf.”
Lidia Cabrera poured all of herself into returning to a normal life. She’s still surprised when she looks back on the work she’s done over the past three years. “My binges and compensatory behaviors – like working out for four hours and throwing everything up – were unstoppable. It was my daily routine. It got to the point where I couldn’t control anything at all. I didn’t know what was happening to me until – after the second suicide attempt, in the Eating Disorders unit – they explained to me what a ‘binge’ is and what an eating disorder is.”
After that second attempt, the psychologist who had been following up with Lidia was transferred due to staff shortages.
“I didn’t know when my next appointment would be,” she recalls. “Overnight, I was left without a psychologist: the only [person] at that time who made me believe that someone understood and supported me.” She continued taking medication, but no one explained to her what she couldn’t mix it with, or how it worked. “Now I know that an antidepressant can take up to a month-and-a-half to have an effect…”
Lidia continues: “I was still feeling bad despite the medication. Inside, I couldn’t forgive myself for what I was doing to the people I loved… but the other part of me couldn’t find solutions.” In just under three months, her third suicide attempt came, leaving her in a coma for two weeks. “When I realized what I had done, I couldn’t stop crying and apologizing for having screwed up my life,” she confesses. When she was discharged, she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to stand up, walk, or go back to work. She did both: today, she works as a social worker in the field of mental health.
“I still wonder where I got the strength from. I guess [what made me change my mindset was] realizing that, at the age of 22, I was losing the ability to live.” She hasn’t stopped therapy again; she’s learned to manage “the monsters” when they come back into her head. Being in love, she says, has also helped her a lot. And whenever her phone battery is about to run out, the first thing she does is call her family. “They’ve had a hard time; they didn’t choose the suffering that they’ve been through.”
Jordi Batalla recommends that family members and friends of people who have attempted suicide avoid certain phrases, even if the intention is to give their loved ones encouragement. “‘But you have your studies, a job, friends, a place to live! How could you take such a step?’ It’s the worst thing they can say to you, because it crushes and destroys you even more.”
“Even if we know that a person has all of that, let’s not tell them. Because if they’ve reached the point of wanting to kill themselves, it means that they don’t care about what they have.”
Translated by Avik Jain Chatlani.
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