Two of the poems on this site deal with the subject of suicide. In the case of Kurt Cobain, the message is not so much his tragic death but the effect it had on one of his young fans. With "Two Autumn Deaths", the message is much more obvious and overt. These are youngsters who have been committed to a psychiatric facility and, steeped in despair and wanting to be together for eternity, engage in a suicide pact. The girl takes an overdose of an antipsychotic drug, enough to be fatal several times over, then shoots her beloved boyfriend. It is sad and senseless, but, like it or not, suicide has skyrocketed over the past ten or fifteen years or so and shows no signs of abating.

So why do so many people, particularly the young, want out of this life of pain so desperately that they are willing to take that "final plunge from the cliff?" And are patients diagnosed with BPD more likely than the so-called "normal" (there's that nagging word again..) of the population? Well, certainly those with emotional problems are at a much higher risk, but what makes borderlines so suseptible is that we are more-or-less confined in these invisible boxes, surrounded by those "delicacies" as depression, self-abuse and anorexia, not to mention possible psychotic breaks where the patient can hear voices or experience delusions.

When I am psychotic I hear voices coming from people on the television and they usually come from the Devil. In lucid times, i realize that David Letterman isn't sending me demonic messages (although some may wonder;) but when the psychosis is in "full flight", I am sure everything that happens is real.

Many BPDs suffer from MPD, or, Multiple Personality Disorder, and one of their "alters", as these personalities are called, can become suicidal unbeknownst to the patient. I personally know of an MPD who killed himself when he was this twelve-year-old boy named Jason. It was frightening and sad.

My suicide attempts have been numerous, but only three really meant business, so to speak. I once tore my throat open with a torn pop can and on another occasion, took over three hundred pills and was in a critical care unit for quite awhile. Needless to say, these actions were extremely upsetting for my family and friends, for suicide is the ultimate act of selfishness. But we don't think that way when we are suicidal. We just want relief and want it NOW. We don't think about the consequences or what would happen to our parents; just "get me the hell out of this crummy world fast!"

When you are borderline you can be "triggered" to suicidal actions, either by listening to someone else talking about it or after hearing of anothers' death by his or her own hand. That is one of the major features of BPDs: We are very, very suggestive and almost "catch" suicidal thinking and actions as if we were getting a cold from someone with whom we were recently in contact.

I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about this morbid topic, but it is a significant one and HAS to be addressed or it will not simply disappear. What can we, as sufferers of BPD and other emotional illnesses, and our families do to reduce the risk of losing a loved one?

The bottom line is this: Keep the lines of communication open. If you are living at home with one or both of your parents, for God's sake TALK to them. Talk even if it upsets them. Tell them what hurts and that you just cannot stand the pain for one more minute. I wish I had been open with my family when I was younger. I still have problems letting my mother, with whom I now live, know that I am feeling suicidal. On two different occasions I cried out for help on the Internet, and then several hours later, the police were practically hammering the door down. The potential of the Internet for suicide intervention, but we must not simply rely on a computer to keep us from downing those pills, just as televisions shouldn't be used exclusively as babysitters.

Suicide is something whispered in dark hallways and swept hastily under the carpet of denial. But if we are ever going to save ourselves and those about whom we care deeply, we have to talk and get closer. The nuclear family has faded into the sunset----there never WAS a Ward Cleaver. He was simply the creation of an imaginitive screenwriter.

Today the world is far more complicated, particularly for this generation, the one some of mine "Xed" out of existence and dismissed as "slackers" and "whiners". I don't subscribe to that theory. These young people are in crisis by the droves, clinically depressed and taking medication like Prozac to take the edge off of the pain. I personally find this drug to work wonders.

So with a combination of talking and revealing your pain, engaging in some kind of therapy or organization, (not a hospital unless absolutely necessary) and use prescribed antidepressants to regulate your Seratonin levels. But above all, please remember what a kind nun told me years ago, and I have heard it said by others since: It's not yourself you want to kill; it's the moment".

The moment will pass. Hang on. Listen to R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts"----it helped me a great deal. Do whatever you can to avoid that last leap into oblivion. We don't know where we will end up, after all.