On Suicide Road
In 2016, we bought our first home, a beautiful place with a flowing creek and towering willows. I loved it so much at first.
It also happened to be right on a 50MPH road and had once been a heroin house that had undergone a complete remodel. The nearby town was so depressing I could hardly stand to be in it. Together, these paint a picture of an area under some kind of influence.
Shortly after moving in, a neighbor began terrorizing us. My then mid single digits daughter had nightmares for over a year about him coming in the house to attack her.
And I lay awake at night contemplating what I would do to protect her. Jung wrote about facing the shadow, and that house introduced me to mine. I learned exactly what I was capable of.
Around the same time, so intertwined I didn’t realize for a long time that they were separate things, I began having visions that would interrupt throughout the day.
These visions were extremely graphic and showed in great detail me committing suicide in a particular way. Over and over and over again, each and every day.
But I wasn’t suicidal.
I was raising my babies and building my business and leading in my community.
This went on for two exhausting years, the vision always just right there like a thought bubble on a tether. Hands in the sink washing dishes, BAM! Tossing hay into a feeder, BAM! I never knew when it would appear.
Every day, I’d make it to the end and be grateful that today, at least, I won against the visions.
One day, I heard a song from a Christian metal band, one I knew of but didn’t really listen to, and it was as if…looking back now, I’d say it was as if a curse was lifted somehow.
The song talked about suicide, and maybe hearing it so candidly helped me to turn and face the demon at last, but whatever the mechanism, it completely and permanently removed those visions.
I became a super fan, and have remained so for nearly a decade. The band is touring now to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the album that song lives on and as I anticipate seeing it live, I keep thinking back to that time and that house.
Around the same time the visions left, I had a conversation with a pastor and his wife. I hadn’t shared my own story with them, but they told me about how on the road I lived on, there were so many suicides a local church was formed to try to combat it.
Not long after that, another neighbor committed suicide.
Suicide road, indeed.
I write this today, filled with reflection on how hard that time was. And I wonder how it might have gone if I could’ve known the possibility that thoughts and visions like that could be externally influenced.
I don’t have an answer and I don’t have wisdom to share here. I just feel like perhaps there is someone for whom this story needs to be told.
What would it mean to consider the thoughts that haunt us might not be ours?
When the antagonist turns out to not be us at all, it can be easier to stand up and fight.
This is a tough topic. My inbox is open if you need an ear. hello@thewitchwanders.com.
