My dear friend @Shaz51
I can fully feel for your husband. My thoughts somehow go like this: What if I don't like the world anymore when I look at it without all my coping strategies? I don't want to be here anymore. And I can very much relate to the fact that he doesn't want to play "the game" anymore.
I don't know your husbands background, but for me I want to stop playing "the game" when I feel like a child, because I lose control and "the adults" take over, let that be work politics, or doctors that are not sensitive to my trauma background... Then I just want to hide or stop playing the game.
The other "game" I hate playing is when I have to do something that I don't see sense in.
And then there is "the game" called looking at the world and being overwhelmed by the suffering and war and how everything has changed (even more for your husband than me, I am slightly younger) and I don't want to continue playing "that game".
I stopped watching the daily news 22 years ago this July. For a while I kept up to date with current affairs by reading weekly news magazines like the "Economist" - I don't know what the equivalent is in Australia. I don't mind not being able to have current affairs discussions in small talk environments. I cannot change the world by talking and knowing what is out of my hands to change. I prefer to be active in local settings, sort out my closet and take what I don't need to Vinnies, donate to Wires, fundraise for an organisation like SANE, things that are within my reach. Now that I am unemployed (a word that still does not come easily to my mind), I am thinking of volunteering.
I stopped playing "the game" at work, with the result that I am now unemployed, but somehow I am happy (and sad) with my decision and I hope with time I will find a better solution for myself. I think it was time to move on. Perhaps your husband can have a look around the job market?
My Dad didn't want to play "the game" anymore at the age of 50, sold their belongings, got their super, took my mum and travelled the world. When they returned he even found a new job. I am glad he left "the game", as he died only a couple of years after they returned. My Dad's other game plan was to move to the country side and become a farmer. He was a mechanical engineer.
I don't know where you live or what your circumstances are, but my husband and I have played around with many different game plan options, selling up, travelling, moving elsewhere to start fresh, we have cleaned out our "closet of friends and family" - but not donated them to Vinnies! We have tried to make life a little more simple. A little less playing "the game" the conventional way. There is a book called SLOW from Carl Honore (thanks @Former-Member) and I recently read Victor E. Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning, a very powerful book about surviving the holocaust.
If your husband is suicidal, apart from all the normal plans (and make sure they are current and in place), there is one webpage that has always helped me - especially when I lost "the final string", i.e. "not traumatising the people I love and leave behind"... is areason.org. I have written down (for my coping box) the passages that resonated most with me, like the following:
"Remember, suicide is a temporary feeling and reaction to overwhelming pain. Suicide is a very permanent solution to this temporary question. Imagine destroying an entire city to rid it of a single cockroach. When we decide to actually take our own life, that is the equivalent of what we're doing. We are taking all the potential, the hope, the possible future achievements (both great and small), the creativity, the history and the life, and destroying it to rid ourselves of one feeling, pain. Talk about overkill."
"You can do something that is so totally out of character for you, others will wonder what has gotten into you. Guess what? If you're going to die anyway, who cares? You can choose to die anytime, so why not have some fun before you go?? Live life one more time, one last chance. And maybe in that living, some small part of you will recognize that there is more to life than pain. There is more to life than what you're feeling right now.
"So the real choice is whether to end it now, immediately, and never feel anything ever again. No relief from the pain. No possible joy in the future. No happiness. No additional pain. No love. No friendship. Nothing. Or to find a way, any way, to deal and cope with the pain for one more day. And then another. And then another. Until it starts, slowly, to subside."
I am still here and I can tell the story. When my mind gets "stuck", I know to sit down, take out my coping box (a little plastic tin) and go through my strategies. And when I finish and try and try and still don't feel like playing "the game" anymore and feel like hurting myself, I go to hospital, until my mind gets "unstuck".
I really hope you and your husband will find new "games" to play. Just try it.
I'm glad to hear that you have the day off today. Are you able to get some rest or are there other things that need to get done today?
