by admin | Apr 10, 2016 | Book Shop, Dead People, Depressed, Heterochromia, Hope, Life, Love, Poison, Talk To Someone, Uncategorized, University
CHAPTER 6 Conference Room, Large Book Shop in Oxford Street, London After an hour and a half of talking to her audience, Anna had opened the floor up to a question and answer session. The questions were coming fast and furiously. “Is it true that people who talk about wanting to die by suicide are only seeking attention and don’t try to kill themselves?” Anna shook her head, “No, people who talk about wanting to die by suicide often do go on to kill themselves. Psychiatrists say that when people talk about it, it is often a cry for help and people shouldn’t ignore this cry because some people are actually looking for a way forward, a way through their pain without dying.” “Does suicide always occur without any warning signs?” “There are almost always warning signs, we just need to know what to look out for in people,” Anna replied. “You’ll be surprised at the number of parents I’ve spoken to who’ve said that they were completely blindsided, they didn’t see it coming. Parents who’ve said they were completely shocked and distraught at their child’s unprecedented action of suicide. Then you ask them a few pertinent questions and you find out that their son or daughter had started locking themselves in their bedroom and not been communicative for weeks prior to their death. Or the child had been depressed for weeks then suddenly became happy, which is usually when they’ve devised a plan to kill themselves, or a child suddenly starts to give away his or her most prized and treasured possessions. A mother would...
by admin | Apr 2, 2016 | blog, Book Shop, Bullying, Dead People, Heterochromia, Hope, Life, Love, Talk To Someone, Uncategorized, University
The next instalment of U Murder U (Suicide) below – Chapter 5 CHAPTER 5 Conference Room, Large Book Shop in Oxford Street, London “Mrs Lewis, there are nearly two hundred people in the conference room waiting for you, are you ready?” The book shop’s posh divisional manager asked, interrupting Anna’s soliloquy. He studied the attractive woman, whose head was bent; dark, luxurious curls framed her tanned, pretty face. She opened her eyes and looked at him and he felt his breath catch at the back of his throat as he stared at her un-matching eyes. One eye was greenish brown and the other a bright greenish blue, he was unsure if they were real or lensed and even though he had read that she had heterochromia iridum (mis-matched eyes), seeing them in the flesh took his breath away. Anna Lee Lewis nodded then opened the gold locket which hung from a chain around her neck. She looked at the picture of her late mother enclosed and smiled. “I’m ready,” she said, pushed her curly hair to one side and walked to the conference room with firm, confident steps. “First of all, I want to thank you all for coming today and I also want to say, no matter what you’ve read or heard about me, unlike the little boy in that movie – I don’t see dead people,” Anna told her audience. Some people in the room laughed, others stared openly at her, not sure what to expect. “My name is Anna Lee Lewis, I was born and raised in Chicago, I co-founded the charity Talk To...
by admin | Mar 1, 2015 | blog, Hope, Life, Love, Suicide
Sometimes I wonder why he didn’t Talk To Someone. They say it’s the people left behind who suffer when you go. They do you know, they really suffer when you go, they constantly ask themselves what they could have done to stop you, what they could have done to change your mind and help you see that everything looks different under different shades of light. A Proverb says – Weeping may endure for the night but Joy comes in the morning. You may think that you have no one to talk to, you are so wrong. Your mother or father, a relative or a friend will ask themselves a number of questions when you die, one of which will be, why didn’t you Talk To Someone? Some faiths believe that when you kill yourself you go to hell, where you remain for eternity. I believe that there is nothing so bad that you cannot get help to deal with it. To get through the weeping you have to believe that there can be joy, take fifteen minutes and make a list of some of the good things in your life, the people who love you and who you will be leaving behind, heartbroken and shattered. Recently, there seems to be one story or another in the newspapers about someone killing themselves every week. As a daughter, a mother, a sister, an aunt, a niece and a friend, if there is one thing I can say to make you change your mind about killing yourself it is this – Talk To Someone, don’t suffer alone – I say this in...
by admin | Feb 15, 2015 | blog, Hope, Life, Love, Suicide
Most people will know someone who committed suicide or know someone who knows someone. I do. When I finished my MSc in Medical Microbiology at university I got a job in a renowned London hospital’s microbiology laboratory and it was there that I met him. He wasn’t that tall and was balding, slightly built and told me once that he bought some of his trousers in the children’s section of clothing shops. He took me under his wing and taught me the difference between studying Medical Microbiology and working in a laboratory where I could put my theory into practice. He used to wind me up by calling me ‘Gladiola’ instead of Gladys – he told me it was the name of a beautiful flower and I believed him (we didn’t have Google back then for me to check if it was true or not). I worked with him for nearly seven years; two of those years were spent on maternity leave having my children. When I went back to work each time he brought me up to speed and made sure that I was okay with all the new methods. The things I remember most are his willingness to always help me when I needed help at work, how when we had a misunderstanding I would frown at him, and he would frown in return then things would somehow go back to normal. Once, I identified something in a patient’s sample; something that was quite rare and he confirmed what it was then got everyone’s attention and made everyone aware that I had found it and he heaped...
