This is How it Feels: A Memoir of Attempting Suicide and

This is How it Feels: A Memoir of Attempting Suicide and Finding Life

At twenty-years-old, Craig Miller attempted to end his own life. He sat on the edge of a rented bed and swallowed two hundred and fifty pills. He lay back and closed his eyes, never imagining that a note he wrote to himself fourteen years earlier would be what would save his life. That note, written across the creases of a tear stained paper, read, â€œDonâ€™t ever forget how this feels.â€

From the time he was six-years-old, Craig lived his life by those words. He believed that if he needed to remember the feelings behind his lifeâ€™s most significant events, then there must be a reason why they happened. And for three extraordinary days following his suicide attempt, as he lay in the Intensive Care Unit floating in and out of consciousness, he found those reasons.

He relived days from his childhood when his only friend became his assailant. He relived years of building a troubled and misguided relationship with God when he prayed to be saved from a violent and broken home. He remembered when the pain of his lifeâ€™s tragedies finally caught up to him. He lost the only person he had ever loved and became the victim of severe obsessive compulsive disorder, relentless anxiety, and devastating irrational fear.

After each memory, he awoke to the blurred reality of his suicide attempt. The struggle to fight his childhood assailant became a battle with nurses and doctors who worked to restrain him to a hospital bed. The pain from a fist to his nose became the sting of a tube as it was pushed down his throat by the medical staff. And the memory of freezing alone on a cold winter night became the reality of a dark, lonely hospital room. But more importantly, after each memory ended, Craig was left with the feeling that remained from reliving it. He felt the imprint it left within him- the deep desire to love, the desperate need to change, and the fiery will to fight.

Craig Miller lay in a hospital bed for three days while his body fought for life, but his soul stood undecided on the threshold of existence. He relived the most pivotal moments of his life and saw himself from an entirely new perspective. He learned that God does not punish, and that love, no matter how bad it hurts, is worth it. He learned that compassion is to see the hurt in the eyes of another, no matter how bad we hurt ourselves. He learned that living in the darkness of mental illness can be one of the most powerful paths to self-discovery. And he learned that there are, in fact, reasons for everything. But above all, Craig learned that life, no matter how hard it gets, is worth living.
Country USA
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2012-07-22
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2012-07-22
Format	Kindle eBook

This is How it Feels: A Memoir of Attempting Suicide and Finding Life

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