At
around 7am on a foggy October morning in 2010, former data management
specialist Christen McGinnes, then 41, set about cleaning the two-bedroom
apartment she shared with her roommate. She tidied up the living room and
kitchen, trying to make it look nice for the people she knew would be seeing it
later. But this wasn’t because she’d
invited friends or family round for a happy social gathering. Instead, it was
because later that morning she planned to end her own life by shooting herself
in the head, and knew that in a few hours, after her roommate came back from
work and found her body, her home would be swarming with police and the
emergency services. What she could never have predicted, however, is that when
she pulled the trigger, she would survive to tell the tale. "I used to
love life," says Christen.
"Up until 2009, I would even say I had a
charmed life; I had great friends, I loved my job and I was dating a really
nice guy. I was a happy, normal person. But then everything started to go
wrong." First, Christen lost her job, which she’d had for 18 years, after
staff cutbacks. Then her beloved grandmother died, followed soon after by her
pet dog. Christen’s relationship also ended, and she started having money
problems as, with no income, she was relying on her savings. "I hadn’t
been sleeping well, and I started having panic attacks," she recounts. She
tried to soldier on, but she was becoming more and more depressed. "I had
asked a few people for help," she admits, "but I felt like a burden,
going on about my problems, so I isolated myself." Month followed
miserable month, and eventually, on that fateful morning in October, Christen
got out of bed after yet another sleepless night and thought about killing
herself. "I just didn’t see a way out. It took me about an hour to decide
to do it, and once I did, I felt at peace. It was a conscious, deliberate
decision. I didn’t want to phone anyone to discuss what I was planning to do,
as I’d got to the point where I couldn’t bear to be a burden any more." Selfless
up until the end, her main concerns were how to minimise the mess the shooting
would leave, and be as considerate as possible towards others. She realised
that tidying the apartment wouldn’t do much good if the place ended up covered
in blood, so she decided she would pull the trigger out on the balcony.
Christen chose her method of suicide, in part, so she could still help others. "I wanted to shoot myself in the head
because I’m an organ donor, so I wanted to preserve as much of myself as
possible," she explains.
The blast shattered her jawbone
With everything prepped to her satisfaction, and just one hour after making her decision, Christen decided it was time to act. "I remember everything about those last moments," she says. "I picked up a little Christmas ornament in the shape of an angel to put in my hand. Then I went out onto the balcony and sat down with my gun, a .357 revolver I kept for protection, then said a quick prayer. And then I pulled the trigger…" To her surprise, the gun just clicked. There were five chambers, but she’d only loaded four bullets. "I basically won at Russian Roulette," she jokes. "I laughed. I thought, 'I can’t believe that after everything I’ve failed at, I failed at this too.'" Christen wondered if it was a sign that she shouldn’t go through with it, but
she stiffened her resolve and put the gun back up to her chin. This time when she pulled the trigger, it didn’t click. "The noise was so loud," she says, "and almost immediately I couldn’t see." However, unbeknownst to Christen, her roommate was asleep in the next room.
"The
next thing I knew was hearing him scream, 'What’s that? What’s happening?', and
I thought, 'Oh my God, he wasn’t supposed to be home.' He came running out to
the balcony and the noise that came out of his mouth was the shrillest, most
panicked shriek I’ve ever heard." The
bullet had blown off Christen’s right jawbone, shattered a third of her teeth
and her tongue, destroyed her right sinus, bounced off the bone of her nose and
exploded, destroying her right eye, although it didn’t pierce her skull.
Christen was still holding the angel when she passed out, and the last thing
she heard was ambulance sirens in the distance.
After spending three weeks in
the Fairfax Inova Hospital in Virginia in a coma, she finally woke up to find
her father holding her hand. The very
first thing I remember is seeing him, and him saying, 'The only thing you have
to do is heal; everything else is being taken care of. Everything will be OK –
you just have to get better.' He told me I’d been saved for a reason, and we
were going to find out what that reason was." Christen had beaten some very slim odds to be
alive – only 3% of people who try to commit suicide by gunshot survive. She
found out that while she’d been in the coma, so many of her friends and family
came to see her that the hospital lifted the restriction of only two visitors
at a time, and her bed was surrounded by flowers, cards and gifts. Lying there,
Christen experienced an emotion she’d never expected to feel: she was happy to
be alive.
SOURCE: MIRROR
1 comment:
thank you
Post a Comment