i possibly had the most difficult conversation with my kids just now. i wasn't ready for it but that's the nature of these chats, right? you are never ready. i just retweeted a tweet that introduced me as a panelist for a suicide prevention chat. +

The tweet was open on my phone and 10 happened to peep into my screen and said, hey you are doing something again? And proceeded to read the whole thing. Including the thing I had missed -- next time my name it said suicide survivor. +

"Suicide survivor!" Pause. Everyone is around me -- dad, mum, 12. "Why are they saying that about you?" He's a bit slow. 12 catches on, "You tried to kill yourself?"
My parents have gone temporarily deaf. And I am not prepared for this. +

I have planned this conversation in my head many times. And none of them involved the kids initiating it by discovering it by chance.
Anywhere, here we are. It was close to lunch time and I said, let's eat, then we can sit down and I can tell you all about it properly. +

We go through lunch. 10 chimed in now and then asking, so did you really try to kill yourself? I avoided the question the first couple of times (I WAS NOT READY GUYS) by saying, "after lunch". The fourth time, because my parents were getting increasingly uneasy, I said, "yes+

"but more details after lunch ok?"
Post lunch, I rounded both of them up, sat them across and asked them what they wanted to know.

"Have you tried to kill yourself?"
Yes.
"Can you tell us how you did it and why?"
I explained to them my two attempts.

Why I did it and when it was. ("Did you do it before or after we were born?")

I watched their faces and they watched mine. 12 reached out at one point and held my hand through the whole narration.

I then asked them if they had questions.
10 had dumbass questions about why +

I didn't pick a more interesting method that overdosing on my medication.

Then they asked me how I felt when I did it, and do I feel like that now.

Then they talked to me about they felt on hearing this.

It was nothing like I imagined, this conversation.

But it's one more chat that is out of the way before someone else tells them. Or they get their information and ideas from half-baked ideas.

I hope they'll never be in a place where they will have to resort to this. And if they do I hope I can help them cope.

Sorry I keep calling him 10. He's 11. Been 11 for a month.