Suicide Survival Memoir How One Person Stayed Alive When Every Cell in Her Body Wanted to Quit – A Raw Account from the Ledge and Back: What Actually Works When Darkness Screams Louder Than Hope
Hollis Parr Enderby
DEPTH TRUST PRESS · AI-narrated by Archie (from Google)
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2 hr 22 min
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About this audiobook
This is not a self-help book. It is not a recovery manual. It does not promise that life gets beautiful or that the darkness goes away. What it offers is something rarer and more honest: a raw, unflinching, darkly humorous account of what it actually feels like to be suicidal and how one ordinary woman stayed alive when every single cell in her body wanted to quit. Hollis Parr Enderby takes you inside the bathroom floor in Manchester where she sat with the mouldy grouting and the clanking radiator and made the quiet decision to die – not with a scream or a dramatic gesture, but with the most ordinary, terrifying relief she had ever felt. Then she tells you what happened next. Not a miracle. Not a heroic rescue. A shoelace. A grey, frayed shoelace on a pair of cheap trainers became the unlikely lifeline that pulled her back from the edge, one loop and pull at a time. This memoir exposes the shocking truth about well-meaning advice that nearly killed her faster – the gratitude lists, the exercise prescriptions, the hotline calls, the friends who said "think of your family," the partner who made a colour-coded spreadsheet for her mental health, the hospital with its beige walls and powdered potatoes that did not fix her but held her long enough for her to learn how to hold herself. Through chapters with titles like "The Body That Betrayed Me," "The Things That Almost Killed Me Faster," "The Shoelace Method," and "The People Who Got It Wrong (And the Two Who Didn't)," Hollis dismantles the myths about suicide that most people get wrong – that the decision is agony (it was peace), that suicidal people want attention (they want the screaming in their head to stop), that you need hope to survive (you do not, you just need to tie one lace and then decide about the rest). She introduces you to Pat, the neighbour who brought soup and asked no questions, and Mr Ahmed, the corner shop owner who gave her a free banana and said "you seem tired, my dear" – two ordinary people whose quiet presence saved her life more effectively than any crisis line ever could. She reveals the eight strange, small, embarrassing things that actually worked when nothing else did: reverse schedules for sleep, noise as company, the ten-minute vandalism rule, postcards written to no one, the five-minute rule for leaving the house, eating one colour of food per day, naming her darkness Derek (because you cannot be afraid of someone named Derek), and the ten-second hug that released more healing than any medication. This book does not romanticise suicide or recovery. It tells you that the darkness still lives in the room, that the author still has bad days, that she still talks to Derek when he gets loud, that she still ties her shoelaces every morning six years after the bathroom floor. But it also tells you that staying is possible. Not because you are brave. Not because you have hope. Because you are tired and stubborn and you can survive one breath, then another, then another. Written with dark wit, radical honesty, and not a single empty platitude, Suicide Survival Memoir is for the person on the ledge who cannot hear one more gratitude list or one more "it gets better." It is for the person whose every cell wants to quit. It is for the flatmates, friends, and family members who want to understand what it actually feels like and what actually helps. And it is for anyone who has ever sat on a bathroom floor with a decision to make and somehow, impossibly, chose to stay. If you are in crisis right now, put the book down and call for help – but if you cannot, if you are too tired to make a phone call, just read the next paragraph. And the next. That is all staying is. One breath. One page. One absurd, ordinary, miraculous moment of not dying. That is the whole assignment. And you are still here. Reading. That is not nothing. That is everything.
This is not a self-help book. It is not a recovery manual. It does not promise that life gets beautiful or that the darkness goes away. What it offers is something rarer and more honest: a raw, unflinching, darkly humorous account of what it actually feels like to be suicidal and how one ordinary...
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About the author
Hollis Parr Enderby lives in a small flat in Manchester with too many books and a plant that refuses to die. She works part time in an office where no one minds if she takes a quiet day. She drinks too much tea, burns most of her toast, and has a complicated relationship with her own brain. This is her first book. She hopes it is her last book about suicide. She is not sure it will be.
Hollis spends her free time watching old television shows, walking to the corner shop for milk, and occasionally remembering to water her plant. She still has bad days. She still ties her shoelaces every morning. She still talks to Derek when he gets loud. She does not have all the answers. She does not have most of the answers. But she has one answer that matters. Staying is possible. Even when it does not feel possible. She knows because she did it. And she is not special. If she can do it, anyone can. That is not a motivational line. That is just a fact.
She does not have any professional qualifications in mental health. She is not a therapist or a counsellor or a doctor. She is just a person who survived something and wrote it down. Take what helps. Leave the rest. And if nothing helps, just stay anyway. One breath. Then another. That is the only assignment.
Hollis Parr Enderby lives in a small flat in Manchester with too many books and a plant that refuses to die. She works part time in an office where no one minds if she takes a quiet day. She drinks too much tea, burns most of her toast, and has a complicated relationship with her own brain. This ...
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