For the last 6 years I have been plagued by suicidal thoughts,
and for about 3 years prior to that it was an array of other self-destructive
thoughts. I dislike the term ‘suicidal thoughts’, because they have never just
been thoughts. They are an overwhelming feeling, a sense of power, control and
belonging, and feel like a look at the future rather than just an idea. When I
think of suicide, it is not me considering it. The time for considering suicide
was 6 years ago, and now it is a constant battle between the part of me which
strongly knows that it wants to kill me, has to kill me, and the part of me
which wants to beat this and live a full life.
I have good days and bad days. On a bad day, 90% of me is suicidal and 10% of me doesn’t know how to fight it, on very good days it’s the other way around, but those are rare. Very occasionally I get to come up for air and feel 100% able to survive, but this only tends to last for about 5 minutes and happens once every month or so. When that happens it feels like after years of being suffocated, the hands have been lifted from my throat. Yet I know that the hands will return, I know that I haven’t yet beaten this.
Suicide is a fear, an incredibly deep seated and slow yet terrifying fear. Some people describe their mental illness as an animal, holding onto them, walking near them. Suicide feels like an ink which has been injected into my bloodstream. People talk about recovery yet I have no idea how to remove this ink without bleeding out. People often tell me that I can’t commit suicide because it will hurt the people left behind. I’ve been told it will leave them angry, heartbroken, and an array of other negative emotions. Yet I struggle to make this a reason to not kill myself, because for me it is not as simple as ‘kill yourself or don’t kill yourself’, it is purely a question of how long I can hold on before I do inevitably die by suicide. That pain, anger and heartbreak will always happen; to me that part is not up for question. The only question is whether by the time I die, I can get the people I love to understand that when someone is killed whose heart is already black with ink; it isn’t actually a loss at all.
The fear comes from the knowledge that I don’t want to die. I don’t want to hurt the people I love, and I don’t want to be dead. I don’t want my life to end in my early 20s, and I don’t want a funeral before I get that chance to have a wedding. I want to go abroad on my own, I want to love someone and be loved back, I want to see which of my friends goes wrinkly first, and who is the one to try Botox? I want a life where I can gather more memories, not a life where all I leave is painful memories.
The control over whether I get to do these things doesn’t lie with me. It would be my hand taking my life, but honestly, its not within my power. I can try, and I can fight, but there is a mood which takes over where all I can do is watch from the side-lines as I hurt myself, swallow pills, prepare to hang myself and try to throw myself off a cliff. I get my own special seat ready for the viewing of me ruining my own life, and all I can do is watch.
So if I die by suicide: be angry, be upset, be whatever you want to be, but remember that the biggest loss alongside that you won’t see me again, is also that I won’t see the life I desperately wanted to live. So you might have to live it for me, and feel lucky for every day you go through where you don’t have to watch your own hands take something as important as your life away from you.
I have good days and bad days. On a bad day, 90% of me is suicidal and 10% of me doesn’t know how to fight it, on very good days it’s the other way around, but those are rare. Very occasionally I get to come up for air and feel 100% able to survive, but this only tends to last for about 5 minutes and happens once every month or so. When that happens it feels like after years of being suffocated, the hands have been lifted from my throat. Yet I know that the hands will return, I know that I haven’t yet beaten this.
Suicide is a fear, an incredibly deep seated and slow yet terrifying fear. Some people describe their mental illness as an animal, holding onto them, walking near them. Suicide feels like an ink which has been injected into my bloodstream. People talk about recovery yet I have no idea how to remove this ink without bleeding out. People often tell me that I can’t commit suicide because it will hurt the people left behind. I’ve been told it will leave them angry, heartbroken, and an array of other negative emotions. Yet I struggle to make this a reason to not kill myself, because for me it is not as simple as ‘kill yourself or don’t kill yourself’, it is purely a question of how long I can hold on before I do inevitably die by suicide. That pain, anger and heartbreak will always happen; to me that part is not up for question. The only question is whether by the time I die, I can get the people I love to understand that when someone is killed whose heart is already black with ink; it isn’t actually a loss at all.
The fear comes from the knowledge that I don’t want to die. I don’t want to hurt the people I love, and I don’t want to be dead. I don’t want my life to end in my early 20s, and I don’t want a funeral before I get that chance to have a wedding. I want to go abroad on my own, I want to love someone and be loved back, I want to see which of my friends goes wrinkly first, and who is the one to try Botox? I want a life where I can gather more memories, not a life where all I leave is painful memories.
The control over whether I get to do these things doesn’t lie with me. It would be my hand taking my life, but honestly, its not within my power. I can try, and I can fight, but there is a mood which takes over where all I can do is watch from the side-lines as I hurt myself, swallow pills, prepare to hang myself and try to throw myself off a cliff. I get my own special seat ready for the viewing of me ruining my own life, and all I can do is watch.
So if I die by suicide: be angry, be upset, be whatever you want to be, but remember that the biggest loss alongside that you won’t see me again, is also that I won’t see the life I desperately wanted to live. So you might have to live it for me, and feel lucky for every day you go through where you don’t have to watch your own hands take something as important as your life away from you.
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