If you haven’t already, please read the introduction post. That will give you context for this page.
(Trigger warning: suicide, depression)
This one…I’m going to keep it short.
I can’t see any good that would come of me describing in great detail what I felt like when I was suicidal. I will just say that it’s not the same as feeling self-harm urges. For me, it was always an emotional and mental state that was despairing beyond anything I could believe existed when I wasn’t in the middle of feeling them. And it wasn’t just a brief moment. It would settle in…last long enough for me to decide that literally nothing could compensate for continuing to feel that way…and then long enough for me to purposefully consider and plan how I would do it.
This was not the same as the moments I was emotionally overwhelmed and sobbingly asserted that I could not go on.
And it could happen during times you might think I had everything to live for and no reason to want to die. The motivating emotion is not, at least for me, rational.
I also can’t see what good would come of describing the ways I planned to do it. I don’t want to put ideas in anyone’s heads. But the uniting theme between them all was that I wanted to spare anyone having to clean up much mess.
I did want to give my opinion about the assertion that suicide is selfish. I wish I could find the rather eloquent essay someone else wrote on the topic, because I’ve struggled with getting this bit just right. So, I’m settling for this: When someone you love is in the level of exquisite pain that would cause them to consider suicide, you’re the one who looks a right selfish twat when you self-righteously preach to them the idea that suicide is selfish. Try a little compassion instead.
Now, I’m not suggesting anyone commit suicide. And I’m pretty sure my days plotting my own are over. So, don’t fret.
But I remember the feeling. And I remember the sense of empowerment and relief when I made my plans and saw a way out. And my disappointment with myself every time I failed to make it happen.
I’d love to go back in time and reassure younger-me that it was truly going to be okay with her to be alive someday…and I’m glad those days are over, but I am not ashamed to have felt what I felt.
I’m proud of myself for the person I managed to be and the commitments and achievements I realised during that time, in spite of the things with which I was struggling.
If you’re struggling with or plagued by suicidal thoughts, please get help. At least talk to a compassionate friend and try to believe them when they give you reasons to live.
xxx
Cross-posted to the Not Ashamed section of my site (so that it’s all tidy).
Not sure about that “eloquent article” but this is what DFW had to say on the topic in Infinite Jest:
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flame yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don‘t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
Holy fuck, that book…. <3
I’d say that’s part of it. I mean, for me, there was…sometimes it was the hopelessness/assets and debits thing (because I fully admit that I wasn’t always seeing clearly). But the thing you quoted also definitely applied at least as option. I guess I’d say that the invisible agony it mentions made things feel hopeless and/or like the assets could never catch up with the agony. Yay for broken brains! 😛