One of the many things I've written over the past few months
Jan 6, 2017 1:59:47 GMT -5
Post by Dream on Jan 6, 2017 1:59:47 GMT -5
A little insight into where my head has been. Not looking for feedback or anything, just wanted to share. And in spite of how this sounds, I'm currently doing just fine. I just wrote it out to clear my head of the thoughts on that particular day (October 9th according to the 'last modified' thingy ).
I have struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts for most of my life. The earliest instances of self-harm I can recall happened when I was around 5 years old. My introduction to the idea of suicide was trying to talk my mother out of leaving the house and following through with her threats of driving herself off of a cliff, I was around 6 years old. I never quite fit in anywhere or with anyone so there was always this huge disconnect between me and other people. I don’t even know if my closest friends knew about my thoughts and tendencies. If my family knew they never let on and I’m not about to tell them. It wasn’t a passing thought after a bad day or thinking my world was over because of some minor embarrassment. It was constantly in the back of my mind. I couldn’t always pinpoint why I felt the way I did, I just knew that it was there and it lingered at the edges of every thought, trying to worm its way to the foreground. I tried to ignore it but it persisted and never really let up, there was no coming and going, no ebb and flow to the depression. Some days were worse than others, but no day was completely without the thought of wanting to end my life.
I took up writing as a way to curb those thoughts. It was an outlet for frustration, fear, and the desire to end my own life. For the most part, it worked to keep that urge at bay. I could kill myself in a myriad of ways and bring justice to the people who pushed me closer and closer to it. It worked on paper, but it didn’t take the thoughts away. Actually, in some cases, it brought the thoughts to the foreground and amplified the urge to take my life. Then there were times that writing exactly what I was thinking calmed the urge and allowed me to continue on with the day to day of life. There are times when I avoid calling friends or family, specifically because the urge is strong and I’m feeling so emotionally and physically drained trying to keep myself alive that I just cannot deal with the sadness or thoughts of others.
I feel like there’s no one in my family that I can turn to that can offer support to me. I don’t think any of them really know just how much I struggle with staying alive. They treat depression like a fashion accessory, to be worn and displayed, yet not one of them is willing to seek help for what they term depression. For them, it comes and goes as their particular circumstances change. It is a mood and not a disorder; it is a mindset rather than a dysfunction. I treat it with shame, to be hidden and pushed deep down within you so no one else can see how deep the pain goes. I shouldn’t feel that way, but I do. I have gone to therapy, I have sought treatment, I take medication, but the thoughts are still there, they still linger and I have accepted that they are always going to be there for me. My family doesn’t know about my past suicide attempts and I don’t intend to let them know.
There are times I want to tell my family that I’m suffering, but I can’t. I wear this mask of normalcy for their benefit. I’m okay. I’m always okay. I question what they will think if one day I’m not okay. Some will be sad, I have no doubt of that. We are a very close family and we grew up in constant companionship with aunts, uncles, and cousins. But even with that closeness, I was on the outside, just to the side of everyone else, not quite accepted, but tolerated, and loved because I was family. I don’t think a single one of them knows who I truly am. Not who I present myself as, but who I am when I can take off the mask and cry in the safety of my own home, away from anyone who will ask me why I’m crying, because chances are, I don’t know why I’m crying, I just need to cry.
I don’t really care what others think of my situation as it isn’t theirs to live with. Depression isn’t contagious, it won’t hurt you by being near someone who’s suffering from it. In fact, sometimes, someone who is suffering from depression can genuinely be helped by listening to another person vent about all the ills that have happened to that person on a particularly bad day. I know that sounds kind of sadistic, but it’s not, I assure you. It’s not about someone having a bad day, therefore making yours seem not so bad. It’s about realizing you can still empathize with someone. You can potentially make their day better by allowing them a safe space to be vulnerable and show their hurt, something you feel you can’t be afforded or don’t deserve. Being useful to someone has often kept me from following through on my suicidal thoughts. Being needed by someone can be life-saving to many people who suffer from true depression. But that can be a double-edged sword, as you can assist others out of their depression, but yours is still there, making you feel more worthless, more broken. You can help them, why not yourself?
The few times I have reached out to family to simply hint at the idea that I wasn’t okay, I was met with: “Well, whatever made you feel this way is in the past, so just don’t think about it and get over it.” But it’s not in the past. It’s an every day thing, it’s not a moment that was bad and stuck with me, it is every fucking day of my life that is a struggle to get through. Telling a person suffering from depression to “get over it” is quite possibly one of the most damaging things you can do to them. They would love to be done with it, to have it in their past, to solve the issue causing their depression and move on from it. But in most cases, there really isn’t a specific reason for their depression. There isn’t an event that triggered it. It’s just there. Sometimes lingering around the edges of your mind, and sometimes screaming directly in your face to make sure you understand that everything you believe and stand for is worthless and hopeless and ridiculous.
Many people equate depression with sadness. It isn’t sadness for me. I don’t feel sad when I let those thoughts of killing myself linger just a little too long in my conscious mind. I feel relieved. I feel like a burden has been lifted from me. Just by allowing my thoughts to focus on the negative for a little while, and acknowledging that I am aware of this desire to end my own life, allows me to have a moment of peace. Thinking of my own death is my reprieve from depression, not the cause of it. I am still alive, obviously. I have no current conscious intent to act upon the desire to end my life, but the thoughts still linger just around the edges of my mind and I can feel the tension in my body when they begin to push their way through to the front of my thoughts.
I am not always strong enough to withstand those thoughts. I have tried, half a dozen, maybe a dozen, times to end my life with no success thus far, largely because I haven’t allowed myself access to a gun. A gun is quick, a gun is easy, though likely still painful it doesn’t require much thought, it only takes half a second to pull the trigger. A gun makes it harder for me to fail, and I do want to fail at it most of the time. There have been times in my life where I’ve watched someone go through the pain of losing someone they love and I can’t help but feel guilty over still being alive. There are times when I actively want to die and say a quiet prayer that I would very happily go in someone else’s place, let someone more deserving continue in the life that they actually want and just let me be done with it.
But I’m still here, so I assume that I still have a reason for being here; a purpose. I don’t yet know what it is, but maybe it’s important to someone else. Maybe there’s a reason I’m so aware of my thoughts of suicide. In some twisted way, maybe my awareness and acceptance of wanting to die is keeping me alive. It tells me where my limits are, it shows me the dangers sitting right in front of me that I could fall victim to if I wasn’t so self-aware. I know when I need to be supervised when handling knives. I know why I won’t allow myself to even touch a gun. I know when I can dose my own medications and when I need someone else to hand me the correct dosage. I am aware of my depression, I accept it as a part of me, and I acknowledge my limits. Being aware doesn’t make me any less depressed, it just helps me stay alive by knowing when I need help.
I have struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts for most of my life. The earliest instances of self-harm I can recall happened when I was around 5 years old. My introduction to the idea of suicide was trying to talk my mother out of leaving the house and following through with her threats of driving herself off of a cliff, I was around 6 years old. I never quite fit in anywhere or with anyone so there was always this huge disconnect between me and other people. I don’t even know if my closest friends knew about my thoughts and tendencies. If my family knew they never let on and I’m not about to tell them. It wasn’t a passing thought after a bad day or thinking my world was over because of some minor embarrassment. It was constantly in the back of my mind. I couldn’t always pinpoint why I felt the way I did, I just knew that it was there and it lingered at the edges of every thought, trying to worm its way to the foreground. I tried to ignore it but it persisted and never really let up, there was no coming and going, no ebb and flow to the depression. Some days were worse than others, but no day was completely without the thought of wanting to end my life.
I took up writing as a way to curb those thoughts. It was an outlet for frustration, fear, and the desire to end my own life. For the most part, it worked to keep that urge at bay. I could kill myself in a myriad of ways and bring justice to the people who pushed me closer and closer to it. It worked on paper, but it didn’t take the thoughts away. Actually, in some cases, it brought the thoughts to the foreground and amplified the urge to take my life. Then there were times that writing exactly what I was thinking calmed the urge and allowed me to continue on with the day to day of life. There are times when I avoid calling friends or family, specifically because the urge is strong and I’m feeling so emotionally and physically drained trying to keep myself alive that I just cannot deal with the sadness or thoughts of others.
I feel like there’s no one in my family that I can turn to that can offer support to me. I don’t think any of them really know just how much I struggle with staying alive. They treat depression like a fashion accessory, to be worn and displayed, yet not one of them is willing to seek help for what they term depression. For them, it comes and goes as their particular circumstances change. It is a mood and not a disorder; it is a mindset rather than a dysfunction. I treat it with shame, to be hidden and pushed deep down within you so no one else can see how deep the pain goes. I shouldn’t feel that way, but I do. I have gone to therapy, I have sought treatment, I take medication, but the thoughts are still there, they still linger and I have accepted that they are always going to be there for me. My family doesn’t know about my past suicide attempts and I don’t intend to let them know.
There are times I want to tell my family that I’m suffering, but I can’t. I wear this mask of normalcy for their benefit. I’m okay. I’m always okay. I question what they will think if one day I’m not okay. Some will be sad, I have no doubt of that. We are a very close family and we grew up in constant companionship with aunts, uncles, and cousins. But even with that closeness, I was on the outside, just to the side of everyone else, not quite accepted, but tolerated, and loved because I was family. I don’t think a single one of them knows who I truly am. Not who I present myself as, but who I am when I can take off the mask and cry in the safety of my own home, away from anyone who will ask me why I’m crying, because chances are, I don’t know why I’m crying, I just need to cry.
I don’t really care what others think of my situation as it isn’t theirs to live with. Depression isn’t contagious, it won’t hurt you by being near someone who’s suffering from it. In fact, sometimes, someone who is suffering from depression can genuinely be helped by listening to another person vent about all the ills that have happened to that person on a particularly bad day. I know that sounds kind of sadistic, but it’s not, I assure you. It’s not about someone having a bad day, therefore making yours seem not so bad. It’s about realizing you can still empathize with someone. You can potentially make their day better by allowing them a safe space to be vulnerable and show their hurt, something you feel you can’t be afforded or don’t deserve. Being useful to someone has often kept me from following through on my suicidal thoughts. Being needed by someone can be life-saving to many people who suffer from true depression. But that can be a double-edged sword, as you can assist others out of their depression, but yours is still there, making you feel more worthless, more broken. You can help them, why not yourself?
The few times I have reached out to family to simply hint at the idea that I wasn’t okay, I was met with: “Well, whatever made you feel this way is in the past, so just don’t think about it and get over it.” But it’s not in the past. It’s an every day thing, it’s not a moment that was bad and stuck with me, it is every fucking day of my life that is a struggle to get through. Telling a person suffering from depression to “get over it” is quite possibly one of the most damaging things you can do to them. They would love to be done with it, to have it in their past, to solve the issue causing their depression and move on from it. But in most cases, there really isn’t a specific reason for their depression. There isn’t an event that triggered it. It’s just there. Sometimes lingering around the edges of your mind, and sometimes screaming directly in your face to make sure you understand that everything you believe and stand for is worthless and hopeless and ridiculous.
Many people equate depression with sadness. It isn’t sadness for me. I don’t feel sad when I let those thoughts of killing myself linger just a little too long in my conscious mind. I feel relieved. I feel like a burden has been lifted from me. Just by allowing my thoughts to focus on the negative for a little while, and acknowledging that I am aware of this desire to end my own life, allows me to have a moment of peace. Thinking of my own death is my reprieve from depression, not the cause of it. I am still alive, obviously. I have no current conscious intent to act upon the desire to end my life, but the thoughts still linger just around the edges of my mind and I can feel the tension in my body when they begin to push their way through to the front of my thoughts.
I am not always strong enough to withstand those thoughts. I have tried, half a dozen, maybe a dozen, times to end my life with no success thus far, largely because I haven’t allowed myself access to a gun. A gun is quick, a gun is easy, though likely still painful it doesn’t require much thought, it only takes half a second to pull the trigger. A gun makes it harder for me to fail, and I do want to fail at it most of the time. There have been times in my life where I’ve watched someone go through the pain of losing someone they love and I can’t help but feel guilty over still being alive. There are times when I actively want to die and say a quiet prayer that I would very happily go in someone else’s place, let someone more deserving continue in the life that they actually want and just let me be done with it.
But I’m still here, so I assume that I still have a reason for being here; a purpose. I don’t yet know what it is, but maybe it’s important to someone else. Maybe there’s a reason I’m so aware of my thoughts of suicide. In some twisted way, maybe my awareness and acceptance of wanting to die is keeping me alive. It tells me where my limits are, it shows me the dangers sitting right in front of me that I could fall victim to if I wasn’t so self-aware. I know when I need to be supervised when handling knives. I know why I won’t allow myself to even touch a gun. I know when I can dose my own medications and when I need someone else to hand me the correct dosage. I am aware of my depression, I accept it as a part of me, and I acknowledge my limits. Being aware doesn’t make me any less depressed, it just helps me stay alive by knowing when I need help.