First, a vision of a grandson, not born for 8-years. Then a feeling about his mother who had a terrible struggle with suicide because she couldn’t remember and when she did, she quit all meds, moved to a mountain and quit trying suicide because she was bad at it.
1) Like many others have said, not wanting to traumatize the ones I love who have already been through enough in plenty of ways. I don't need to pile it on.
2) My kids don't need the burden that maybe there's something they've inherited from me that could lead them to the same outcome. They're so much like me in all the cool ways AND they're like me in the ways that I struggle with. They're growing up in a better environment than I did with a whole different set of troubles and traumas (thanks covid and t***p and three moves in three years). I need to see them make it to functional adulthood* and then, if necessary, there can be a big family reunion / bon voyage party before I embark on a single-handed ocean crossing in a sexy sailboat.
3) All the suicides close to me or my loved ones have been bad. I mean, ugly, traumatic, hard to see. You know, not good for the casket. Someone had to discover that body. This is not good. This is one of the secret reasons I'm glad we made it to Oregon. Someday, if my options are limited and the sailboat isn't happening, I'd like a dignified exit on my own terms, and we have that here. I don't want to be "found" by anyone in that state. Either it's a planned to-do in a proper cozy setting, or it's a rogue wave and fishies.
*Able to navigate the world and have the helpful people in place to manage the things that our people are historically bad at (calendars, bills, deadlines). We're geniuses. We can't remember why we walked into a room, or what we laughed at a moment ago. I'm in Mensa and I'm a MF engineer. Also, left and right are hard for me.
DDB 9000 offered this as a reply to the comment on Wonkette that linked here. I copy it here so it doesn't get lost and so that people who need another reason can find it:
===============================================
So I read you post and it was very interesting. But when you var y very few friends, who are almost all out of town, iand no living realtives to speak of, it makes a very big difference. One thing that is different in my mind is that I don't think of killing myself (although I wish I were dead every day) because I feel I am so incompetant that what ever I do would inevitably fail and I would end up a quadraplegic vegetable fully aware of my situation.
So for now there is no solution, and never will be. It is literalkly hopeless.
The most famous speech by our most famous playwright in our language is about the pro and con of suicide. That should say something right there. Hamlet doesn’t do it for fear of hellfire. My greatest fear is of wasting away in agony from disease like my mother and a friend or two, so I could never take it off the table. And I’m pretty narcissistic, which means being of a subset prone to self-ending.
I don’t think about it seriously because, despite the slog of being a 65 year old with a 4 hour, 100 mile commute, with other issues I’d rather not describe is...I’ll always have the option. Got no kids or parents to let down, and have pets that need my care, and I sure get a good laugh out of things. Anything goes really bad, I’ll always have an escape clause. Cheers me to think of it. It’ll be like sleeping in on a Saturday, except forever!
This is really great work, and things like this definitely need to be talked about. I think it is important now more than ever when Americans (and others) are dying "deaths of despair"--including suicide--at a way higher rate than ever, historically.
I've suffered from major depressive disorder and chronic suicidal ideation for about 30 years. I have been on and off of anti-depressants (and now am permanently "off," b/c I refuse to deal with the side effects that really rob me of even the most mundane "glimmers" in my life, like having an orgasm or being able to think clearly, which I just refuse to deal with anymore.
So I'm trying to get by on CBT, DBT, ACT, and talk therapy. And I am happy to say that since I was in the IOP over the summer (roughly from July through September), I have a whole new set of tools with which to try to tame my despair, as well as an understanding that much of what I suffer is likely due to childhood trauma (my brain being bathed in stress chemicals and hormones pretty much from the time I was born) and then a sexual assault I suffered 2 weeks after HS graduation, which cut me off from my social circle and I never dealt with (I just never talked about it to anyone and it came out all in a rush in a therapy session c. 2018).
When I was at my lowest, I did not give. a. fuck. who I might have hurt with any decision I might have made to commit suicide. And I'll tell you why: My emotional pain was such that it didn't matter. I would have done anything to just get rid of it and I feel strongly that people need to understand this (or at least make a good attempt at understanding it) about people with chronic suicidal ideation and impulses, and not necessarily just regard it as "selfish" and regard that person as potentially horrible if they decide to take their own life.
For me, David Foster Wallace captures the misery, pain, fear, etc. of being held up against the wall by your throat by suicidal ideation and severe emotional pain:
"“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 flames. And 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.”"
That being said, I am happy to say that I haven't had a thought of suicide since around the first week of July this past year, shortly after my father died and I felt like the walls were closing in on me and that I had no future, no hope, the world is dying anyway so why not take myself out of my misery?
Again, the first thing that happened in that IOP was I understood for maybe the first time in my adult life that I am not "in my right mind" and thinking correctly, so I decided a "just wait" approach. And things started getting better when I started using the CBT and DBT tools that I was taught.
It's not perfect, but I don't want to kill myself anymore. That could change at some point, but for now, it has held steady since July. Which is the longest stretch in my adult life that I haven't had those thoughts.
My reasons?
**Just wait. It may get better. (and so far it has, or at least I'm coping with it better)
**My mom is still heartily grieving my dad. I couldn't add to her burden (or my brothers' etc.) by doing that.
**There are still good people and things in this world that are worth sticking around and fighting for.
**I want to write.
**I want to see eventual grandchildren maybe (my daughter may eventually change her mind about it, though, and that's OK).
**I want to live to see my daughter do better (she is getting kicked in the teeth by major depressive disorder and some other mental health issues that have caused her to not yet "launch" the way young people are expected to do)
**I want to live to see such expectations as above be jettisoned from my consciousness so I can enjoy the here and now and not some "model" vision that influencers give us of how our lives are supposed to look like.
**I want to see my nieces grow up.
**I love art and music and natural things. I want to see the solar eclipse in April.
**I love my partner and want to see the relationship grow and see him grow.
**I want to do something to help people. I don't know what that is yet (teach free writing classes, how to cook classes, get more involved in LGBTQ+ advocacy, which is near and dear to my heart, homeless causes, etc.)
**And for the reason the other article you reference really vibed with me: The neofascists want people like me dead. And for now that's enough for me. Fuck 'em.
I think it is important to understand how much suicide and depression can hurt others, yes, and being attentive to that can keep us here and trying for more.
But I also think it is okay to talk to people about your intractable depression even if it affects them to hear about it. I have a lot of conversations with my therapist about my CPTSD tendency to manage other people’s emotions in advance, and she is firmly in the camp that it is most respectful to let other people have their own emotions, and that I am not in charge of that.
I don’t like to burden people with seven years of depression that keeps me disabled. And again, therapy is helpful for me in that it let me see the things which are OCD intrusive thoughts (no more death terror, mostly, fewer reflexive statements about hating myself or wanting to go home) or see how many of my behaviors may have kept me safe in difficult situations but that I can now let go of. But I’ve not been better enough to work, and that can feel really really desperate. And lately there is seething jealousy that I can do so much less than I used to, and anger over the traumas of the past and the systems that didn’t help.
But you know, I like it here. I like the pets and the sky and eating dessert. I love my family and the friends and acquaintances I have made online (like you) and in person. I don’t want to make them sad or frustrated, though I am not in control of how I make them feel. I am only in control of my own behavior. So it’s for them, it’s love for them, that I keep fighting. Maybe I don’t have to be better, or able to work. Maybe I can just be here.
Thank you for talking. This is a good place for it. And thank you for staying. I know that I look forward to comments under your name.
As for the main topic, if I were compiling a "best reasons to tell suicide to fuck off" list, it seems like the last paragraph is supposed to be a summation or your reasons, but it's written diffusely. Where does giving yourself permission to "just be here" rank in helping you stick around, vs. dessert, vs snuggling pets, vs love for others?
We're all different (and we're all complex, I know that there are multiple reasons and for some people it won't be possible to separate them), so in addition to just having a conversation about this important and difficult stuff, my longer-term goal here is to get as many "best reasons" as possible and list them so that others can use them as a resource.
If you had to sum up why you stay, would you write it any differently than you did your last paragraph?
Thank you for this and thank you all the brave commenters on this. Thank you for sharing these difficult stories and thank you for still staying with us even though it is so, so hard. My young BIL killed himself and I still think about him often 30 years later. And the stories of families and friends devastated by the suicides of people they loved resonate through out my life. However, I learned something from David Foster Wallace that brought me great insight. I won’t share it with you….but perhaps someday. Big hugs to all of you.
I have taken antidepressants for more than 35 years and anti-anxiety meds for about 20. I have beloved people in my life who've left by suicide, including my closest brother who was suffering from terminal cancer and chose to go on his own terms. I was heartbroken but I supported his act.
Another friend and coworker, 30 some years ago, asked me to notarize his will one day at the office, then went home that night and killed himself. I tore myself up for years thinking I should have seen what he had in mind.
In this second case, the guy was only 39 and suffering from severe depression.
What has kept me from committing suicide all these years is #1, I don't have the guts to do it and #2, if there is even one person in my life who would be hurt like I was over my loved ones who've done this, it's not worth it.
That might sound self righteous but I don't mean it to be. I'm coming from a place of relative privilege too, because I have a good job and the health insurance that allows me to afford the Prozac and BuSpar that keep me from going off the rails. In my twenties I was not so fortunate, and the spotty access to meds meant I had trouble keeping myself together enough to make it work at jobs. I bounced around a lot in my twenties, some less in my thirties, and at 41 landed the job I've had for 17 years now, thankfully.
I'm so sorry to read of your struggles. I'm a fairly new subscriber and my heart goes out to you.
>> I'm so sorry to read of your struggles. I'm a fairly new subscriber and my heart goes out to you. <<
Thank you. That's very kind. I'm glad that things are easier for you now than they were previously. That detail about notarizing someone's will, though, that's ... oof. I hear you. I feel how someone could beat themselves up over that. I probably would too. I hope that's in the past for you and that you also have good memories to be a help and blessing to you.
Well, my life will probably end by suicide if I can't find permanent treatment for my chronic migraines. I talk openly with my family about the chronic pain I live with, including constant vomiting, and being unable to live any semblance of a meaningful life when I am untreated. I feel empowered by my decision because I have given it plenty of thought. When people question me, I tell them what they are asking me to live with and they are generally sympathetic.
I think our nation has a horrible problem with impulsive acts of suicide related to a failure to teach people how to process various feelings. When someone acts suicidal, they need help, and that help should be provided to them.
"I think our nation has a horrible problem with impulsive acts of suicide related to a failure to teach people how to process various feelings. "
All of this. I didn't learn a lot about this in any intensive way until I was in an IOP this summer b/c I was about two seconds away from offing myself after my dad died. :(
Learning how to deal with your big emotions and how to regulate them and to understand your emotions or thoughts aren't some kind of truths and can be ignored and will eventually go away (in most cases) is something that needs to be taught, re-taught, and re-visited from Kindergarten.
Our society would be much better off if everyone learned the emotional regulation skills offered with Dialectical Behavior Therapy.
But it is one of the most expensive therapies to pursue, and costs thousands and thousands of dollars (like $800/month it was going to be last time I checked into it) for the full 1-year course.
I have lived with Suicidal Ideation for 32 years now. Four times in my life, I have actively planned my death. Here’s why I was suicidal and why I stayed.
When I was 16, I was being horribly bullied plus I was panicking over the fact that I pretended I was kissing girls whilst making out with boys. A marathon session in the Resource section of the library cleared a bunch of that confusion up and helped me remember I only had two more years of high school left.
The second time was when I witnessed my beloved cousin fall off a balcony during a night of drinking. While everyone kept telling me it wasn’t my fault, I knew I had failed her. I held her hand while she took her last breath and prayed I would stop breathing, too. The only reason I didn’t help myself do that was my cousin and I were living with my younger sister at the time and she would not have survived us both leaving. So I stayed. Started drinking like a fiend though.
The third time came during an absolute shitshow of a year. My husband was having an emotional affair with our shared best friend. I was the primary breadwinner and the only one with a drivers license. I hated my job, my life, the world, God, and myself. That day I had accidentally injured a client badly while transitioning them from bed to chair. I called an ambulance and went to the hospital with them. Their partner screamed so violently at me that security had to get involved.
I had to pull over twice on my way home because I was sobbing so hard I couldn’t see. I told my husband that he was young enough to remarry and our daughter young enough to forget me. When I got home, I held my daughter and husband and told them how much I loved them, thinking I would wait until they fell asleep. Except I was the one who fell asleep. I slept for almost 20 hours.
When you are so deep in the black, the lies whisper our loved ones will be better off without the mess, hurt, agony, and sickness we bring into their lives. Our pain is so thick we can’t see through it.
The next day I woke up to a message informing me a friend had ended her battles permanently. It rocked me to my core. She left behind her 5 year old, her husband, 3 stepsons, and hundreds of grieving family members and friends.
Her husband made a vow to be open and raw and real about the devastation left in her wake. It broke through those lies. I saw in acute clarity just how much wreckage and pain my departure would cause. It also showed me how much joy and triumph I would miss.
The fourth time was this past June. I started hearing voices. They started as me feeling like I was overhearing conversations between people. Then I felt like I was hearing violent fights between friends through my cellphone. After a week of the voices getting more violent and insistent, I just wanted them to stop and I did not give a damn as to how. But even in all that darkness, I remembered my friend, and managed to call my psychiatrist so I could self-surrender into Crisis Care.
Turns out taking stronger and stronger anti-psychotics when you are not, in fact, psychotic can really mess you up. Combine that with illicit drugs I was using to self-medicate for the disorders I did have and it’s a recipe for tragedy.
I didn’t have Borderline Personality Disorder or Bipolar Depression. I wasn’t Schizophrenic. I had treatment-resistant depression, ADHD, and was in Autistic Burnout. Being locked up for a week under constant medical supervision, stopping every single medication except for my blood pressure, and starting me on appropriate medication for my actual symptoms saved my life then.
While I still feel like a failure, a loser, a broken-ass sorry excuse for a human sometimes, I have way more days where I am excited to wake up than not. So yes, I live because it would be exceptionally cruel to the five people I love with my whole soul to leave them wrecked and wracked with guilt over whether they could have done more (they couldn’t have, but they’ll never understand that).
Thank you for this piece. Thank you for sharing your innermost struggle. Thank you for seeing us. And thank you, with all that I am, for staying.
You are not a failure, or a loser, or a broken-ass sorry excuse for a human. Those struggles are but small, chipped tiles in the total mosaic that is you.
We are all only human at the end of the day. And there are things in this world that break us. You reclaim that by rebuilding yourself enough to share your story with people who have earned the right to hear it. That's how we heal (or at least that's what I believe).
Oh, man, I'm so sorry. That really sucks. That has happened to me several times in various contexts, and I also cried and raged. It's perfectly understandable when you are making yourself vulnerable and then something like that happens. Oof. :/
This is also an *excellent* reason to stay. Also one that has figured in my own sticking around, though I must say that not harming myself because it would harm others was not always such a convincing argument due to peculiarities of my own family of origin. But it has gotten to be a better and better reason to stay as the configuration of people in my family has improved.
For those of us who have treatment-resistant depression (we have that in common; wrote about that a bit here -- https://hanneblankboyd.substack.com/p/serotonin-never-heard-of-her), it's probably wise to have multiple reasons in one's arsenal, and I'm grateful for you writing about this one too.
Thank you for talking about the typically unacknowledged effects of slamming-into-a-wall-at-high-speed that happens when one is whatever sort of prodigy, then that part of your life ends. It's so deeply, profoundly disrupting and distressing. I deeply wish there were more discussion of it.
(Oh and: it's Blank Boyd, in case it comes in handy.)
First, a vision of a grandson, not born for 8-years. Then a feeling about his mother who had a terrible struggle with suicide because she couldn’t remember and when she did, she quit all meds, moved to a mountain and quit trying suicide because she was bad at it.
My reasons:
1) Like many others have said, not wanting to traumatize the ones I love who have already been through enough in plenty of ways. I don't need to pile it on.
2) My kids don't need the burden that maybe there's something they've inherited from me that could lead them to the same outcome. They're so much like me in all the cool ways AND they're like me in the ways that I struggle with. They're growing up in a better environment than I did with a whole different set of troubles and traumas (thanks covid and t***p and three moves in three years). I need to see them make it to functional adulthood* and then, if necessary, there can be a big family reunion / bon voyage party before I embark on a single-handed ocean crossing in a sexy sailboat.
3) All the suicides close to me or my loved ones have been bad. I mean, ugly, traumatic, hard to see. You know, not good for the casket. Someone had to discover that body. This is not good. This is one of the secret reasons I'm glad we made it to Oregon. Someday, if my options are limited and the sailboat isn't happening, I'd like a dignified exit on my own terms, and we have that here. I don't want to be "found" by anyone in that state. Either it's a planned to-do in a proper cozy setting, or it's a rogue wave and fishies.
*Able to navigate the world and have the helpful people in place to manage the things that our people are historically bad at (calendars, bills, deadlines). We're geniuses. We can't remember why we walked into a room, or what we laughed at a moment ago. I'm in Mensa and I'm a MF engineer. Also, left and right are hard for me.
DDB 9000 offered this as a reply to the comment on Wonkette that linked here. I copy it here so it doesn't get lost and so that people who need another reason can find it:
===============================================
So I read you post and it was very interesting. But when you var y very few friends, who are almost all out of town, iand no living realtives to speak of, it makes a very big difference. One thing that is different in my mind is that I don't think of killing myself (although I wish I were dead every day) because I feel I am so incompetant that what ever I do would inevitably fail and I would end up a quadraplegic vegetable fully aware of my situation.
So for now there is no solution, and never will be. It is literalkly hopeless.
The most famous speech by our most famous playwright in our language is about the pro and con of suicide. That should say something right there. Hamlet doesn’t do it for fear of hellfire. My greatest fear is of wasting away in agony from disease like my mother and a friend or two, so I could never take it off the table. And I’m pretty narcissistic, which means being of a subset prone to self-ending.
I don’t think about it seriously because, despite the slog of being a 65 year old with a 4 hour, 100 mile commute, with other issues I’d rather not describe is...I’ll always have the option. Got no kids or parents to let down, and have pets that need my care, and I sure get a good laugh out of things. Anything goes really bad, I’ll always have an escape clause. Cheers me to think of it. It’ll be like sleeping in on a Saturday, except forever!
And now I’m going to Trader Joe’s, yaaay!
This is really great work, and things like this definitely need to be talked about. I think it is important now more than ever when Americans (and others) are dying "deaths of despair"--including suicide--at a way higher rate than ever, historically.
I've suffered from major depressive disorder and chronic suicidal ideation for about 30 years. I have been on and off of anti-depressants (and now am permanently "off," b/c I refuse to deal with the side effects that really rob me of even the most mundane "glimmers" in my life, like having an orgasm or being able to think clearly, which I just refuse to deal with anymore.
So I'm trying to get by on CBT, DBT, ACT, and talk therapy. And I am happy to say that since I was in the IOP over the summer (roughly from July through September), I have a whole new set of tools with which to try to tame my despair, as well as an understanding that much of what I suffer is likely due to childhood trauma (my brain being bathed in stress chemicals and hormones pretty much from the time I was born) and then a sexual assault I suffered 2 weeks after HS graduation, which cut me off from my social circle and I never dealt with (I just never talked about it to anyone and it came out all in a rush in a therapy session c. 2018).
When I was at my lowest, I did not give. a. fuck. who I might have hurt with any decision I might have made to commit suicide. And I'll tell you why: My emotional pain was such that it didn't matter. I would have done anything to just get rid of it and I feel strongly that people need to understand this (or at least make a good attempt at understanding it) about people with chronic suicidal ideation and impulses, and not necessarily just regard it as "selfish" and regard that person as potentially horrible if they decide to take their own life.
For me, David Foster Wallace captures the misery, pain, fear, etc. of being held up against the wall by your throat by suicidal ideation and severe emotional pain:
"“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 flames. And 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.”"
That being said, I am happy to say that I haven't had a thought of suicide since around the first week of July this past year, shortly after my father died and I felt like the walls were closing in on me and that I had no future, no hope, the world is dying anyway so why not take myself out of my misery?
Again, the first thing that happened in that IOP was I understood for maybe the first time in my adult life that I am not "in my right mind" and thinking correctly, so I decided a "just wait" approach. And things started getting better when I started using the CBT and DBT tools that I was taught.
It's not perfect, but I don't want to kill myself anymore. That could change at some point, but for now, it has held steady since July. Which is the longest stretch in my adult life that I haven't had those thoughts.
My reasons?
**Just wait. It may get better. (and so far it has, or at least I'm coping with it better)
**My mom is still heartily grieving my dad. I couldn't add to her burden (or my brothers' etc.) by doing that.
**There are still good people and things in this world that are worth sticking around and fighting for.
**I want to write.
**I want to see eventual grandchildren maybe (my daughter may eventually change her mind about it, though, and that's OK).
**I want to live to see my daughter do better (she is getting kicked in the teeth by major depressive disorder and some other mental health issues that have caused her to not yet "launch" the way young people are expected to do)
**I want to live to see such expectations as above be jettisoned from my consciousness so I can enjoy the here and now and not some "model" vision that influencers give us of how our lives are supposed to look like.
**I want to see my nieces grow up.
**I love art and music and natural things. I want to see the solar eclipse in April.
**I love my partner and want to see the relationship grow and see him grow.
**I want to do something to help people. I don't know what that is yet (teach free writing classes, how to cook classes, get more involved in LGBTQ+ advocacy, which is near and dear to my heart, homeless causes, etc.)
**And for the reason the other article you reference really vibed with me: The neofascists want people like me dead. And for now that's enough for me. Fuck 'em.
I am so glad you are still here, my friend. My heart smiles every time I see your comments!
I think it is important to understand how much suicide and depression can hurt others, yes, and being attentive to that can keep us here and trying for more.
But I also think it is okay to talk to people about your intractable depression even if it affects them to hear about it. I have a lot of conversations with my therapist about my CPTSD tendency to manage other people’s emotions in advance, and she is firmly in the camp that it is most respectful to let other people have their own emotions, and that I am not in charge of that.
I don’t like to burden people with seven years of depression that keeps me disabled. And again, therapy is helpful for me in that it let me see the things which are OCD intrusive thoughts (no more death terror, mostly, fewer reflexive statements about hating myself or wanting to go home) or see how many of my behaviors may have kept me safe in difficult situations but that I can now let go of. But I’ve not been better enough to work, and that can feel really really desperate. And lately there is seething jealousy that I can do so much less than I used to, and anger over the traumas of the past and the systems that didn’t help.
But you know, I like it here. I like the pets and the sky and eating dessert. I love my family and the friends and acquaintances I have made online (like you) and in person. I don’t want to make them sad or frustrated, though I am not in control of how I make them feel. I am only in control of my own behavior. So it’s for them, it’s love for them, that I keep fighting. Maybe I don’t have to be better, or able to work. Maybe I can just be here.
Thank you for talking. This is a good place for it. And thank you for staying. I know that I look forward to comments under your name.
As for the main topic, if I were compiling a "best reasons to tell suicide to fuck off" list, it seems like the last paragraph is supposed to be a summation or your reasons, but it's written diffusely. Where does giving yourself permission to "just be here" rank in helping you stick around, vs. dessert, vs snuggling pets, vs love for others?
We're all different (and we're all complex, I know that there are multiple reasons and for some people it won't be possible to separate them), so in addition to just having a conversation about this important and difficult stuff, my longer-term goal here is to get as many "best reasons" as possible and list them so that others can use them as a resource.
If you had to sum up why you stay, would you write it any differently than you did your last paragraph?
Thank you for this and thank you all the brave commenters on this. Thank you for sharing these difficult stories and thank you for still staying with us even though it is so, so hard. My young BIL killed himself and I still think about him often 30 years later. And the stories of families and friends devastated by the suicides of people they loved resonate through out my life. However, I learned something from David Foster Wallace that brought me great insight. I won’t share it with you….but perhaps someday. Big hugs to all of you.
I also learned a lot from David Foster Wallace (see my comment above) and would love to talk to you about your own insights when you're ready.
I re-read Infinite Jest about every 2-3 years. There's a *lot* in there relevant for depression. A lot.
We can open a different thread. I didn’t want to use the quote I had in mind on this thread.
No pressure at all. I was just curious, as I myself have found much of solace and insight in his works.
I have taken antidepressants for more than 35 years and anti-anxiety meds for about 20. I have beloved people in my life who've left by suicide, including my closest brother who was suffering from terminal cancer and chose to go on his own terms. I was heartbroken but I supported his act.
Another friend and coworker, 30 some years ago, asked me to notarize his will one day at the office, then went home that night and killed himself. I tore myself up for years thinking I should have seen what he had in mind.
In this second case, the guy was only 39 and suffering from severe depression.
What has kept me from committing suicide all these years is #1, I don't have the guts to do it and #2, if there is even one person in my life who would be hurt like I was over my loved ones who've done this, it's not worth it.
That might sound self righteous but I don't mean it to be. I'm coming from a place of relative privilege too, because I have a good job and the health insurance that allows me to afford the Prozac and BuSpar that keep me from going off the rails. In my twenties I was not so fortunate, and the spotty access to meds meant I had trouble keeping myself together enough to make it work at jobs. I bounced around a lot in my twenties, some less in my thirties, and at 41 landed the job I've had for 17 years now, thankfully.
I'm so sorry to read of your struggles. I'm a fairly new subscriber and my heart goes out to you.
>> I'm so sorry to read of your struggles. I'm a fairly new subscriber and my heart goes out to you. <<
Thank you. That's very kind. I'm glad that things are easier for you now than they were previously. That detail about notarizing someone's will, though, that's ... oof. I hear you. I feel how someone could beat themselves up over that. I probably would too. I hope that's in the past for you and that you also have good memories to be a help and blessing to you.
Well, my life will probably end by suicide if I can't find permanent treatment for my chronic migraines. I talk openly with my family about the chronic pain I live with, including constant vomiting, and being unable to live any semblance of a meaningful life when I am untreated. I feel empowered by my decision because I have given it plenty of thought. When people question me, I tell them what they are asking me to live with and they are generally sympathetic.
I think our nation has a horrible problem with impulsive acts of suicide related to a failure to teach people how to process various feelings. When someone acts suicidal, they need help, and that help should be provided to them.
Great work, CD!
"I think our nation has a horrible problem with impulsive acts of suicide related to a failure to teach people how to process various feelings. "
All of this. I didn't learn a lot about this in any intensive way until I was in an IOP this summer b/c I was about two seconds away from offing myself after my dad died. :(
Learning how to deal with your big emotions and how to regulate them and to understand your emotions or thoughts aren't some kind of truths and can be ignored and will eventually go away (in most cases) is something that needs to be taught, re-taught, and re-visited from Kindergarten.
Our society would be much better off if everyone learned the emotional regulation skills offered with Dialectical Behavior Therapy.
But it is one of the most expensive therapies to pursue, and costs thousands and thousands of dollars (like $800/month it was going to be last time I checked into it) for the full 1-year course.
I have lived with Suicidal Ideation for 32 years now. Four times in my life, I have actively planned my death. Here’s why I was suicidal and why I stayed.
When I was 16, I was being horribly bullied plus I was panicking over the fact that I pretended I was kissing girls whilst making out with boys. A marathon session in the Resource section of the library cleared a bunch of that confusion up and helped me remember I only had two more years of high school left.
The second time was when I witnessed my beloved cousin fall off a balcony during a night of drinking. While everyone kept telling me it wasn’t my fault, I knew I had failed her. I held her hand while she took her last breath and prayed I would stop breathing, too. The only reason I didn’t help myself do that was my cousin and I were living with my younger sister at the time and she would not have survived us both leaving. So I stayed. Started drinking like a fiend though.
The third time came during an absolute shitshow of a year. My husband was having an emotional affair with our shared best friend. I was the primary breadwinner and the only one with a drivers license. I hated my job, my life, the world, God, and myself. That day I had accidentally injured a client badly while transitioning them from bed to chair. I called an ambulance and went to the hospital with them. Their partner screamed so violently at me that security had to get involved.
I had to pull over twice on my way home because I was sobbing so hard I couldn’t see. I told my husband that he was young enough to remarry and our daughter young enough to forget me. When I got home, I held my daughter and husband and told them how much I loved them, thinking I would wait until they fell asleep. Except I was the one who fell asleep. I slept for almost 20 hours.
When you are so deep in the black, the lies whisper our loved ones will be better off without the mess, hurt, agony, and sickness we bring into their lives. Our pain is so thick we can’t see through it.
The next day I woke up to a message informing me a friend had ended her battles permanently. It rocked me to my core. She left behind her 5 year old, her husband, 3 stepsons, and hundreds of grieving family members and friends.
Her husband made a vow to be open and raw and real about the devastation left in her wake. It broke through those lies. I saw in acute clarity just how much wreckage and pain my departure would cause. It also showed me how much joy and triumph I would miss.
The fourth time was this past June. I started hearing voices. They started as me feeling like I was overhearing conversations between people. Then I felt like I was hearing violent fights between friends through my cellphone. After a week of the voices getting more violent and insistent, I just wanted them to stop and I did not give a damn as to how. But even in all that darkness, I remembered my friend, and managed to call my psychiatrist so I could self-surrender into Crisis Care.
Turns out taking stronger and stronger anti-psychotics when you are not, in fact, psychotic can really mess you up. Combine that with illicit drugs I was using to self-medicate for the disorders I did have and it’s a recipe for tragedy.
I didn’t have Borderline Personality Disorder or Bipolar Depression. I wasn’t Schizophrenic. I had treatment-resistant depression, ADHD, and was in Autistic Burnout. Being locked up for a week under constant medical supervision, stopping every single medication except for my blood pressure, and starting me on appropriate medication for my actual symptoms saved my life then.
While I still feel like a failure, a loser, a broken-ass sorry excuse for a human sometimes, I have way more days where I am excited to wake up than not. So yes, I live because it would be exceptionally cruel to the five people I love with my whole soul to leave them wrecked and wracked with guilt over whether they could have done more (they couldn’t have, but they’ll never understand that).
Thank you for this piece. Thank you for sharing your innermost struggle. Thank you for seeing us. And thank you, with all that I am, for staying.
Thank you for sharing your story.
You are not a failure, or a loser, or a broken-ass sorry excuse for a human. Those struggles are but small, chipped tiles in the total mosaic that is you.
We are all only human at the end of the day. And there are things in this world that break us. You reclaim that by rebuilding yourself enough to share your story with people who have earned the right to hear it. That's how we heal (or at least that's what I believe).
Thank you fore sharing this!
I typed a whole thing out, paragraphs upon paragraphs, my soul laid bare, and Substack ate it.
I’m going to go cry and rage for a bit and then I will come back and re-type everything.
Oh, man, I'm so sorry. That really sucks. That has happened to me several times in various contexts, and I also cried and raged. It's perfectly understandable when you are making yourself vulnerable and then something like that happens. Oof. :/
I'll be here. Your words are always welcome.
Thank you
This is also an *excellent* reason to stay. Also one that has figured in my own sticking around, though I must say that not harming myself because it would harm others was not always such a convincing argument due to peculiarities of my own family of origin. But it has gotten to be a better and better reason to stay as the configuration of people in my family has improved.
For those of us who have treatment-resistant depression (we have that in common; wrote about that a bit here -- https://hanneblankboyd.substack.com/p/serotonin-never-heard-of-her), it's probably wise to have multiple reasons in one's arsenal, and I'm grateful for you writing about this one too.
Thank you for talking about the typically unacknowledged effects of slamming-into-a-wall-at-high-speed that happens when one is whatever sort of prodigy, then that part of your life ends. It's so deeply, profoundly disrupting and distressing. I deeply wish there were more discussion of it.
(Oh and: it's Blank Boyd, in case it comes in handy.)
>> (Oh and: it's Blank Boyd, in case it comes in handy.) <<
It does! Changed the main text, thanks.
>> treatment-resistant depression (we have that in common; ...) <<
:fistbump: