Suicide is the ultimate escape. The place you can go to when all seems and feels hopeless. I often think about killing myself at least twice a day or more if I am feeling really hurt and hopeless. Pain is another reason I think about suicide. Pain can be either physical or mental for me. Mostly these days it’s mental. I do not like myself. I loathe myself to the degree I would rather be dead than live this way. I hate the way I look. I hate the way my body is. I am ugly and disgusting and no one can tell me otherwise. My therapist says that I have a form of body dysmorphic disorder because I loathe myself so much. It’s just another reason to kill myself. Another reason to end my life.
Yet despite all this loathing and self-hating and pain, I’m still alive. I’ve come up with a date to end my life. I have decided that 38 years of living is long enough, or close to it anyways. I try not to think about it I try to think of now and live but its just too damn hard when you have to force yourself to breathe everyday. Sure the lungs work automatically but to actually breathe freely without this elephant sitting on your chest, that is what I am talking about. I used to say weight on the chest but what is that exactly. Not very accurate visually. Unless you have been to a gym and know what a weight is and looks like, most people don’t know. An elephant is easier to visualize and imagine better.
Right now I am at a café in a bookstore in Harvard Square. I bet no one knows that I am suicidal. They just see a guy writing in a notebook, drinking a lime soda. That what kills me. The invisibility of it all. These thoughts are mine and mine alone, unless I speak of it like I am doing now. No one knows. No friend or family member knows except my therapist and psychiatrist. Sometimes guilt will make me not want to commit suicide. I feel bad because I have worked with these caregivers for more than a decade. MY psychiatrist I have worked with for almost two decades. Yet I don’t but do care how they will react to my suicide. Will their attitudes change? Will they refuse to see other clients who are suicidal? Most will.
My therapist keeps saying I am the exception not the rule. But I am tired of living in constant misery. Misery that only the blog world knows about. I can’t share my misery with others because I have become so ingrained to keep it to myself. I keep it to myself so as not to worry my friends and family members. They wouldn’t understand anyways. My family is not one of openness. I am not blaming them for how I turned out. I don’t blame anyone but myself for my suicidal thoughts. It’s my fault. Maybe if I got help sooner I wouldn’t be this way but that is doubtful, it took me twelve years of therapy to realize what the root of my suicidality was. I was suicidal since I was eight years old. It wasn’t because I was abused (although I have been by multiple family members) but not at that ago. Suicide just came to me at that ago and has been with me ever since. I didn’t like myself back then anymore than I do now. But it was because of reasons I had not thought of. Reasons I could not articulate like I can now as an adult. I realized I was a girl and I didn’t like it. I developed into one an hated it. But I couldn’t say anything to anyone, not even my best friend from childhood because back then you just didn’t say what you felt or what you thought. I would have fallen on deaf ears and it’s not like psychiatry/psychology is like it is now. I have always felt like an outcast and coming out as a “boy” would have further set me into outcast land.
Just like when I thought I was a homosexual, I thought of killing myself. I felt like I was severely psychotic liking another woman. Again I didn’t say anything to anybody, not even my therapist at the time because I was fearful of being committed to the hospital. I already had a few by this point. But I met a fellow inpatient that showed me it was ok to be gay and I’m grateful for that.
My therapist now does what she can for helping me accept being a transgender but part of me always wonders whether one day she will have me committed for these thoughts. And I don’t mean the suicidal ones.
Why am I not in the hospital if I am chronically suicidal? Because I’m not “actively” suicidal. If I was in imminent danger to myself, like I was going to do it right this second, at this very moment, I would be hospitalized, probably against my will.
But at this stage I just feel like my telling my providers I’m suicidal is like me crying wolf. I’ve said this so many times I don’t really think anyone believes I will act on it. Hell I don’t even feel like I will act on it. I want so much to die and though I have made active plans to kill myself, I am still here. I have not attempted in several years now. At this point I wish it could be just a wish that I could be granted at anytime. I sometimes wish I lived in the times of the Ancient Greeks where if you constantly asked for permission, eventually you were granted permission and “allowed” to kill yourself with hemlock. Now the governments of most societies say it’s all part of mental illness and every life should be saved. Now do you see why I am not vocal on my suicide thoughts. I have to keep them secret for fear of commitment. But a hospital stay is not what I need. Being six feet under and pushing up daisies is what I desire. That is truly what I want.
Somehow between my last “attempt” seven years ago, I lost my lethality. I lost the will to truly die. Even though I wish to be dead on a constant basis, don’t get me wrong, I have no will so to speak to truly act on my thoughts anymore. I lost the intensity of my constriction, my narrow minded thinking. Because of this I am still alive though I desperately wish I was dead.
I understand. I thought maybe it could provide some relief of having to hold it back from everyone but I can see where you’re coming from.
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I don’t think I can ever tell a family member I am suicidal for fear of being constantly watched or constantly being asked how I am doing and having to give an answer or else. Just be awkward and too much pressure, especially after all this time.
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Wow, first of all, forget what hookered said. Clearly he/she doesn’t have any idea of what you’re going through.
I don’t think it’s your fault for having suicidal thoughts because you didn’t get help sooner. Lots of people have their own issues that they live with for many years and maybe never even seek help or try to address them at all. A lot of times we wait until things get worse, but it’s not because we didn’t care to get help but maybe we’re scared, don’t really understand what’s going on with us, have difficulty trusting others, etc.
Do you think if fearing being committed wasn’t an issue that a part of you might feel better to tell a friend or family member about your suicidal thoughts? Someone who wasn’t your therapist or from the blog world?
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Thanks for the comment but it does not make sense. “hate instead of despair”? and don’t use buck up. it offends a lot of depressives, including me. Walk a day in my shoes before you tell me that
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I’m being serious 38 is not even mid life you need to chill and realize that maybe you should hate instead of despair get angry not sad the world id screwed up man maybe even in the smallest way you could do something to change that idk buck up …
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