Every once in a while I run into a thread about how "cowardly" and "selfish" suicide are. The negative words used to describe suicide alter, but the general feel of the threads are the same: suicidal people are bad for being suicidal because suicide hurts those left behind.
These threads irk me.
You see, I have spent a sizable chunk of my life battling with being suicidal. The first time I remember really wanting to off myself was in 5th grade. The girls of my fifth grade class had basically split themselves into two groups. You picked one and did what they said or you spent your time alone while everyone else mocked you. This was especially painful during our daily 20 minute recess. Because I refused to do the cruel things that either group demanded, I spent most of that year friendless. I don’t know if this by itself would have been enough to send me into a suicidal spin (although isolation is a hell of a lot more painful than people often think) but I was also being emotionally, mentally, and sexually abused (but not molested) by my father. As the year went on, I used to sit and stare at the floor cleaner in our house and think about drinking it. Not a particularly effective or painless way to kill yourself, I know now, but that’s what I thought about at the time. I also thought about slitting my wrists, but I’d never thrust a piece of metal into my body before. I’d spent my entire life drinking stuff. That was the beginning.
Eventually the year ended. I hadn’t attempted suicide, but something was broken inside of me. Some of it was being young, some of it was being abused, some of it was being me, and some of it was being so isolated that year, but I was not functioning correctly. I was profoundly socially awkward. I didn’t know how to interact with people and was so afraid to try that I never started a conversation. When and if people tried to start one with me, I came across as cold and unresponsive. People believed I was stuck up and thought I was better than everyone else when I was in fact terrified and convinced everyone hated me.
And I also developed phantom health problems. I felt nauseated almost all the time. When I went to the doctor and had tests done, everything came back as normal. No fever, no elevated white blood count, no nothing. I would later realize that these health problems were really a physical manifestation of the intense stress I was under, but at the time no one could figure out what was wrong with me. The kindest doctors offered no explanations. The least understanding doctors asserted I was making it up to get out of school. When I talked to my teachers and peers about my problems, they responded with a comment about how I whined too much or how I really liked to complain. This lead to me trying to not talk about what was wrong. When I did break down and talk about how awful I was feeling, I never knew how to articulate what was really wrong. Truly, I didn’t even understand what was wrong. I didn’t understand that what my father was doing to me was abuse, so if someone had asked me if he was abusing me, I would have denied it. To me, what he was doing was normal. When I felt violated, I mislabeled my feeling as worried or uncomfortable. My childhood was made up of being isolated socially, abused by my father, constantly feeling ill when nothing was physically wrong, and being told that nothing was wrong in my life. I didn’t know how to tell anyone what was really wrong because this was what my life had always been.
Then I went to college. For a while I did all right. I was in a new setting, I had broken off all contact with my father, and I was making friends. But I still wasn’t dealing with what had happened to me. I’d been to counseling with my mother and sometimes my sister, but I hadn’t really addressed my problems. I was ignoring how my father had violated me. Whenever I had problems because of my abuse, I told myself what the adults in my life had so often told me before: that I should just deal with it. I’d spent my life being told by teachers, doctors, family friends, and peers that what I was going through wasn’t that bad. That I was making too big a fuss about my problems. That I had to learn how to deal with it. I believed them. I believed that my problems were normal, that if I was just stronger I wouldn’t be hurting so much, that I was creating my own pain. So when I started wanting to slitting my wrists or jump out my dorm window, I didn’t think to go for help. In my mind, no one could help me because I was doing this to myself. I knew that my suicidal desires were simply more proof that I was a failure as a human being. I knew that if I told someone about what I was feeling, they would once again tell me that people chose how they felt, and I needed to choose to feel better. The stress got worse and worse, but I told no one.
Then I started cracking under the strain. I lay in bed and couldn’t find the energy to get up. I didn’t want to do anything anymore. The things that had sustained me in the past (reading, video games, computer debates) lost all appeal. I hated myself and knew I was a terrible human being. Open windows and razors called to me; I was afraid that if I went near them, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from using to them die. I had terrible anxiety attacks where all I could do was huddle in a ball and cry. When I tried to read my school assignments, I found myself unable to comprehend what I was reading. I would read the same paragraph over and over and over again, only to discover that I had no idea what it said. I slept all the time, but it was a broken, unsatisfying sleep. Little things that people said could upset me so badly that stopped being able to move. And worst of all, I knew it was all my fault. I was doing this to myself because something was wrong with me. I was bad, so I deserved this. I wasn’t going to get better because some character flaw in me was causing all this. But I kept putting off getting help because I believed it wasn’t that bad. I was fighting not to kill myself and I still believed my problems weren’t important enough to get help.
Luckily, while I was breaking down, there were people around to help me. My mother was willing to do whatever it took to help me, and my friends were around to see me snapping. I even had a friend who made me give her my mother’s phone number and called my mother when I was in a particularly bad place. I started going to counseling with a new counselor. He told me I had severe depression, that it was bad enough that he was worried about what I might do. If I got worse, I’d have to be put in the hospital. He immediately put me on medication. But I kept going to school, convinced that I could push my way through. My counselor told me that needed to stop trying to do all my classes, that I should focus on only a few, but I didn’t listen. I had been taught all my life that if I just pushed hard enough, I could do it. I was wrong. I couldn’t handle all of my classes. As my breakdown continued, I ended up having to take an incomplete in all my classes. I went home. I struggled some more. I eventually kicked a hole in the wall and checked myself into a mental hospital overnight because I didn’t think I could keep myself from committing suicide. Somewhere along the line I was diagnosed with PTSD and an anxiety disorder. Yes, PTSD is an anxiety disorder, but apparently I have another one. Eventually it became apparent that I wasn’t going to be able to finish the classes I’d taken incompletes in and had to take Fs in them. I eventually got that semester dropped off my transcript, but only after my mother implied to the school that I would seek legal action if they didn't; at first the school refused because I had apparently waited too long but not long enough to drop the grades I couldn't pass because of my failing mental health. They initially stated that I either had to have dropped the classes within the first year or I needed to wait seven years. The fact that I had a doctor supporting me was not important. The fact that I was apparently willing to go to a lawyer was.
And somewhere along the line I started getting better. It didn’t happen overnight. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t a steady progression. I’d get better, and then I’d get worse. I’d get better again, then I’d get worse again. I’d get much better or better for a longer period and think I had finally beaten the problem, only to get worse again. But as time went on, I got more better than I did worse. It happened in little steps, but my horrible crashes into desperation started happening less often, were less terrible, and lasted shorter periods of time.
So, here I am. I’m 22 years old. I still have PTSD and an anxiety disorder. I take one anxiety medication daily and I have a different anxiety medication I take as needed. I am no longer taking anti-depressants and no longer have depression. I’ve just finished my first year as a full time student since my breakdown a couple years ago. I even managed to do it while away from home, which is another first. I am aware that when I start having trouble I am usually unaware of how bad my problem is, so I set up regular appointments with the school counselor, even though I don’t need them. That way, if I get in over my head, someone will be there to see it. My battle isn’t over, but I’m much better.
But because of what I went through, I know what it is to be suicidal. To be suicidal isn’t to be cowardly, it is to be in an altered state of consciousness. To be suicidal isn’t weak, it is to be ill. To say that suicidal people are either just makes things so much worse. If the suicidal person hears and believes these awful things, they blame themselves even more. They don’t seek treatment because they believe they can’t be helped, that their problems aren’t worthy of attention, that if they were a decent human being they wouldn’t be suffering the way they are. And then they die, not because they were more weak or cowardly than I was, but because they weren’t as lucky.
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