Chronic suicidality as a coping mechanism

[Made4TV]

This is a bit meandering but I've been thinking a lot about suicidal ideation, especially in light of the push for suicide hotline numbers, mental health "awareness", calls to shut down this site, etc.

I've been suicidal off and on (mostly on, tbh) since I was 11. I'm now several decades past that. I always saw my chronic suicidal ideation as a liability; I wanted to be normal. I didn't want a life that began with malnourishment and neglect and then grew to include multiple abuses to dictate my future like that.

I've been embarrassed about my lifetime of relentless suicidal ideation, because I'm well aware of the derision reserved for people who attempt suicide more than once, talk about it a lot, or do the hospital revolving door thing. I never wanted to be that guy who people thought was just trying to get attention.

Suicide hotlines are not made for people like me who have a lifetime of cumulative trauma. Nobody on the phone I don't know is going to have some magic that makes it more bearable.

And I'm past being guilted about loved ones. A friend of mine lost a loved one to suicide and constantly says "she just took her pain and gave it to all of us!" As if that person had the unmitigated gall to cause all of them to suffer. I hear shit like that and just think…so you were happier when they were suffering and you weren't? Do they even hear what that sounds like? So I don't buy into all the "think of everyone else's pain" because I'm like…well does anyone give a shit about MY pain which I've had to manage by myself for half a century while y'all just make sure I know the numbers for the suicide hotline?

Anyway, the suicide hotlines aren't for people like me. If it's not situational or impulsive, a hotline just doesn't have anything else to work with. They know some of us are suffering because we can't get the help we need when we can't access good medical or mental care. People at the hotline can't do shit to help those of us that have fallen through the cracks. They can't get us appointments any faster or find a psychiatrist for us who isn't an asshole (quite the task it turns out).

Most people pushing a hotline have no idea what happens after you call, if you're still suicidal. In the US there's almost no hospital admission done outside of having to go to an ER, then take an ambulance ride to anywhere else in the state that has a bed. Doesn't matter if it's the place that treated you badly last time. Doesn't matter if it's 5 hours away from your family. You have no control. Which is about the worst thing imaginable for someone after a lifetime of trauma.

If you're a juvenile, you might even have to stay in the ER, receiving no mental health care, for days until a bed opens up. The best therapists who treat complex conditions like I have don't take Medicare or Medicaid. I have to just get assigned to a rando at the community mental health center who is underpaid and just doing this job as a stepping stone to a real career. (I'm fortunate to have access to a fanstastic therapist right now but I wouldn't if not for a friend who is paying, but this could change any day.)

The hospitals don't do individual therapy. You're stuck in groups most days that are tailored to the lowest common denominator. It's a holding tank and you just hope you don't have more trauma to add to your baggage by the time you get released. Then when you get home, if you have private insurance, the bills start pouring in. ER bills. Ambulance bills. Hospital bills. It never fucking ends. I had to declare bankruptcy in part because of medical bills.

So anyway, like I said, I had assumed that being chronically suicidal was the thing fucking up my life and my finances and my friendships, not to mention the way I felt with normal people. Why can't I just do life like they do? Well, for starters they don't have the sheer amount of trauma history I do (and many other folks here share I know). Trauma is the real gateway drug imo. But I digress.

A few months ago I was able to share some time with two family members who are dear to me, in their late teens. We made some really great connections and I came away feeling strongly that it's important to stay around, as they may need me at some point, to be a voice of reason or a shoulder to cry on given the fucked up family situation. Furthermore I don't want to normalize suicide for them. I want to protect them from a life of constantly struggling with the will to live. And also protect them from possibly being tempted to suicide over something that truly is temporary, because these kids look up to me.

For the first time in my life I felt like I had a deep knowing that I could no longer commit suicide if it looked like suicide. I think I expected my life to improve because I'd never known a time since the age of 11 where that wasn't a viable option on the table.

Since then my struggle with depression has deepened I think. And I have felt stuck and trapped in this life. I feel almost a panic sensation, not having this familiar desire to fall back on. I'm not sure how to explain it but it's a tangible difference in my mental health since I decided there's no way I can do it if it looks like suicide. It's the most hopeless I've ever felt. And worse still because I have no hope of being able to choose when I'm done with it. I'm just at the mercy of…I don't know what anymore. And I could just kick myself for not letting sepsis take me when I was very ill a while back. But that was in a year I'd promised folks I'd stick things out and see if they got better. In hindsight maybe I should have just gone back to bed when I knew I was going septic, instead of calling an ambulance. Hindsight. Amazing stuff, that.

This has led me to drastically reducing what I do for my health. I'm delaying and not caring about some routine healthcare. I haven't been to a dentist in 4 or 5 years and have kind of stopped taking care of my teeth. I stopped using my CPAP for severe sleep apnea. I unscheduled my colonoscopy. I have a small unidentified object on my last mammogram and I will probably cancel my upcoming ultrasound to check it out further. I can only hope and pray it's malignant.

I never understood that in some ways, my suicidal ideation was saving my life. This website has saved my life. Being able to talk openly about these things has been a huge and wonderful thing for me. Take it away and what do I have? Take away the fantasy of being able to control when I say "ok, enough" has to be the darkest thing I've dealt with of late.

It's really hard for me to imagine continuing on like this, having closed the door to suicide of my own volition. I've heard that when people live in places where they can get medical aid in dying, it's often just a relief for them to have it. Some don't end up using it and die a "natural" death: they just needed to know it was there.

I wonder how many of us need this website in the same way? When the normals talk of wanting to shut down this website I think..in a perverse way…they'd be removing hope and comfort from some of us.

I hope the people who are young, who are here because of being bullied, overbearing parents, abuse at home, lost love, etc will at least try to change something up, to see if there are other options before taking the drastic bus ride. You can always still do it later if everything you try is a dead end. But for the chronically suicidal, I'm starting to see many of us may, ironically, need to keep the hope of suicide alive.

Man that's a mindfuck though.

 

[Pluto]

Removing the option of death from the table implies a random length of time to be married to chronic pain. It is a concept completely foreign to opponents of bodily autonomy who project their own moderate ups and downs onto all others, thus assuming that all situations are workable. It's an 'if you know, you know' thing for the minority of us who know real trauma. Even if the option of exiting is just there as a failsafe, it can bring immense psychological comfort.

I was fortunate enough to successfully panic-buy N from D during a previous time when this website suddenly came under public attack, and it has brought much comfort just sitting there. Though in saying that, now the problem is that I've almost completely run out of reasons to not use it. It's like fighting for my life when I can't find any reason to fight for my life.

In the end, attention needs to go towards genuine solutions, not merely imprisoning ourselves in uninhabitable bodies by force. The only acceptable options that I can see are some radical, previously-overlooked revelation that transforms the experience of living, or an orderly exit from the body.

 

[Rounded Agony]

I remember feeling this very strange sense of relief when my nebulous thought of no longer living began to coalesce into this concrete notion of actively putting an end to my own existence. When life continues to screw you over, despite you "making the effort" to "do the right stuff" no less, it felt very affirming to know that if I so chose, I could quit this miserably rigged game when I so chose. Of course the idea of actually doing it is still horrifying to me, and it could still well fail leaving me even worse off, but the option opening itself to me felt so empowering and liberating.

Of course, now I have the added fear of somehow becoming incapable of acting on it, like methods disappearing, losing bodily function/autonomy/etc...not sure how "healthy" any of this is but I just mean it all to say I think I get where you're coming from here.

 

[Made4TV]

Absolutely. Leading up to my nearly lethal attempt which I've detailed elsewhere on the site, I felt a huge sense of relief. Sadness too of course, that I couldn't find any way out of a relentless series of calamities, trauma, bad luck. And I did have a terrible sadness that society dictates that one of our punishments for suicide is that generally we have to do it all alone. There's no loving hugs, exchanges, people telling you what you've meant to them. That kind of thing.

But at the same time I had a sense of peace and purpose, especially because I prioritized a responsible death with quite a to-do list beforehand. But to finally have control over something…yeah, I still remember that month leading up to it as a time that was surprisingly not as bad as one might assume considering all my energy was going toward my eventual death.

It feels like a big loss and I think there's still a part of me that deeply regrets the fact that it wasn't a success. Especially now that the option feels removed. Don't get me wrong, I still have tricks up my sleeve in the event of something really horrific, but in a normal world I can't see choosing to use any of it at the moment. But I was unprepared for how totally despondent it would leave me. I really needed that option mentally.

 

[chloramine]

It's so much easier to cope with things we choose. It's also a lot easier to go into a bad or uncertain situation when you have an exit plan. Suicide provides both of those.

 

[Made4TV]

And there's literally nowhere else on the internet to have a discussion like this. Grateful for what SaSu has been for me the last 4 years that I've been a member.

 

[SamTam33]

For years, the only thing that could calm me down and slow my thoughts was imagining my death.

It brought me a certain kind of peace I can't really describe. Instant calm.

Somewhere along the way I lost that feeling. Now when I need to calm down, thinking of suicide makes me anxious and desperate like it'll never be a reality. It feels further and further away.

The older I get, the more I want it and the harder it seems to achieve.

A few weeks ago I was sitting at a stoplight by a puny little bridge. But in that moment I knew I could go over the side if it was higher and there wasn't any traffic passing underneath.

It's not a feeling I have often: 100% certainty that I can jump. So being able to experience that, however fleeting, made me feel good for a few hours.

I tell myself that if I felt it in that moment - then I can feel it again.

So for me, I not only need the option to be there; I need to feel there's a high probability of me going through with it.

Regarding the website: Things that I love tend to disappear quickly. Think tv shows that are cancelled too soon. A restaurant or a particular store. My fear is that now when I've finally found a community where I can share all my ramblings and fears and contradictory feelings about life - it will be taken away too.

 

[Ligottian]

Some of us, for many different reasons, simply can't be fixed.

 

[FuneralCry]

It can be a relief having the option of suicide and I think that knowing that there is a way out can make life more bearable in general for people, as they can exit when the time is right. It can be such a dreadful feeling, feeling trapped here with no way out and that is what pro lifers want to do, make it as hard as possible for people to try to leave and just prolong suffering which of course would only make things worse.

I do think that suicide is the best way to die as it gives us control over a life that we never asked for and if someone is leaving at a time of their own choosing it means that they have the chance to come to terms with their decision to leave rather than dying at a time out of their control.