Venting How do non-suicidal people feel?

[Eideprius]

As a child, I had a time when I really wanted to die. I felt terrible, cried all night and thought about suicide the whole time. I never tried, and after my parents found out, I get better. But not good. I've never felt great.
I can't remember the feelings I had before this time. I know I was often stressed and anxious as a young child, but maybe I still felt happy.

The thing is, I don't know how i should feel. At what point I can't expect more.
I can't remember many moments in the last few years.
I only remember one moment in my entire life when I was happy. Where I felt like this moment makes life good. And I was at least happy enough to remember it. When I'm otherwise happy, it's more of a break from unhappiness and my own thoughts.
Maybe I also just forgot all the happy feelings in my past.

And I wonder why and how other people feel like they want to live. I have felt terrible in the past and would say I am feeling better and calmer now, but I still think about ending my life. Moments like this where I don't feel that deep emotional pain are rare, but still not enough to move on. More like I'm in peace with dying. And I'm afraid that this is maybe all I can feel. That I expect more, but there is no more.
Do other people feel something that I don't? Or is what everyone feels just not enough for me to live?
I really don't know what I have done wrong in life, that I have ended up like this.

 

[willitpass]

I have brief moments of respite through my days where I feel okay enough. Sometimes I let out a genuine laugh. But that is just a short mask of my true feelings. Enough to make it through the days, but not enough to feel happy. There have been periods of my life where I genuinely felt okay most of the time. Ocasional periods where I felt true happiness. But they are few and far between and always interrupted by a depressive period. And when I have these periods it is always still in the back of my mind that death would be preferable. That suicide will still be my end. That the depression will always come back. Mental illness is a thief. I will never know what it is like to experience happiness without a shadow of suicide hanging over me. I don't remember what it felt like before I became sick as a child either.

 

[Forever Sleep]

I'm similar to you in that I began having suicidal thoughts early on in life- aged 10. I don't think it did occur to me prior to that that I wanted to be dead. I wasn't always happy as such but it wasn't as bad as wanting it all to be over. Still- it feels kind of pointless trying to work out how I felt as a young child because- even if I turned out as a non suicidal adult, I doubt we think like we do when we're children. There are usually fewer responsibilities and maybe we just live in the moment. All I can really remember is being obsessed with play- like most children I suppose.

I suppose it does make it harder though when someone wants to give 'recovery' a real shot. Like- what is it we should even be aiming for? I know what you mean.

 

[Praying 4 a Miracle]

My situation is pretty tragic, I feel, because for approx 57 years I was very happy, and healthy. Then I allowed myself to get stressed out over something that caused me to have a mini-stroke. Now, I have so wicked insomnia (basically have barely slept at all for 2.5 years) which is causing all kinds of other health problems.

One little mistake, took my eyes off the ball for a few seconds, and boom. It can happen in a heartbeat. The mortal life is so fragile, and then a bit of bad luck and it's basically game over. After all those years of hard work and happiness, it's a very frustrating reality. I so wish that we all had a time machine so that we go back, do it again, and avoid the tragic accidents this time!

 

[vitbar]

My depression has always been episodic. So I've kept knowing what it's like without the depression.

For me it's not even that I'm happy and having a continuous wonderful time. Most of it I'm just living, but without that horrible weight, and without thinking about it, or its absence, at all. I do still have sad times and happy ones, but I can have them without the thoughts and feelings in the background.

It's weird how when depressed I struggle to remember feeling different. What I can remember seems unreal or like it happened to someone else. When I'm not depressed I don't think about the depression, and struggle to explain it in any detail. When the episodes settle over me it all comes flooding back. It's so familiar. Often don't realise they've started or stopped untill a few days in or out.

Since finding a medication combination that works for me I feel okay or good most of the time. They haven't completely got rid of the episodes. What remains of them is milder. The ideation is still present. I think it is an ingrained part of my personality now.

 

[AliceTheGoon]

My situation is pretty tragic, I feel, because for approx 57 years I was very happy, and healthy. Then I allowed myself to get stressed out over something that caused me to have a mini-stroke. Now, I have so wicked insomnia (basically have barely slept at all for 2.5 years) which is causing all kinds of other health problems.

One little mistake, took my eyes off the ball for a few seconds, and boom. It can happen in a heartbeat. The mortal life is so fragile, and then a bit of bad luck and it's basically game over. After all those years of hard work and happiness, it's a very frustrating reality. I so wish that we all had a time machine so that we go back, do it again, and avoid the tragic accidents this time!

I got called out for giving you grief in your 'amazing person' thread so I checked your posts to see if you're legit and found this. I stand corrected but the thread got closed so I'll post here. I'm in a very similar boat as you and your description is spot on.

 

[endofline2010]

And I wonder why and how other people feel like they want to live.

I wonder this too. And because I'm such a fucked up person, I often think along the lines of "My life, health, intelligence, etc... is orders of magnitude better than yours, and I just want to go to sleep and not wake up. What the fuck do you have to look forward too."

 

[ijustwishtodie]

Non suicidal people feel happy with their life. I don't know why but I feel like not even they themselves know why either as, at the end of the day, they all give the same answers that they've been indoctrinated by society to say. They don't bother thinking about why they're happy since it comes naturally to them

 

[endofline2010]

Non suicidal people feel happy with their life. I don't know why but I feel like not even they themselves know why either as, at the end of the day, they all give the same answers that they've been indoctrinated by society to say. They don't bother thinking about why they're happy since it comes naturally to them

I've actually wondered if they are happy (I'm sure some are/think they are), or if the thought of dying is so scary, it just never crosses their minds. I have expressed to people that dying isn't a scary thing to me, and they can't understand that.

It seems like suicidal people and those not afraid to die just think differently than people who fear death.

 

[FlufflesAway]

I would love to experience a few days as a "normal" person. I just want to contrast it to my own experiences. Maybe everyone's just miserable? Maybe that is normal. It's something, due to its subjective nature, may never be known. I certainly don't know.

Like another poster wrote, in my more lucid moments, the suicidal thoughts are just not there. Your mind is thinking about 'neutral' things. When the depression inevitably comes back full force you literally can't remember what it's like to be in a 'better' headspace. All the more positive thoughts/things are just gone. It's a bit like swapping between two different people. Where one struggles to recall clearly what the other has experienced, but retains good recall of itself.

I'm just going mad.

 

[ijustwishtodie]

I've actually wondered if they are happy (I'm sure some are/think they are), or if the thought of dying is so scary, it just never crosses their minds. I have expressed to people that dying isn't a scary thing to me, and they can't understand that.

It seems like suicidal people and those not afraid to die just think differently than people who fear death.

I think that it's both. From what I've seen, they are happy and they are scared of death. It also seems like that even many suicidal people are scared of death as well and only see it as the lesser of two evils. Those who are scared of death can never understand those who aren't scared of death

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

"I wonder why and how other people feel like they want to live. "

I don't see any objective reason for wanting to live.

My reasons for wanting to die asap including to get out of the threat of extreme torture, to avoid avoid all these to avoid long lasting unbearable pain, to avoid work chores diseases old age oppression, pain , suffering , accidents, problems , stress and more horrors.

So I wish someone could tell me why I should have to want to live or to do anything . Everything including life is meaningless. I can't can't separate the supposed pleasurable addictions from the worst pain the most horrible things as addictions lead to the other the extreme torture

 

[ijustwishtodie]

So I wish someone could tell me why I should have to want to live or to do anything .

This question cannot be answered because there is no answer. Life is an abomination and isn't worth living through. It's better to be dead than to be alive as being dead contains no suffering and no pain for all eternity whereas life contains unimaginable horrors. People rely on fiction to stimulate a horror experience but life contains far scarier and threatening horror than anything that fiction could produce. Of course it's better to have never been born in the first place than to kill yourself to end your life early but ending your life early is better than going through existence. The earlier the life ends, the better really as then that means less suffering overall as well as eliminating any chance for life to fuck you up in the future. As long as you are alive, you are subjected to life's whims and could randomly get diagnosed with an extreme condition since life is random and cruel. The concept of a "rock bottom" doesn't exist as things can always get worse and worse