EtherealCicada
Member
- Sep 28, 2025
- 8
Hi if anyone is reading this. This is my first time accessing the site so I thought I'd start w/ a hopefully interesting q;
When in your life, at your youngest, do you remember your FIRST experience with your own suicidality?
For me, I'd have to say I questioned my situation as young as between 1.5-2 (many I've told don't believe me when I say I was really this young...). It was around this time I was able to understand my shitty dad's articulation of the impossible concept of "heaven", and my first train of thought was something to the effect of: "Then what am I doing here?" I didn't particularly understand what it meant to die yet, but I remember the feeling of, I guess, that want to be elsewhere. I had wanted my body to give out on its own.
Around the same time, I had told my older sibling that I was "going to play with the knives in the kitchen because I wanted to see what heaven was like". Obviously they ended up physically holding me back and telling on me to my mom. I do assume I wouldn't have hurt myself that badly had I not announced my plans to my sibling. I only knew that knives were dangerous, and was fed the concept that I would go to heaven had something drastic happened to me; had I actually had a knife in my hand, I wouldn't know how to use it effectively. But this memory still often sticks out strangely to me.
My first "attempt" was around a year or two later. I was still a stupid toddler, but I somehow had a better concept of deleting something from the planet. My therapist says this ["this" being curious and/or knowing about the concept of death] is abnormal for someone of that age for at least a few years. I attempted to smother myself underneath a pillow, I remember laying in the dark of my bedroom for a very long time trying hard to essentially breathe my own CO2 out of my pillow, but I really only succeeded in slowing down my heart rate a ton. It was during bedtime, I eventually gave up and fell asleep. I had tried this seriously at least once more before the age of 6 before realizing pillows seem to just have too much airflow.
I think many people don't give credit to children's suicide attempts due to their limited knowledge about the world and their bodies. If a child does something non-lethal with the intent to kill themself, it's still a suicide attempt in my book. That child wanted to die.
Yuck. Haven't aired out this much dirty laundry in ages. I feel filthy.
...On a side note, I read in the site FAQ that we should search questions before asking, but I don't seem to have a search bar. Google said I'd 'unlock' it after posting a few times? If this is the case I feel that they should have specified this. Either way, I'm very sorry if this q has been asked before :[
...Anyway, hope someone else has some interesting answers to give :]
When in your life, at your youngest, do you remember your FIRST experience with your own suicidality?
For me, I'd have to say I questioned my situation as young as between 1.5-2 (many I've told don't believe me when I say I was really this young...). It was around this time I was able to understand my shitty dad's articulation of the impossible concept of "heaven", and my first train of thought was something to the effect of: "Then what am I doing here?" I didn't particularly understand what it meant to die yet, but I remember the feeling of, I guess, that want to be elsewhere. I had wanted my body to give out on its own.
Around the same time, I had told my older sibling that I was "going to play with the knives in the kitchen because I wanted to see what heaven was like". Obviously they ended up physically holding me back and telling on me to my mom. I do assume I wouldn't have hurt myself that badly had I not announced my plans to my sibling. I only knew that knives were dangerous, and was fed the concept that I would go to heaven had something drastic happened to me; had I actually had a knife in my hand, I wouldn't know how to use it effectively. But this memory still often sticks out strangely to me.
My first "attempt" was around a year or two later. I was still a stupid toddler, but I somehow had a better concept of deleting something from the planet. My therapist says this ["this" being curious and/or knowing about the concept of death] is abnormal for someone of that age for at least a few years. I attempted to smother myself underneath a pillow, I remember laying in the dark of my bedroom for a very long time trying hard to essentially breathe my own CO2 out of my pillow, but I really only succeeded in slowing down my heart rate a ton. It was during bedtime, I eventually gave up and fell asleep. I had tried this seriously at least once more before the age of 6 before realizing pillows seem to just have too much airflow.
I think many people don't give credit to children's suicide attempts due to their limited knowledge about the world and their bodies. If a child does something non-lethal with the intent to kill themself, it's still a suicide attempt in my book. That child wanted to die.
Yuck. Haven't aired out this much dirty laundry in ages. I feel filthy.
...On a side note, I read in the site FAQ that we should search questions before asking, but I don't seem to have a search bar. Google said I'd 'unlock' it after posting a few times? If this is the case I feel that they should have specified this. Either way, I'm very sorry if this q has been asked before :[
...Anyway, hope someone else has some interesting answers to give :]
