I've seen this a lot when a suicidal person mentions feeling afraid to go through with the act of committing suicide. I cannot speak for everyone who is suicidal, it's not possible for me to.
"There is a part of you that doesn't want to die because you want to get better."
My rebuttal to this sentiment is that every single person has a survival instinct inherently in them. It's just there because we're human beings, and I don't think for some people it implies much beyond that. That's just a biological design.
I know it's not intentional for people who say it, but just personally when I hear or see it, it feels invalidating. Maybe I don't want to have to die, but I want death. I hold the perspective that death is freedom, whether the afterlife that I personally believe in and envision waits for me, or even just nothing at all, no consciousness, nothing. Ceasing to exist or higher existence.
I could very well be wrong/incorrect in this, but it's an opinion I do strongly hold. Wondering if anyone feels similarly or differently.
But what is freedom if you're not there to experience it (if there is no afterlife)? I get you though, that death is at least "freedom" from having to experience constant suffering. I think thats the most painful realization when I got seriously suicidal, is that, for me, I just want to experience a decent level of peace and enough joy to make life worth living. But death isn't an experience at all. Its part of the reason I'm here.
Even though I don't think its likely or even possible for me, I've felt the experience of peace and joy, even though they were such brief periods and the times I've genuinely experienced them I could count on my fingers. Peace is so difficult that it surprises me when I feel just ok for a few minutes of the day. But I know what that peace and joy feels like, and it pains me so much that its so rare for me, and I see others be able to live with normal levels of it. It feels like a party that I wasn't invited to, but the party is everyday, and I'm just watching it from my bedroom window. Seeing people smile, knowing what its like, but not being able to feel it, or even touch it. Wishing my mind didn't work against me in every way, to make it impossible for happiness or peace to settle here. It always tells me that my keys are in the past, and things woulda been different if… but having seen this movie over and over, there is no woulda been different if, because no matter how hard I try to change, or do something different, or listen to my mind, I end up in the same spot-still convinced that if I only did something else things would've been better and I would've been ok.
My mind taunts me by giving me the feeling of peace and what I could of felt when I imagine my past actions differently, but because it didn't go like that, my brain constantly berates me, and beats out any bit of peace or semblance of joy in the present. It doesnt allow me to be present. No matter how much I try. It compares constantly, or ruminates, or imagines and ideal past, or criticizes me, or tells me how fucked up qnd horrible I am. I live with the worst critic that could possibly be made, and its my brain. I can't escape it. It knows my thoughts. It is my thoughts. Its my CPU, its the pilot of my plane. Every single action, decision, thought and experience, it pervades and destroys. I've been trying to change the behaviours and external circumstances, not fully grasping, that I don't think it fucking matters what I do, my brain won't be content, it will always doubt, worry, tell me that I'm doing it wrong, make me feel like what I have is bad, that I should do this or do that and I'll feel better, that I'm not good enough, that she's not good enough, that things would be better if…why did u think that was the right decision? Wtf is wrong with u? Etc etc. just pure chaotic noise, and constant pain.
But I think life is a beautiful experience for a less disordered and dysfunctional brain. I've felt it for moments, and although so few and far between, like once you've had a spiritual experience, you know it exists, you know its there. I know life is worth it for many, I'm just locked out of heaven, a normal less disordered brain is heaven compared to this hell. I wish things were different. I so badly want to join the party, I so badly want to live, but you can only take so much of a beating, so much intense disappointment, so much internal horror, before it just becomes inhumane.
I view my experiencer/observer (as in my conscience) separate from my mind that includes my disorders, dysfunction and inner critic. It becomes inhumane for the experiencer or observer to be in an unrelenting horror film for almost its entirety of experience. For me, it doesn't feel like much of a choice. Like the 9/11 jumper who leaps from the window to avoid dying from the flames, and those that wait helplessly waving their towels for a rescuer that never comes. I'm the observer, forced into having to make a humane choice. I'm burning alive and I'm nearing my threshold. I don't want my life to have been mainly pain. I dont want it to end the way its always been. But I'm not in control of the movie, I'm just the observer.
