Suicide is not a single act, it's a process.

[RainAndSadness]

It's something I've realized recently after years of talking to suicidal people and I've noticed in myself too, suicide is not a single act. It's not one action and then, poof, it happened. For many of us, it starts weeks before, months or even years, maybe even subconsciously before you think about doing it. And I think that's something people need to realize who really care about avoiding and preventing it, it's not a clear cut. It's not, oh this person is alive now, and then they do something and now they're not alive anymore and that's when they committed suicide. It's way more complex than that. That's also not how you prevent suicide in a meaningful way, really. Like just today someone mentioned the suicide hotline again, as if having one call and one talk is enough and then you're fine again, right. I mean I've talked about this years ago already. And I'm not even talking about my personality disorder that would render this type of help useless anyway. Like, it wouldn't do anything for me. The hole I dug for myself is so deep already, and that's been a process over several years, the amount of effort and work you'd need to invest to pull out of there again would be so much work, it's just not realistic anymore. In my case, it's been a long and painful deterioration, mentally and physically, like I'm clinging to any coping mechanism I have at this point, just to stay alive, but doing that is destroying me in different ways. Like there is no way out, you could actually make the case I was in a better condition 5 years ago and all this did was prolong the inevitable. I've known people who were addicted to drugs and they were already drowinng, months before they committed suicide and I think that's probably one of the better ways to visualize that process. It might not apply to everyone out there but I feel like it's really not just that one act, it's a long process: it's self-destructing behavior, it's trying to fight against it with everything you have, it's failing, trying again, it's the planning, it's getting closure with one's decision and these are things that happen a long time before the actual act. Like realistically speaking, my suicide started many years ago, yeah I tried to bounce back but to no avail, I keep ending up in this cursed dead end and really I'm not in any different place as I was 2018, except I'm older now and maybe in a worse condition and that's it. I think we, as a society, need to get away from the idea, that a person is alive and they haven't actually committed suicide yet until a very specific act happens. Just because the process that leads to the climax is invisible, and I'll just describe it like that now, doesn't mean it's not already happening, to people around us. That's at least my perspective on it. Like yeah, I'm alive but that really means nothing, let's be honest. When it comes to my quality of life, you could as well say I died 10 years ago and that's basically where I would say it started. But again, I'm not saying it applies to everyone else, but I think it's an accurate way to describe the process of suicide for a lot of people.

Just writing it down. Cheers.

 

[Quietist]

Real shit. Thank you for your take.

 

[volo]

Slow and painful deterioration, yes, until one can't take it any more, I guess. Sometimes I even wonder, if I'll have enough left in me to do the actual act…
I don't think that the society gets the magnitude of the pain.

 

[Aknu132]

I'm sorry for your pain Rain, we are on the same boat. We are accumulating more and more pain, and no one is going to help us get out of it.

 

[AngelTear]

Thank you for saying this. I've had people say to my face that "suicide isn't hard" because xyz or that I'm faking it for talking about it so much (even though I had already attempted before) but it's such a long process to endure before you finally end up committing. My suicide has been over half my life before I even attempted and it still going on.

 

[TransientEternal]

I don't remember much, but I'm pretty sure I've been suicidal since before I hit double digits in age. The only thing time has done is reduce the delay between the thoughts and increase the desire/certainty of it. Suicidal -> Don't do my best -> Quality of life worsens -> Become more suicidal. Repeat this till now.

 

[X-sanguinate86]

An honest and truly caring society (let's be serious though, that's never existed) would help suicidals through the process, including speeding it up where possible. People with problems or who just failed to be healthy competitive players in the game of life are now wanted by the bulk of the human population. The disdain the healthy normies have for the problematic people is a compounding factor that makes it all the more impossible for the process to truly be reversed.