I've been here as a registered member since late March. I don't know if that's a long time or not. My situation is a little complex due to a dissociative disorder.
At the core of it, I'm still here because not every part of me wants to die. Due to childhood trauma, abuse, and neglect, my personality fragmented at an early age (around age 6) and the various parts failed to integrate into one cohesive whole. Most people have one coherent sense of self and integrated personality. This will happen naturally as the child develops. But traumatic events and abuse in very early childhood can disrupt the formation of a sense of self and leave a person with a fragmented self.
Because of severe dissociation at a young age as a response to trauma and abusive life circumstances, all of the different aspects of my personality and memory split apart into distinct "parts" with their own memories, perceptions, ideas, desires, viewpoints, and even ages. These parts basically operate below the radar amongst themselves without my full conscious control. I don't always know when one part of me will come to the surface and how long it'll be at the front.
So, I can wake up one day and feel completely different, with different feelings, different desires, and even different degrees of access to certain memories from my past. One day, I might wake up feeling spacey, numb, and dissociated. Another day, I may wake up and struggle with flashbacks, body memories, and mood swings because a traumatized child part is at the front. Another day, I might wake up full of rage. Then, I may experience another day where I'm mostly peaceful, relatively content, and feel like the trauma never happened at all because I experience no triggers, flashbacks, or memories of it.
The most developed "part" of me besides my normal day-to-day self is the suicidal part. I have many days where I'm flooded with suicidal thoughts, urges, and intentions to ctb. This part can be triggered by something during the day or I can wake up feeling suicidal as soon as I open my eyes. When the suicidal part is at the forefront of my personality, I tend to post much more on this site. In those moments or days, I genuinely, truly want to die and I sometimes have to talk myself out of making impulsive attempts. This suicidal part was born out of trauma and school bullying at around age 11. It only exists to hold suicidal thoughts and feelings and to try to urge me to ctb to end the pain. Eventually, though, the suicidal part retreats again, and I'm back to "normal". This part may or may not even be aware that if I ctb, it will die as well. Hence why I've yet to actually ctb. The thoughts come and go constantly, often without my conscious control
And yes, living like this is as horrible and painful as it sounds on paper.
All of this may sound bizarre, but the brain can do some remarkable things in order to survive in childhood. There are a lot of reasons why people may stay on this site and not ctb right away. There are a lot of reasons why people have suicidal thoughts to begin with. One thing I can say for sure is that for people with long term suicidal thoughts and depression like me, it doesn't just "get better with time"
