May ;

As May comes dragging to an end I have to look back on the days and deeply self-reflect. At the start of the month everyone and their mother were posting about how May is mental health awareness month. Timelines were littered with semicolons and stories of lost loved ones but rarely do those battling it post too in-depth about their afflictions. It’s not some pretty survival story you can just openly share with those closest to you. It is dark and so beyond normal that the mere mention is hard to digest for even the most divergent. Suicide is a heavy subject. It is almost a social taboo to discuss. But how can we continue to lose people every single day and not be more open about it. Today I want to get a little dark and talk about what it is like to live with suicidal ideation. So, if you have a soft view, this may not be the blog for you. You have been warned.

My love affair with the idea of dying came at a very tender age before I was even a teenager filled with confusing hormones. The discussion of suicide began when I was a mere nine years old, still so impressionable. I soaked up the idea like a sponge and as things began to fall apart in my home life, I began to cling to the idea of it like it could somehow save me from the hell I lived in. It began as a seed from the tongue of my mother and grew into an invasive vine that strangles my every move even twenty years later. It consumed me long ago and has left its scars on my entire being.

The first mentioned of suicide came from mother it was her vile idea that she could control the home if we lived in fear of her killing herself. She weaponized her life and used it to manipulate herself out of every situation that made her even the tiniest bit uncomfortable. I was a child when it began and to this day, two decades later, I still live with that fear she planted in my mind at nine years old. If I were to misbehave, wore makeup she did not approve of, talked back, got poor grades, hell if I sighed wrong, she would fling herself in to a fit.

She would barrel in my room with an armful of her medication bottles and sling them at my feet to show they were empty. Her crazed voice clawed through the silence and she would assure me each time that she’d taken all of her pills and would die that very night. She was confident in saying that it would be my fault. That her child was the cause of all of this and had I just been better the situation could have been avoided. She would then lock herself usually in the bathroom. I spent so many hours through my young life clawing at wooden doors, begging my mother to please live. I was nine when this started. When I began sobbing at locked doors begging her to not do it, to please not kill herself. By morning she would be fine and pour her pills back in the bottle and act as if nothing had ever happened. Every time she did it, I promised myself I would not fall for it again but not once have I stayed true to that. I would find myself curled up at the door again, pleading for the adult in my life to not do this. Begging for forgiveness. Sobbing until I was so exhausted that I would sleep by the door.

Death was an easy topic in my home as a child. Whether my mother was threatening suicide, or my father was looking up photos of horribly mangled bodies on the internet to show me, it was always in the forefront of my mind. So much so that I began to rely heavily on the Bible for support during those very bleak years. It said that a child under the age of twelve could enter heaven no questions asked. I was convinced at ten years of age that if I ended it before I was twelve, I could still see the other side of the gates. Suicide was a sin, but I could get away with it if I was young enough, God could never fault a child. So, when I turned ten, I wrote my first note. In green crayon I scribbled my little heart out and said my final goodbyes. I tucked it away for the right time.

My grand plan ran in to one problem, how on Earth would I accomplish this task? The pills were in a safe and I was far too scared of blood to slice my wrists. And we did not keep guns in the house. So, I took to the internet and began reading all I could find on the topic. This was the early 2000’s and while I had access to all of the gore my father obsessively saved, I could not find very much to fuel my desire to learn about the best methods of a quick exit. Forums were hush hush about the matter and Yahoo answers always suggested seeking help. I mean, I was ten, I had no idea what I was doing. Soon it became a horrible habit to continuously check these morbid sites for more and more information. It was still the best option I had to escape the horrid situation I faced with my parents.

Years began to pass, and my own written notes began to pile up. My obsession with dying had only just began but something always held me here, mostly fear of abandoning my clearly ill mother. One day I realized that I was past the age of twelve but the idea of going to Hell no longer scared me. What could they do that I had not already suffered through? Molestation, beatings, screaming matches, threats on threats… nothing terrified me at this point. I was so numb to the abuse that the pits of an imaginary world were not all that concerning anymore. And not long after I became content with my decision, I lost my faith. That was fuel on the fire I had began to kindle to life. There would be no consequences to my actions.

The first note my mother found was hidden in a book I was reading; I was barely thirteen at the time. I had written to a famous author I adored and had confessed my plans to kill myself. It was detailed and so outside the realm of normal for someone to just receive. It was inappropriate to say the least, that woman did not need to know all of that, but the topic was an easy one, so I found it normal enough to write in depth about. I came home from school to find my mother on the edge of my bed holding the letter. There were no tears at the thought of her young daughter being so ready to die, there was only anger. She grabbed a handful of my long hair and slapped my face over and over again. She screamed that I was an ungrateful brat, that I was nothing, that I could not just up and kill myself because that would make her look like a bad mother. She was only concerned with her image. She tore my letter to shreds and left me red-faced and sobbing alone in my room. We never spoke of it again; she knew that I knew better. The lesson I learned that day was to hide it better, and I did. She did not find a single one of my many notes after that.

My need to cultivate my knowledge to pursue the “perfect” plan only grew over the years. When things were not in my favor, I would exit the situation and begin to daydream about the release death would bring me. I idolized those who had already done it and always thought how brave they were when I would hear stories. Suicide became my safe space; it was the home I retreated to when life became just too much. It is so sick how often I have given up chances to further myself because I believed I would not be on this planet much longer. I stifled my own growth to nestle myself in this fantasy.

As I grew older the notes came a few times a year, always detailed and very apologetic for my mere existence. I always felt so bad for taking up space for too long. But as I hit adulthood new problems began to emerge, who and how would the funeral be paid for? Did I want to be donated or cremated? Would life insurance cover it? I started seeking help but as I went through therapists, I never found a sense of peace that would leave these lingering questions as null. They just became more intense. I actually had unlimited access and my studies began all over again. Obsessively I would look up dosages, rope strength, life insurance that covered suicide. It was all I could think about.

I would delete my social media, coordinate the perfect playlist, hide all of the photos that had me in them. I was certain that I wanted to be forgotten so I would prepare intensely detailed plans down to the alcohol I would drink and what verse I would finish up on. It consumed my waking and sleeping thoughts. I just struggled with when would be the perfect time and place. In 2019 I finally had enough of my research. I put on my picked song, smoked a cigarette, and tied up a noose. It was finally time to give myself what I had always wanted, the end to my very bitter story. As I took the last drags off my smoke, someone wandered up from bed and wanted me to come. It was enough to shatter my illusion of comfort and I went to bed. These moments would continue to build, and more attempts were made but each and every time someone stepped in with something I assumed only I could handle. So, I handled it.

This is not some divine reason to stay, I had shit to take care of and I did. I never once thought there may be some greater reason for me to stick around. A long time ago I had the idea that I was born in the wrong time and body. That feeling has lingered for many years, the notion that it is not my time to be here. So daily I wake and sleep with the thought that my time will be up here soon. I have sought therapy, but she can only do so much. I have to do the real work here and years of oppressing myself has left little hope for a permanent solution that society will find acceptable.

Every single day I wake and go to work or about my daily activities is a win. I do not necessarily want to be here doing all of this, but for now it takes all I am to smother the urges that began so long ago. Living in this mind is a punishment I would not wish on anyone. Some will say I am cowardice, but I already know that. I was made aware of my shortcomings at a very young age and was not allowed to forget them. My mother started this, but I have to find a way, on my own, to finish it. I have to navigate a way out of this mental prison I am locked away in because as it stands, I am consistently consumed with this love affair I have with the idea of my own demise. It is romantic, it is warm, it is safe to me.

I do not believe anyone even read all of this so I will just wrap myself up by saying that you never know what someone has gone through or is suffering with. I came from a poverty-stricken family who thrived on criminal levels of abuse, but I grew up and became successful without their help. I made it here on the pebbles I threw in the pond to build a shitty little walkway. Suicide is the final symptom of a very real disorder. You wouldn’t be angry at the person succumbing to cancer, don’t be angry when someone can take no more of their mental disorder and ends their life. I hope you took the month of May to check in on someone hurting. Don’t post kind absent words, send them that extra message. Send them a song that made you think of them. Anything is better than nothing and there will be a time when that little reach out was a pebble in their own pond.