Sinking on Purpose

“I don’t wanna break down but I’m feeling low. Let me sink to the bottom.” When the depressive cycle hits it is a struggle to keep your head above water, much less try to explain why you can’t swim to those that can easily see the bottom. Your lungs fill, you gasp, and then another wave hits. The pool in your surrounding area is lashing at you violently as you watch everyone around you float along with ease. You’re drowning and only a few truly understand what that feeling is like.

Worse yet is when you are just above the surface, toes on a sandbar, you step back and sink again. The intentional sabotage is even harder for healthy people to understand. The sensation of grasping at straws to survive is more familiar than the notion of being stable. You are not comfortable here but it is all you’ve ever known. They will mock and say you’re just desperate for attention, and while that might be true to an extent, you’re truly just terrified of change.

What is life without violent turbulence? How are you supposed to live in harmony when a storm will inevitably come? If you jump in to the deep end you at the very least have control over your dwindling hold on life. If it comes while you practice stability, you no longer have that grip on your destiny. It is unknown, and to you, unknown had always been a frightening monster under the bed. It waits for you to slip so it can pull you under in to its gaping mouth.

That beast is just enough to keep you doing the same thing over and over, fully knowing there will be no difference in the outcome. You trick your mind in to believing your sanity, your life is all you can exert control over. A pattern has been drawn and you must follow it until the end. Is that true? Of course not, but change is alien and we don’t like that. So you’re just stuck in this vicious cycle of self-sabotage that goes until you’re too tired to keep your head above water or you swim to safety.

My own swim has, of course, been easier said than done. I will get a few feet from the edge and as soon and something small happens outside of my norm, I go rushing right back. I would rather flail my arms and drown than face the new reality without the trauma. Trauma is what landed a lot of us in this position. In one way or another we were hurt by someone or something and now we’re scared to let go of the reigns of our fate. We MUST have a hand in it or else we go right back.

Trauma came in many forms for me, particularly from my toxic upbringing. It shaped the adult I am now and imbued so many horrible habits. The primary one I write to you about today is my intense affection for my own demise. My obsession with dying goes back a decade and some change. Looking in from the outside you may be horrified by my deep need to die. Hours of research night after night keeps me awake. I’m not necessarily going to go through with it but I want to. The thought of ending this life that has been so tormented gives me comfort. I am comforted by the idea of letting go of the sickness and falling in to something unfamiliar.

That’s change right? I’m scared of change, or so I’ve written in the above paragraphs. Suicide though? It is more of a control and spite thing. What’s on the other side scares me enough to keep my feet planted on the sandbar but not enough to stop the daydreaming. No one can stop me, no one can change it, and it is my decision alone. That fact keeps that tab always open in the browser of my mind. It’s just a click away. I am always one click away from opening it again for review.

This may sound unhealthy to some and while I realize this fact, I struggle with stopping it. Two years of therapy haven’t halted the thought that I’m not meant to be alive right now. My existence feels out of place, like I shouldn’t be here. Sound crazy? It most likely is. I truly do not feel as if it is my time to be here on this Earth. Some say it isn’t their time to go but I don’t think it’s my time to be. Maybe it all boils down to the scarring on my mind from years of intense trauma but it is still there, lingering. It never goes away and drives me mad so many late nights I lie awake just wanting to phase out of this realm. I’m ready to go home, to where I actually belong. I am tired.

It’s a lot of exhaustion, some control, and a good bit of spite. In my head I think if I die it will be to spite those that did this to me, the ones who ruined my outlook. The woman who broke the child she wanted so badly to have. I know if it goes through and one of my highly detailed plans works, I will be called a coward. No one has the right but when has that ever stopped the negative people? I’ll be where I want to be and won’t have to hear the bull anymore. It would be a great relief.

All of these factors are a poisonous mix that runs through my veins and gives me a great opportunity to swim back to the deep waters and start drowning again. With all that I haven’t been able to control, this much I can. My life is my choice and I do with it as I please. It is the one thing no one can hold over me any longer. I see them floating along happily and am content to stay just above the tide. It may change one day but for the time, I only know the struggle.