So, this is an essay/article I have been considering writing for a while, and since May is Mental Health Awareness Month, it seemed like now would be a good time to try it out. I just want to preface this with letting you know this is not a cry for help, I’m not looking for pity, and I’m also not seeking advice. I am sharing this because I feel like this is a perspective that I don’t see a lot online or in media, and maybe someone out there will feel less alone, or perhaps someone will see things in a new way.
AND HERE IS YOUR TRIGGER WARNING: What follows includes topics such as depression and suicide. Please do not read if these subjects make you uncomfortable. If you need assistance, text NAMI to 741-741 and connect with a trained crisis counselor to receive free, 24/7 crisis support via text message.
I am suicidal. Not actively, but I am. At one point I was actively suicidal, and not in a testing the waters kind of way, but in the secretly researching ways to kill yourself. Late at night while my husband was sleeping and standing alone in the kitchen fighting the urge to take a kitchen knife to myself suicidal.
I have issues. Many issues. Looking back, I suspect I have always been clinically depressed, but life was stable and so I would have depressive bouts, but nothing too serious. However, you take that person and start piling on chronic pain conditions that defy diagnosis, and well, you first become a full-time clinically depressed person and when nothing changes, you become suicidal.
Luckily for me, antidepressant medications have worked. It is true what people tell you, antidepressants do tend to dull you, so you don’t feel the highs of happiness, but it is a good trade off for not actively researching your own death. The thing is, other than being medicated, nothing has changed. If I stop taking my medication, I will eventually slide back into being suicidal. On the two occasions I forgot to take my medication I had total emotional meltdowns.
So, it is not like I WAS depressed and suicidal, I AM depressed and suicidal. I do not think about it in the past tense, every day I acknowledge that I AM suicidal.
If you feel suicidal, GET HELP. There are absolutely ways to help you not feel that way. You can start here.