Being Suicidal

Tonight the tragic news of Caroline Flack passing was released, and ever since I found out I’ve been sobbing on the sofa. 8 years ago yesterday, the 14th February 2012 my uncle John committed suicide. January 2019 I attempted to take my own life by running into traffic after a night out and Christmas just gone on Boxing Day I took an overdose of all my pills, then two weeks later I tried to run myself into traffic again and was sectioned by the police on a 136 for endangering my life and was ultimately released back to my mental health team.

I’ve felt suicidal for a long time in my life, mostly intermittently as comes with the highs and lows of my borderline personality disorder and depression. But the last two years was the first time I’ve actively wanted to end my own life and take away all the pain I was feeling. I remember so vividly the first time I tried to take my life, I had been out with my friends on a night out and everything was fine, then all of a sudden i started to panic, and I sat there and thought “this is how the rest of my life is going to be - and I can’t cope with that” so I ran. I ran all the way to the dual carriageway hoping a car would hit me. Luckily that night I had my friends surrounding me and who were more than willing to tackle me to the floor until I was taken to A&E in a police van.

Being suicidal doesn’t mean walking around with a noose around your neck waiting for a good moment to strike, it doesn’t mean you can’t leave your bed sobbing and in a pit of depression. Sometimes it does but other times, it’s picking yourself up and carrying on with life despite feeling this worthlessness, hopelessness and all round shittiness throughout your entire being. Feeling like a complete burden on your family, on yourself and on society. Feeling as though nothing will take away the pain deep inside you, nothing will ever change how your feeling and no one will make the pain go away.

People say suicide is selfish, when in fact all you think about in that moment is how you’re doing everyone a favour. You don’t want your family and friends to see you struggle, see you not able to carry on, see you enduring months of therapies and medications and waiting lists only to feel the same hopelessness you started with. You want them to be happy, to live their life without you in it, because it would be better that way - or so you believe. You want to take away your pain but also take away the pain you’re causing your loved ones. Telling people who care about you that you no longer care for your own life is hard, and hearing it is even harder, no one wants to put people through that so they hide it away and keep it a secret until it festers and cannot be contained anymore.

Most people believe being suicidal means you’re ready to die, when in fact most of us who are suicidal just want the pain to go away. We don’t want to die, we don’t want to be gone forever we just want to kill the pain that’s rotting away inside of us and kill the part of us that is no longer living, that is festering inside causing physical pain to your every being.

People also believe that maybe “I could have said something” or that they “could have done something” when in reality, nothing anyone says in that moment when you want to end your life will ever make sense. Nothing is worth living the pain you’re living, the little things in life are meaningless, the joys life brings are just moments, and they’re not enough to make it all worth while. Trying to think that “it’ll all be okay” sometimes just isn’t worth the risk of what if it isn’t okay? What if it’s never okay again? Logically I know I will have ups and downs, that’s just part of my condition, but in that moment I feel as though I will never be okay again, that this haunting feeling of sadness will cloud over me forever.

 And that’s what I want to kill, the sadness, the pain, the unknowing of what the future holds. I don’t want to find out. I want to make it all stop, for me and for everyone around me who has to endure my mood swings, my outbursts, my never ending tears and rants and moans.

For anyone that got this far and actually cares - I’m doing better. I’ve started therapy and working on myself, I haven’t self harmed in over a year and I haven’t wanted to make another attempt on my life. I Started a new romantic relationship with someone who makes me incredibly happy, and I got offered a new job which makes me excited for the future and what it holds. I am safe but not from my thoughts and urges, but I’m working on it. And I’m here for anyone who needs help working on theirs too.

Meg x