Reading over this thread, I feel a change in perspective. It might be short-lived but maybe that's only because this is just online, and I can't talk to any of you face-to-face -- in the blink of an eye I'm just alone in the basement and it's back to the same old pain over and over and over again.
But that's because of the lack of complete communication. It isn't because this change in perspective can't have any truth to it.
I feel like I have a reason to live when I can see purpose in my suffering. I can share my experiences with other people -- people who actually understand, and are willing to share -- and that doesn't make the pain go away, but it takes away the pain of purposelessness.
And that pain of purposelessness is what's been filling my head with suicidal ideation lately. I've mostly lived with suicidal ideation and/or recurring thoughts about death for most of my life. I've been to so many wakes and funerals, the first one being my grandpa's when I was 3. I remember reaching out and going to touch his face, but I hesitated. A classmate of mine committed suicide when he was -- if I remember right -- 16. I was a senior in high school.
I thought at first that I had no right to feel so upset and actually traumatized by the wake, with tons of people crying everywhere, and seeing him in that casket, because I hardly knew him at all. But I don't think that anymore at all. We're all human beings.
I feel like I was irreversibly affected by seeing him in that casket. 16 years old, suicide. I'd thought about suicide for such a long time by the time I was a senior already -- seeing that just made me realize that there is a follow-up reality to the ideation. It actually happens. I'm not going to say the method but I was thinking about killing myself today, and that memory just came back. It makes me step back and think about what's going on there: it's real.
The pain is real, yes. But there was just this awful finality that day. I think I was so deeply affected by it because of my connection to him via suicidal ideation, whereas I've only thought about it, he followed through on it.
The memory is burned into my brain. I remember seeing him in that casket. I remember how I felt. I felt completely destroyed on one level, and on another level I felt completely dissociated. I remember just staring into space after going outside and standing by myself.
In a lot of ways I've been exposed to death throughout my entire life. My grandpa recently fell and broke his hip and is in the hospital now. I visited him with my mom a few days ago. My dad said he was hallucinating and thrashing around, talking about stuff from when he was a gunnery instructor in WWII. When I got there he looked mostly asleep. He looked just like my great aunt did when I visited her in the hospital when she was dying.
To tie this all together: I don't know anyone on this forum yet, but I feel like you're all my brothers and sisters. I have a family here, just by knowing that there's understanding here -- that there's a sense of *BELONGING* for people who feel so broken and destroyed.
That's what makes me feel strong enough to keep going. It isn't my strength: it's completely and entirely dependent on the people here -- all the people who feel like me, wherever they are, all the people who've been through similar things as me. All the people who can belong together.
I feel suicidal when I lose that sense of belonging. It's also very easy to lose that sense of belonging for me, having been so isolated for such a long time. It's like everyone I talk to says "people your age go through all these things" and that this is just normal early-adulthood stuff. That's not even most of it; it's just a complete misunderstanding, I don't know. I feel hopeless about having any kind of life or ever being in a relationship and if life is just about getting food, clothing and shelter for yourself, it's no wonder I've thought about killing myself so many times.
But this is a place of interdependence. That's how I see it, anyway. Maybe we're all here because we aren't strong enough to live on our own; maybe we're all here because it's impossible for anyone to be strong enough to live on their own. We need each other. Suicidal ideation for me always seems to have arisen, and continues to arise, from that lack of a sense of purpose: I dropped out of college, I've never had a job, I feel like no one I know actually knows me, and I have years and years of traumatic experiences that I had in isolation -- no one's witnesses my suffering and so I can't get a diagnosis or support and I hear "you're fine" "nothing's wrong with you" and "you just need to get a job" and the stress of not being able to meet people's expectations is driving me over the edge.
But there aren't expectations here, aside from one expectation I see: to feel free to share your experiences with other people, and to feel free to offer advice or help or support or encouragement whenever you feel like it.
Talking like this, connecting like this...it makes me feel like I'm more than a defective machine from the factory that tune-ups and oil changes aren't helping to make me into a 'productive member of society.' It makes me feel like I'm not worthless and useless, or like I'm just a Raggedy Andy doll having its stuffing ripped out and being dragged through the mud.
The suffering doesn't go away, but feeling a sense of purpose seems to clear away the suicidal ideation. I think one of the strongest human drives is to belong; it's no wonder that so many people with so many problems would want to commit suicide -- most of the time, it's hard to find people who understand, and treat us like human beings. And if you as a human being can't belong to this world, but only you as a commercialized machine or work-force-robot model #343093098034890 -- what's the point in living?
I can tell something's right here, because I'm crying, and I haven't cried in a long time. No one can see my face right now. No one can see my eyes. But without even hearing a single word come back to me as I type this, I feel connected. In this little world of understanding and belonging, I feel like there's a safe haven from the big world of misunderstanding and abuse. It's like a little den or foxhole full of people in the middle of a dinosaur raid -- everyone's safe underground as you can hear all the giant steps and thuds racing by right overhead. I know the big world is still there but knowing that it isn't the only thing there is comforts me.
Maybe for me, suicidal ideation has always come from that lack of a sense of belonging. Pleasure and pain are both hell on earth when you have absolutely no one to share them with. So I guess I should make a point of remembering that I do belong somewhere, during all the times I'm alone and feel like I don't belong anywhere.
I don't want to die; I just don't want to live in the big world. The little world with people like you is where my home is. A place to belong and be validated and to be able to share who you are without feeling like you have to meet a million expectations and do a million things you hate doing just to get by.
The little world -- so maybe for me, my metaphorical thinking is mistaken. Maybe all the images in my mind of all the different ways I could kill myself aren't born out of a death wish, but just being unbearably homesick.
