What's It Like to Be Suicidal?

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I have to be careful here. Not about oversharing, as that’s an intended side-effect of this blog, but about glamorizing suicidal thought. I’ll start with a necessary safety message:

If you’re having suicidal thoughts, please reach out to someone or contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK(8255) or call 911.

Being suicidal is dying every day while feeling more and more shame for wasting everyone else’s oxygen because I’m too cowardly to end my life. I’d mentally cut piece of myself off every morning. An offering in supplication to the beast of depression in my mind. Not to spare me another suicidal thought, but to finally give me the necessary push to do what my sick mind felt needed doing.

In my case, the beast was never satiated, which led to a daily struggle of suicidal thinking that I expected would last my entire life. Some would call that a blessing — in that I never followed through in my attempts. I call it a cruel joke because living while desiring death is excruciating.

Think being slowly lowered into molten lead a centimeter at a time, only for the entire process to start over when you gain consciousness. This is why depressed and suicidal people like to sleep. Our conscious reality is an apocalyptic hell-scape, and unconsciousness is a welcome oblivion. It’s the one, reliable refuge from the pain. This is why I agree with the idea that most suicidal individuals do not want to die; they want their pain to end. Since sleep is a temporary suspension of pain it’s not that far of a jump to get to death as a permanent solution.

The pain of thinking about suicide is its own thing. I’ll argue the worse pain is the shame accompanying these thoughts. To actually say the words: “I’m thinking about suicide” is a Herculean effort. When in that state I was convinced I had to hide my thoughts because of course I did!

Telling anyone you’re suicidal feels as socially unacceptable as streaking through a funeral procession. It’s just not something a person does in polite society, and there will be severe consequences for those that flaunt custom. The fear kept me quiet.

I was afraid I’d be locked up in a hospital indefinitely for the crime of having thoughts I did not want to have in the first place. Guilty for something that was entirely not my fault, and that I battled daily. I thought I should get a freaking parade for my efforts, not a bunch of locked doors and questioning doctors.

Suicidal pain - check. Stigma pain - check.

There is one more leg on this infernal stool, and that is the pain of burdensomeness.

More specifically, perceived burdensomeness, which brings us back to my earlier observation of wasting oxygen. When I was acutely suicidal, I didn’t look at my death as a bad thing. In fact, it was a good thing for the people I loved. They wouldn’t have to keep living in a world with me in it. I believed my very existence caused my family and friends pain, and the only acceptable course of action was eliminating my presence in their lives.

Even though we don’t want to admit it, this kind of thinking makes a lot of sense. Parents have died to protect their children. Soldiers have dived on grenades to save their platoon. My dad said one of the worst experiences he had as an new father was when I had to get my blood drawn by a finger prick, and when the needle broke my skin I wailed: “it hurts!” He was in more agony than I was because his little boy was hurting and he could do nothing. Also, doctors don’t give the parents a lollipop for bravery.

As an ultra-social species, we will, when sufficiently motivated, move to sacrifice our wellbeing so the people we most care about have a chance at living. The suicidal mind takes that natural predisposition and turns the hurting individual into a threat. I thought I was hurting my closest people just by breathing. As if the awareness of my existence was a claymore mine primed to go off at the slightest increase in pressure. This is why the insensate comment: “think about the people who love you,” typically falls on deaf ears. By considering suicide, I am already thinking about the people who love me!

If you imagine waking up to feeling the deep cut of a suicidal thought, then the punishing blow of fear, and finally, the acid drip of perceived burdensomeness, you gain some sense of what it is like to be suicidal. I hope that this can increase your feelings of empathy toward someone you are concerned about, and if you wind up having a conversation about their thoughts of self-harm then I recommend the following steps put forward by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention:

Have an honest conversation

  1. Talk to them in private

  2. Listen to their story

  3. Tell them you care about them

  4. Ask directly if they are thinking about suicide

  5. Encourage them to seek treatment or contact their doctor or therapist

  6. Avoid debating the value of life, minimizing their problems or giving advice

If a person says they are considering suicide