This Is Not A Cry For Help

I have sui­ci­dal thoughts every now and then.

They don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly come out dur­ing bad times. It’s rather ran­dom. And it’s not like these thoughts involve plan­ing how I’m going to do it, I just think of how much sim­pler things would be if I weren’t liv­ing. A line from Being John Malkovich comes to mind:

[Consciousness] is a ter­ri­ble curse. I think. I feel. I suf­fer.

I think the root of my “suf­fer­ing” is the anx­i­ety I har­bour. Anxiety about social sit­u­a­tions, the state of the world, and oth­er triv­ial details that make life seem com­pli­cat­ed. I don’t want to have these thoughts, but I do. Then life gets even more com­pli­cat­ed, and I get more anx­i­ety. It’s a vicious cir­cle, until it becomes not about the anx­i­ety itself, but anx­i­ety about hav­ing anx­i­ety. I did­n’t real­ly iden­ti­fy it until I was in the car with Julie, feel­ing sick and sick­er until I almost asked her to pull over on the high­way.

All I want to do is stop think­ing. Suicide would be such an easy solu­tion, and as much as I dis­agree with the rea­sons for sui­cide in the first place, I hon­est­ly believe this is true.

It makes me scared that one day I’m going to make a stu­pid mis­take with a per­ma­nent con­se­quence.

I know I have a good life, I know how illog­i­cal these thoughts are, but that does­n’t stop them from reoc­cur­ring on a month­ly basis. I remem­ber hav­ing these thoughts as ear­ly as high school, although they were much more com­mon back then.

More fre­quent­ly, I have thoughts of muti­la­tion, about once a week. Not self-muti­la­tion, because there’s nev­er any­one specif­i­cal­ly doing it to me. It’s just me in black­ness, then a float­ing knife fly­ing into my wind­pipe, or an axe split­ting my head down the mid­dle, or an ice-pick in the back of the neck, or…well, you get the idea.

I’ve nev­er told any­one about this. Not because I’m ashamed of it, but because I did­n’t want any­one to wor­ry. Not even my clos­est friends know.

But har­bour­ing this fear and anx­i­ety, I’m slow­ly real­iz­ing, is dif­fi­cult. It’s pre­vent­ing me from enjoy­ing life. I’ve decid­ed to get some help; my first appoint­ment is in three days.

I’m tired of liv­ing with this.

19 comments

  1. @Uncle Joe — That makes sense, and makes me real­ize that I’ve been fight­ing these dark feel­ings instead of embrac­ing them. I’m not sure if I want to embrace them though, per­haps because I haven’t decid­ed if it feels “right” or not. Even I don’t under­stand my sit­u­a­tion, and I self-ana­lyze almost every hour of every day.

    @Pearl — It does make sense, although I’ve nev­er met some­one who’s felt “threat­ened” by such things, only con­cerned. I’m very glad that my friends fall into this lat­ter cat­e­go­ry too. Being threat­ened by such things sounds rather igno­rant.

  2. Jeff, I know what that’s like.

    I’m see­ing help now. It’s amaz­ing how won­der­ful it is to be able to see some­one who can give you clear cut solu­tions, and to once a week feel refilled and reviv­i­fied, and pre­pared to face the com­ing week.

    And the reviv­i­fi­ca­tion process begin to add up pos­i­tives slow­ly that help things turn around.

    Anxiety is crip­pling. It made me almost drop out of col­lege at least four times the first two years of school, almost made me kill myself, made me ruin rela­tion­ships… and it was tough going through the pan­ic attacks and lone­li­ness and heart­break alone, even when I was with a man, because no one under­stood what i was going through. My parents–the peo­ple whom I need­ed the most–denied my ill­ness and revoked my pre­scrip­tion cov­er­age so I could­n’t get meds because they said they weren’t nec­es­sary and they did­n’t want their daugh­ter to become an addict…

    I know what it is like to suf­fo­cate from all that.

    You are tak­ing the right steps. I send you my good thoughts.

    -MK

    PS. No mat­ter how long it takes, I’d still like to hear your opin­ion on what I wrote you about.

  3. Thanks for your sup­port. I have to ask though: if you say that that going to ther­a­py helps, why do you need to do it on a week­ly basis? Is it some­thing that isn’t cured?

  4. Because the dam­age my par­ents inflict­ed on me so that I suf­fer from anx­i­ety and low self-image takes years of work­ing at it to make it all bet­ter.

    It does make a dif­fer­ence, but it’s not a one time cure-all. It’s a process that rebuilds what years wore away (like ero­sion). Something lost takes time to be regained. Going con­stant­ly to ther­a­py is a lot bet­ter than try­ing pills. I had to com­bo it for awhile, but right now just the coun­sel­ing helps. Talking to some­one total­ly objec­tive and unre­lat­ed to my life and some­one who’s trained to see these sorts of prob­lems in oth­er peo­ple and give them sug­ges­tions and home­work for fix­ing them.

    Yes, I have home­work. And yes, it does help. Am I cured? No. Am I fight­ing for a bet­ter me? You’re damn right.

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