wanting to die

 

courtesy of unsplash

It's not safe to talk about being suicidal. That I've known for as long as I have felt it: it needs to be kept a secret. No one will ever react in the way that you need them to. No one will ever let you calmly bounce your most insane ideas off of them ("I feel like I am trapped in a relationship where my boyfriend does not want to spend any significant time with me, but because of the housing crisis I feel like my only chance to escape is to kill myself"), because they will instead jump to EMERGENCY RESPONSE.

I know, because I too have been trained to respond in that way. During my degree, during my ASSIST training, during therapy training... if someone says they are suicidal, you assess the imminent danger, you lose sight of nearly everything else. The admittance becomes a physical object, swelling to huge proportions like Harry Potter's Aunt Marge, taking up all the space in the room until any hope of real help is lost. They want to know - do you want to die? Do you have a plan?

I've never, ever, ever to my knowledge admitted to having a plan. I don't know if I've ever even admitted to a long term therapist that every day I just want to be dead. It scares them, it steals their focus, and it leaves me unable to trust that the person in front of me, like everyone else, sees me.

The only places I've ever really been shown appreciation for my existence, for my efforts, is work or school. This was still enough to give me hope in high school and university, that there was a future out there for me, somewhere, where I could really fit in. But after I graduated in 2019 I quickly realized, outside of school I am a no one. No one wanted to hire me, no one wanted to see if I could do anything productive. It was a really bad time for me, realizing that I had been staking all my dreams on the hope that I still had an untapped potential. I did not.

I digress. I want to talk about my feelings of suicide, because I don't feel safe reaching out to a single friend to speak on it. (And I've never felt that I was safe to talk about my feelings and needs with my partner, none of them.) The realization that I can't talk about the thing that hangs the most over my life like a cloud of pain makes me want to delete my social media, stop anyone from being able to contact me. I guess what I want is for them to realize that I'm gone. That I need help. I don't want them to worry, but I want them to listen. To care. And since they don't seem to, I isolate myself. I really don't believe that anyone cares about me, deep down. I realize that my old friends love me, they've invited me to weddings, they've asked me to visit them, but they are concerned first and foremost with themselves and their own lives, and they are also far away from me physically. Here, where I am now, I have no one. When I was single it was easy to pretend, because I could date three or four people at once and stay very busy. Go on a lot of adventures. I miss it so much. One thing my current relationship has always, always been, is boring. Adventure is NOT my partner's forte. Unless it is his own adventure that he is off doing on his own.

So I've been resentful. And frustrated. And suicidal. For 46 days I saw with the resignation that I was just going to kill myself, and I stopped caring. I slept a lot. I didn't speak much to my partner. He didn't even seem to notice that much - he just withdrew from me more than ever. Here is a perfect example of how poor mental health can sort of fold in on itself and leave you so alone - and the people who are mentally fine will blame it completely on you, because you weren't pleasant to be around. I'm not saying I'm not ashamed at my suicidal unpleasantness, but I do wish people who are well would take some of the blame here. it's well-deserved. It should be more on the well person to tolerate some withdrawal, to check in on the person they "love" and make sure things are OK. My partners have never. Only friends have.

No one can recover from severe depression from feeling like they aren't worthy of being alive if the people around them reinforce that idea. When you avoid me because I'm hurting, it makes the hurt so much worse. It all compounds.

And so, here I am, 47 days later now, really not wanting to die, but preferring death to this "life" I've had so far. I just can't take the pain and isolation. Last week I decided I didn't want to die, I wanted to change things instead, to get better. I told my partner I couldn't go on with him never spending time with me. I just don't feel like he respects me as a person in my own right. I feel like he expects me to "shut down" when he isn't around. He expects me to spend time with him doing things with his friends, things he wants to do, but he doesn't expect to do the same for me. 5-6 nights a week he is off, doing his stuff, leaving me completely alone. Weekends are especially bad. I want to leave, but I feel like I can't. I can't afford to live on my own. How PATHETIC - two degrees, never a break in my employment history, childfree, and yet I can't afford to live in an apartment alone. I can't afford to buy a house. I can't even afford to move back to Newfoundland. The only way out feels like death. Literally. But haven't I suffered enough? Haven't I spent enough days crying until my eyes swelled shut, wishing I had parents or anyone who I felt securely connected to? 

But I have no one. And now I don't even want anyone. I just want to die. I wish I could tell someone.

Sad Girl Diary will always be free to read. But if you enjoyed this post, you can support the diary by submitting your own work.


Contribute to the Sad Girl Diary by submitting a contact form or by emailing sadgirl@sadgirldiary.com