This blog may be very hard to read and it is especially hard to write. I have never been so vulnerable and open, so I am terrified to post this. Bare with me.
After my first blog, I was on cloud 9. I was so happy and felt that I was making an impact. I was helping others while helping myself. I had so many people reach out and tell me they supported me. Some even told me that they related to my post and that it was exactly what they were feeling too. Although I was extremely excited, I felt myself going downhill again. This morning I woke up, dreading the idea of having to get out of bed and live my life. My thoughts were consuming me and I couldn't move. I sleep to get out of my own head, so that's what I did all day.
Two days ago, I started writing a blog about depression and suicide. The title was “The Quote That Kept Me Here.” It went on about my struggles with depression and intrusive thoughts which can be extremely crippling, and for some, even fatal. I wrote about a quote that I saw some years ago: Suicide doesn’t end the pain, it just passes it on to someone else.
For so long, that was the quote that kept me going. I saw this quote for the first time a few days after these intrusive thoughts almost took over. It was just before my senior year of high school. I was driving around listening to music when I started to feel myself going downhill very quickly. All I could think about was crashing my car and hoping for the best (or worst). Thankfully, I received a call from my mom asking where I was while I was pulled over in a parking lot contemplating my life. God works in crazy ways like that. Ultimately, I ended up in the emergency room because my mom was so freaked out.
Side note: I would not wish this hospital visit on anyone. They treated me like I was a crazy person. I was put in a different room than the regular ER rooms. This room had nothing. Literally a bed, a chair for visitors, and a monitor. They even had the emergency sprinklers on the ceiling covered. I had to put paper clothes on and give them all of my belongings...even my earrings. Later, I found out this was so I didn’t harm myself while in their care. In the end, you cannot hang yourself with paper clothes on a sprinkler that is covered, doesn’t really work out. They bombard you with questions, as if that would help in any way. When they finally determine that you are not an actual crazy person, they let you go and tell you to see a psychiatrist.
I have since felt like ending it all twice. I have random thoughts about it, but throughout my life, I have seriously thought that killing myself was the only option a total of three times. One being today. I tell myself that I could never do that, that I would never do that. But then I think to myself, probably every person who has killed themselves thought that too.
All the while I was feeling like this, I found out that a friend had done what I had been contemplating all morning.
Before today I sort of believed in the stigma that suicide was selfish, that my problems and thoughts would just be passed on to those who loved me.
I was wrong.
Yes, suicide greatly impacts those around you. They grieve and mourn and wish they could have done more. But the people that I have known that have taken their own lives were the most selfless people I have ever met. I didn’t know them as well as others did, but I knew enough about them to know that they were joyful, outgoing, kind, and only wanted to make others happy.
The pain they felt was real. So real, that they couldn’t avoid it anymore. They thought they were ridding the world of the burden that was themselves, which couldn't be further from the truth. It is hard to comprehend because usually the saddest people seem like the most happy people. They hide what they are feeling or what they are thinking because they don't want to put that on others. They don't want people to feel sorry for them, but at the same time, they just want someone to notice. Someone to tell them that it is going to be okay. It is a constant battle in their heads that never ends.
With all this being said, I encourage you to check on your happy friends. Check on the people that always check on others.
Also, I am okay. Please don't be freaked out by this post. But....it is okay, to not be okay.
