I Am Not “The Problem” for Having Suicide Ideation, The Problem Is The World We Live In
This is entirely my own experience, contemplations and questions as a result of my own life. I feel sharing this side of myself, one that’s stigmatized frequently, that so many of us are stigmatized for, can be/has been cathartic.
CW: suicide, suicide ideation, self harm
“Friedrich Nietzsche stated, “The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it, one gets successfully through many a bad night.” This is not to say that chronic suicidal thoughts are harmless. The more someone thinks of suicide, the more they might get used to the idea, thus dissolving their inhibitions and fears around suicide,” — by Stacey Freedenthal, Understanding The Person With Chronic Suicidal Thoughts
Over half my life, I have had long lasting intense bouts of not wanting to be here. And here as in alive. Suicide has often shown itself in different masks to me but the deep core feeling remains the same each time: I want to die.
Is that dramatic? Mmm. No. Am I depressed? Mmm. Yes. And a lot of other things too. Am I medicated? Mmhmm to that too. Have I been in therapy? Mhhm Mhhhm Mhhm. We can keep asking the questions, just know: yeah…I’m trying…and sometimes you can do everything within your means and it still feels like not enough but you keep trying. But also. Hear me out for a second. I think it would be pretty fucking relieving if we all admitted that long term or chronic suicide ideation is a thing so many of us have had to or currently struggle with.
I mean look at the world around us…? We are on a rock floating in space while colonialism ravages it, capitalism tanks it, and we are told to keep working as the cost of living increases. This isn’t a manifesto to say go off into the night and do it. Please don’t take this as the point of what I’m about to write. It’s just I have spent years convinced from non profits, TV, movies, social media, that you don’t talk about suicide until it becomes a problem. But there’s never an acknowledgement of the fact that: me being suicidal isn’t THE problem, it isn’t something inherently wrong with me, or a fuck you to everyone around me, THE problem is the conditions I’m living under. Does that mean I’ll stop feeling suicidal with the fall of capitalism and a liberated society? Probably not. But I do know it hit different when my material needs are covered.
I know there are folks who do not have people to talk to when it comes to suicide, who feel it’s a personal failure, who are afraid to admit it to themselves, who feel like they’ll be “too needy” or “too much” — it’s isolating as hell. Furthermore, I understand the hesitancy to make anyone aware of feeling/being suicidal for a myriad of reasons, but I’m going to go with the first: hospitalizations and institutionalizations are terrifying for we have absolutely no agency. Given we are always told to call the suicide hotline or go in front of a therapist or psychiatrist, many folks experience loads of trauma before AND after admitting to suicide ideation, especially if there is a plan or thoughts of a plan — which often results in a 72 hour hold that can cause even greater trauma. Or many people don’t remember how they wound up in a psychiatric hold (various reasons can be behind that i.e. a blackout). I worked at a teen to teen crisis hotline in my youth. I remember the calls where we would have to keep kids on the phone so their location could be traced, so that an ambulance could go take them to a hospital in the middle of a Friday night.
The glaring problem with suicide intervention, crisis intervention as a whole, is that it is often abrupt, invasive, can catch us off guard, we — the survivors- lack autonomy, and it’s seen as a one time thing — meaning it will never happen again. Two of the biggest driving forces when I’m feeling suicidal are: being choice-less and helpless. I think having the experience I’ve had working at a hotline a decade ago has resulted in having light bulb questions like: what the fuck kind of irony is it that I was actively suicidal while working at this teen to teen hotline? Why did I feel like I couldn’t say anything at the very place that could maybe help me? Why did I hide my self injury? I was among counselors. I was among people I could trust.
I still don’t have the answer: part of it was shame, another part was me not wanting my family to find out how fucked up I was, and more recently I’ve asked myself: was it watching and also talking to kids who wound up trusting myself and other listeners only to have the cops show up, a mental health crisis team show up, seemingly out of thin air? Did I feel I was betraying them? “a mad friend is better than a dead friend,” just didn’t feel like a good enough platitude for me back then and now.
I’ve had a long time to think since little me was working in that hotline room. Have endured some heavy duty shit and only now am I starting to ask: What is an intervention? What constitutes a crisis — isn’t it different for each person? What happens beyond helping someone for “that one time they wanted to die”? What is the after care?
To zoom out. The problem isn’t me having constant suicide ideation. The problem is that we don’t consider: crisis isn’t a one time event, it’s the current state we are living in and attempting to navigate. The world we live in isn’t sustainable for maintaining life, for maintaining health, for maintaining anything other than the circulation of capital. No matter how many prescriptions a psychiatrist can write for me, there’s simply no prescription for grief, for suffering, for oppression, there is no way to medicate or self soothe our way (whether self medicating or with the help of a psychiatrist) up out of our material conditions.
While this is such a morbid and sobering reality to acknowledge daily, I still make the choice to take my medication because it quiets those thoughts down some. I’m also aware I got lucky with a good psychiatrist who diagnosed me thoroughly, one I can admit some dark ass feelings to, and he isn’t ready to pounce and send me away to the nearest hospital against my will. I mean to this day, I use the skills I learned to self soothe in therapy. Especially using a “grounding memory” which is one of me in swim school with my grandmother while I sit in my shower, gripping my shoulders with closed eyes repeating, “then is not now, then is not now.” And yes, all these things have helped immensely. I will never downplay that. But what I’m saying is that even the best therapists and psychiatrists cannot change the material conditions of their clients. And we all know within the field of mental health (medicine in general), there tends to be a huge amount of invalidation, or racism, or ableism, or unsolicited advice, which results in a “why the fuck am I here trying over and over and keep failing over and over,” to play on repeat in our minds.
The problem is not suicide, making it an individual problem is one of the core issues. The problem is there’s not enough support to keep people here, whether pre or post suicide intervention, pre or post suicide ideation. There’s hardly any resources that are available to vulnerable populations where we can genuinely feel safe. Safety meaning: not being threatened by the state. And yet, a majority of “professional care,” means bargaining with the state while also knowing how many Black people have been murdered by cops during a “wellness check.” So many of us often feel left at a crossroads and suspended in some sort of “damned if you, damned if you don’t,” which yet again, causes choice-less and helpless-ness to arrive.
I’ve dealt with a fair share of suicidal folks in my time as a teen and also as an adult. Have walked people off the ledge of themselves and created safety plans together. I try but I am not a professional, I have no desire to be a messiah, or Father Time, I know my ass will often be thinking these same thoughts folks have expressed to me and have done so since I was a kid. I am aware there’s only so much one person or even a support system can do.
I am often saddened that in order to receive the help we need, especially for colonized people, where we feel safest: we often have to create it for ourselves within the communities we belong to. Whether it’s: a guide on “here’s how to get through being put on a 51/50,” or attending a support group, or being able to talk about suicide without being interrupted by some New Age toxic positivity bullshit savior complexes but rather responding with an: “I feel you” and someone is bearing witness for us to unload, making the weight of existence lighter.
I know that there’s no escaping having to interact with this system, we are forced to do it in nearly every facet of our lives. I also know that there’s no escaping the large need for communal care networks and peer to peer support to be created. Shit, I’m still figuring out how to do that in my own life, so who am I to go wagging my finger at anyone else and say, “communal care, communal care, communal care.”
Lately, a lot of what I write isn’t necessarily meant to come to any conclusion but rather present more questions, such as: How do we simultaneously focus on surviving the violence of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism while also fighting against it?
How do we strike a balance of how much we should or should not interact with the state when it comes to a crisis?
I’m not saying there isn’t work being done surrounding these questions, there always is, and so many people of past and present whose work often goes unnoticed. These are just the questions that zoom around as planets in the orbit of my mind.
I want to know how I am expected to live in a world that is trying to kill me, how am I supposed to “get help” when it’s not affordable, how do I stop “those” thoughts from creeping in? What happens when sometimes “those” thoughts don’t bother me or scare me or even feel invasive but rather trickle in because I am musing on the few things I’m in control of in my life? I want to know why the state refuses to do jack shit…And I know why with that. It’s just…then how am I the one who is supposed to be seen as selfish, or ungrateful, for having a constant urge to become nothing but a memory some days? How is that helpful to even describe anyone whose committed suicide in the past? Here, I understand our survival doesn’t matter to anyone but each other — but still, I have a lot of questions and hardly any answers. I write this in hopes of starting a conversation.
The most I can honestly do is share what has helped me, hope it helps someone else or resonates, and that’s really it, that’s the unfortunate truth of it all:
-I know a huge part of why I am still here, the result of me actively choosing to be alive each day is because I don’t live under the weight of secrecy. Whether it’s sharing by writing this, or with my journal, poems, my loved ones, professionals, and friends. I remain open. Admitting something to another being is different than the thought rattling inside your brain and feeling the crushing awareness in solitude during a global pandemic.
-There are mornings where I immediately know that in order for me to get to the next day, it’s going to be one of those where just getting to the next hour is a “whew, a relief” — usually, I read fiction, watch something that can transport me somewhere, write, write, write, whether poetry or fiction or in my journal — just write, make a playlist, listen to music, call a friend and ask if we can talk for awhile, sitting outside with a friend, busying my hands — for me — my hands have got to be busy.
-From late February to late April of this year, I was intensely suicidal nearly every day. It did get to the point I was scaring myself. I questioned if I was destined to always be this way. Thought of a lot of musicians from my teenage-hood who died of suicide and thought: they tried so hard for decades and it just wasn’t enough. I do somewhat accept as long as we live in this world, suicide ideation will not be running short. I reached out to my psychiatrist and consulted about adding another antidepressant to my regiment (still under consideration on my end and I’m taking my time). I told my best friend. Who didn’t shame me. I told a family member. Who didn’t shame me. I talked about it when I could. Vocalized a lot of feelings surrounding the death itself, something many around me are used to cuz I had cancer for almost 4 years. And I downloaded this random app I heard about on social media called Finch and taking care of a little fucking bird in my phone and crossing off goals like “just be,” or “take a shower,” and writing down little bullet points about how I was feeling: morning, afternoon, evening, and night. And doing little breathing exercises. And listening to soundscapes. There’s also a very sweet Discord and Facebook group. So. All of it did actually help. Did it fix everything? No. However, it alleviated the weight enough for me to make it to each day.
-Stretching and meditation — I know this isn’t for everybody and may sound head-ass to some. I meditate in front of an altar for my ancestors consistently. I recently realized stretching was something I used to do from age 11–18 years old to cope with astronomical levels of stress.
-My meds, support groups, sleeping
-Crying, even if it’s days on end, which can truly feel so agonizing but it helps me. Again, this is what helps me so not meant to be universal or law.
-Letting myself be comforted — I unfortunately am full of a lot of pride but I also am learning to not be ashamed of any aspect of my life including suicide ideation — yeah, it’s scary, but it’s been worthwhile.
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I will close with the words that inspired me to consider writing these words down and publishing them:
“And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.”
-Audre Lorde, A Litany for Survival
