My-i-cide

"You would know wouldn't you?

You extend your hand to those who suffer

To those who know what it really feels like

To those who've had a taste, like that means something"

 

NIN - I Do Not Want This

 

 

How has this haphazard, awkward little journal changed over the years? Slightly improved phrasing, vastly improved typing, more pictures, wordier salads, MMOs died out so I'm not talking much about them anymore... oh yeah and over the last 4-5 years I stopped making plans to kill myself.

This is weird.

Among blogging's unexpected benefits (aside from, in a general sense, howling into the void) has been the catharsis of being able to speak of my obsession with ending it all, if oft obliquely and to no-one in particular. Such outbursts became rather a fixture here in early years. Eventually I even lost two or three steady visitors who'd been checking back for my final note and finally got bored. Too bad. Guess I'm just not that dedicated to the noble craft of bloggery.

 

The morbidity though vastly predates the blog. I'd say to my teens but weirdly enough despite my violent self-hatred, occasional thoughts of snuffin' it didn't rise to prominence until my early twenties. Until then I'd somehow been convinced I'd die at 23 (and something important would happen to me at 26, and yes I did hold both those convictions in my head, with zero context, for several years.*) For various reasons and in tandem with a cycle of anxiety and depression, the fixation then grew, and faded for months at a time but always returned, and recurred on and off for over a decade. Suicidal ideation, they call it.

 

I've been putting off this discussion because I lack the skill the describe it, that mercilessly needling, shaming, self-flagellating mix of insistent impressions, catastrophism, depression, tics and twitches and reflexively reinterpreting everything around, every day, every train, every lake, every high-rise, every bottle of bleach by its pain and efficacy quotients. Once rooted in my interpretation of the world it colored every event.

A family member acts pissy? Must be angry at you. You're too much of a burden, kill yourself.

Failed a quiz? You're worthless, kill yourself.

Broke a plate? You're a waste of resources, kill yourself.

A boss, professor or clerk brushes you off? You're not worth anyone's time, kill yourself.

Locked yourself out of your car? You're worthless, kill yourself.

Wrote a story and it's shit? Further proof you should kill yourself.

Joint pain? You're such a worthless, feeble specimen, kill yourself.

Tooth pain? You deserve it for being so worthless, kill yourself.

Boss tells you you're too slow at work? You're worthless, kill yourself.

Someone compliments you? You're being mocked for being so worthless, kill yourself.

I dreamt about it, both figurately and literally, for years. It grew to where I'd find myself involuntarily mumbling to myself about killing myself when something bad happened. Which is to say when something happened.

Never could cobble together a satisfactory suicide note, either. If I were a better writer maybe I'd be dead by now. Nor did some "off" switch get flipped to remove the underlying thought pattern altogether, but for my own part I've discovered a world of difference between knowing dispassionately that I don't deserve to live and actively wanting to die. Not a distinction I ever thought I'd be making, but, well, here we are.

 

As I realized, belatedly, that such thoughts had not reappeared, that suicidal depression had gone off and hanged itself, I assumed fifteen years' worth of Hamlettish vacillation must needs have garnered me some insight into the matter. Insight should have occurred. Surely I would awaken one morn having braved realms beyond and return like a fairytale hero bearing the secret to life not-offin'-yerself everlasting.

 

No.

 

My reasons both for the obsession and its passing will not be your own. Moreover, the larger result defies analysis for its absurd concatenation of factors.

- My metabolism shifted abrubtly when I hit 30, complete with mood changes.

- I bought a bottle of melatonin (if you're that depressed, your sleep cycle's probably shot to hell and back and back again and back again again) and the first four or five pills hit heavily... then effected a permanent change so that now they're worse than useless to me for side-effects (incidentally, anyone know the going eBay rate for ~90 long-expired melatonin tablets?)

- On a related note, I also started popping the occasional multivitamin. A diet of frozen pizza and mountain dew probably wasn't helping matters. (My current can whispers it probably still isn't.)

- Shrinks/counselors can help, not because they necessarily have any great words of wisdom to offer, but just because they're paid not to gossip. Careful bringing up the S-word though; their profession has a habit of locking you away for that. As fates worse than death go, the cuckoo's nest qualifies.

- Patching up family relations. That was a big one. Takes years too.

- Giving up the lingering insane hope for a mate. Being an evolutionary dead end (whether for incompetence or unwillingness to play the game and submit to the status of draft animal) hurts, sure. Far worse though to play pretend.

- Venting via blogging also helped me organize my thoughts, even if it may not look thus on the page.

- Being openly weird around others instead of trying to mimic normal human behavior. Being regarded as a worthless, disgusting freak is still less stress than pretending not to be one. I don't fit in. Hell, I don't even fit out. Oh well, that's that. Hand me the pelt from under that rock.

- Being less invested in the zeitgeist. Relatively easy for me, being naturally introverted, but in the internet age flame wars still tend to worm their way into your skull.

- Arguably the biggest help came from COVID. Terrible as it may sound, those couple of pandemic years were the best of my life, being given license to do what I always needed: stay indoors and avoid human contact. Only then was I finally able to identify and gradually break the anxiety>depression cycle I'd lived with most of my life.

By no means an instant break. At least a year passed between realizing I'd gone months without fantasizing how the knife would feel finally digging through my forearms and later realizing I'd gone months without falling into weeks-long bouts of depressive funk. Maybe it wouldn't have taken me a decade if the topic were less of a taboo, if even dedicated forums didn't censor honest expression. Back when I was twenty, Trent Reznor and Christopher Baldwin helped more than anyone claiming professional expertise in such matters. A decade later, being able to ramble about it myself did the same. For another year or two afterward I trudged under a lingering fear of relapse to the old obsession, and the thought of turning suicidal again makes me want to kill myself. But that hasn't happened.

 

So.

Then it was and now it isn't. And to be honest, aside from proportionally less misery, I don't feel particularly different. The world's still shit. I'm still shit. Life's still pointless. Only the impetus to add one more pointless action to all the shit around has dissipated. And hey, maybe I'll live to see this entire idiotic species kill itself soon anyway.

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* Hey, grave-robbers exist, so not as illogical as it sounds!