Day 05 - A time you thought about ending your own life.

Ohhhhh boy. This one will be long. 

My own death is something that is constantly on my mind. And when I say this, I promise I don’t mean to be melodramatic or sympathy-seeking: I know I have a mental illness that makes me think this way and I am working on recovering. I’m merely stating the facts as they are. These things that I feel aren’t rational, but they are 100% real. 

I get this sense that everyone in the world would be better off without me and that I’d be doing all those I love a favor by just deleting myself from existence… that my life is pointless, that I don’t mean a thing to anyone, that I’m worthless and do nothing but cause pain, and it goes on. I’ve honestly felt this way for a very long time. I feel a self hatred that is so deeply embedded in me that sometimes I want to end my life simply so I don’t have to live inside of this awful body anymore… and even though I’ve been steadily getting better for a long time, this is still a feeling that I face every day.

When I’m really low, I express this feeling by causing myself harm in a multitude of ways. Typically I starve myself, so that I can both harm myself and shrink the physical presence of the person I hate so much at the same time. Work my way to perfection one skipped meal at a time. And this is something I am still struggling with, as anybody who is close to me is well aware of. My depression and my eating disorder are very closely related and neither one can be recovered from without taking care of the other. 

I’ve also cut myself, slapped myself, written insults all over my skin with sharpie, made myself throw up, worn shoes that were too small on purpose so that my feet would bleed all day (I have scars), and taken handfulls of painkillers at a time simply because I knew it was bad for me. I know all of these things are bad, and I do them much less often than I used to, but the feelings that inspired these actions are still there. They’re under more control, but I still hear them whispering hateful things into my head. Especially at night. 

In a way, I’ve attempted suicide twice; once by slowly trying to starve myself to death, which landed me in the hospital for two weeks when I was 13. I realize that that isn’t exactly a suicide attempt but I know very well that my health and well being were not my concern and that I wanted to starve my pain away until there was nothing left. The second time was more of a direct attempt to end my life. My sophomore year. I grabbed my bottles of anti depressants and advil and swallowed more pills than I’d ever taken before, but then ended up calling Arthur’s roommate (who was my good friend at the time) sobbing because I had no idea what to do. I was scared and I had felt death smack me in the face just like it did when I was hospitalized; cold, sinking, eerie. Nothingness. I was being possessed by nothingness. 

Arthur’s roommate ended up flipping out and told me to stuff bread down my throat to coat the medecine. He then called Arthur who immediately ran back and tried any way he could to get ahold of me. At this point the rest of what happened is a blur; I’m not sure if I threw up the medication (this was when I was in my bulimic phase) or if I actually managed to eat enough bread to coat the medecine, but I remember a lot of crying, and I remember that my parents knew absolutely nothing of what was going on. I also don’t remember the exact amount of pills I took, so maybe it wasn’t enough to actually kill me in the first place, but regardless of what happened the attempt was unsuccessful. But I know that when I shoved the pills down my throat, all I could think about was how I wanted nothing more than to cease to exist. 

I haven’t made any kind of attempt to kill myself since. I’ve thought about it, I’ve planned it, I’ve imagined what would happen and how people would react if I did, and I actually dream about it quite often, but something inside me knows that suicide is never the answer. I think I have a hope rooted deep within me that knows someday I will know pure happiness and that I can defeat the voice in my head that tells me I deserve to die. I know I’ve survived this long for a reason, and the bigger a presence music has in my life the more motivation I find to hold on. I have too many dreams for my future now to end my chances of ever making them come true.

And I’m getting better.

Slowly, but surely.