You dread the sound of your alarm even though you’ve been awake for hours, staring at your ceiling with tears quietly leaking from your eyes. Somehow, you’re going to have to leave your bed. You just want to curl up and stay safe and warm forever.
People say you have to take it one day at a time. But that doesn’t help. You can’t focus on the moment when you’re still sore from yesterday’s marathon. And it’s awfully demotivating to think that you’re going to have to keep running for the rest of your life.
They say it gets better. After months of a thunderstorm persistently raining in the back of your mind, life is only getting worse. You’ve tried it all. Therapy. Medication. Identifying cognitive distortions. Utilizing positive coping skills. Connecting to your support system. Sure, you’ve made some progress, but not enough to keep you afloat in the riptide of depression and the ocean of regrets. You want a bright, happy future, but to get there, you have to survive the present. And you’re not sure you can.
You want to get up and go through the day without running to the bathroom to cry. You want the sharp objects and chemicals to be removed from the lock boxes. You want to have a conversation with a friend without being treated like you’re about to shatter. You want so many things that everyone around you takes for granted. But none of your wishes seem realistic, and sometimes the weight of their impossibility starts to burden you.
The pain may all be in your mind, but that doesn’t make it any less real. You’re not seeking attention, or following a trend, or being melodramatic. You’ve got a medically diagnosed chemical imbalance in your brain that messes up your life.
You fish out the bottle of sleeping pills that your family doesn’t know about. You stashed it under your bed when you first feared that all of the harmful substances were going to be locked away. You reach for the water bottle on your nightstand. Holding the first tablets in your hand, your resolve wavers. Are you sure you want to do this? You can’t undo death.
No, you’re not considering others in the moment. You’re acting with your own interests in mind, or at least how you perceive them through your depressed haze. If you’re on fire, you’re not thinking about how your family will be upset if the flames consume you. In the moment, the only thing on your mind is how to end your misery. Physically, you were never burned, but your mind feels like it’s been reduced to ashes.
So, by definition, killing oneself or attempting to do so is selfish. But who can really pass judgment on that decision? Can you condemn suicidal actions without understanding the complicated and excruciating path leading to them? Is it moral to accuse the mentally ill of being self-absorbed?
Here’s the suicide lifeline for the U.S.: 1-800-273-8255. It’s free and confidential, and it saved my life. Recovery is a difficult and slow mountain to climb, but I’ve done it, and I promise that you can too.