Trigger warnings: depression, suicide, suicidal thoughts, sexual abuse, rape, detailing of wounds.
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I had hoped to make this post sooner but was unable to. This rips through me, feels incredibly close to home and heartbreaking. I'm not sure how much I'll share but some of this stuff is only known by singular people in my personal life, but it could be important for members here right now. It might be rambling in parts but hopefully some might relate to elements of it.
I'll start by echoing a post of mine in an Etika thread before this:
Which sounds harsh, but hopefully everyone can now understand the severity with which we're talking. There should be no tolerance for it, it's disgusting and it costs lives.
I have been both the person suffering, and have tried to help others who suffer.
If you're any age and can relate to Etika's last video, general desperation or find yourself apart from the world drifting – it gets better. It can, it will, it does.
I wish I could show you how far down the well I was, so you understood the tears with which this ink is mixed. I've been to the top of multi-story car parks and stood on the edge, I've sat under trees in the forest crying wondering which I might hang from soon. Every week I drive over a bridge well-known for suicides and every time I do there's still a glint within me that asks if the world would be better if I did. I don't think it ever leaves you, but now I have a list of things that pop up when I think that, reasons to stay alive. Some days that list is shorter than others, but it's always there now and a number of those items are strong enough to where I don't have to worry any more. Which is why it is so important to me that you understand that it can get better, because there were many times where I didn't have that list in the road until now.
During my time at secondary school (ages 11-16) I was both sexually abused at the start, and I was bullied on a daily basis for close to four of the years. My offense was that I was born with ginger hair and needed glasses. Mix that with being pretty shy and coming off the back of everything sexual abuse brings, and I was a prime vector of attack. We're talking being spat on, kicked between the legs, pushed down flights of metal stairs, poled on the bus, punched, kicked, whatever. Every day of school, for years. Several occasions I was threatened with knives. Nothing happened to the bullies because "boys will be boys" and because it wasn't racially motivated.
So I grew up with an irreconcilable level of self-hatred, shame, guilt and a strong perception that the issue was me. After all, I was being broken on a daily basis purely for features of my body I was unable to change. It wasn't immediate, it wasn't overnight but with time that settled and it settled deep. I became an incredible liar and – as with many people suffering from depression – managed to perfect the wearing of masks. Every day I went home and smiled at my parents, said all was fine before going upstairs and breaking down into the pillows. Occasionally I couldn't make it to the bedroom before that, and my parents would see a crack of what was happening. I'd summarily dismiss it as being solely whatever had managed to escape at the time, before going upstairs and wondering how I could get a gun in the UK to put to my head.
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Trigger warnings: depression, suicide, suicidal thoughts, sexual abuse, rape, detailing of wounds.
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Which is another thing: suicide isn't taken seriously until it's committed to.
Unsuccessful suicide attempts are well known as being disregarded as attention seeking (for which I'll let the irony escape for now) but there's a further subset to where if you've only considered it but taken no action toward it then you really aren't being serious. Which needs to be challenged. Thinking of ending your own life isn't a simple one. People might want to die but few want to die in agony. This is about not living, not dying itself. If you jump from a bridge you risk tearing your body apart but surviving and living life crippled with zero ability. Pills are simple but seem horrific in their action except when coupled with alcohol, but again – you read too many stories about people surviving and coming too in the hospital having fucked their organs. A jump off of a tall building seems like the best way to go but the duration of the fall means you could regret it and be unable to reverse the decision, the same is true of hanging and bleeding out. A gun seems like the easy solution but then how do you find out how to do it well, because if you botch that then you're back with the above. Trains are the immediate solution but then you're impacting another, random, person with your already-waste-of-space life. I have spent a lot of time considering these things in the past.
This is what suicidal thoughts entertain, and it turns out that the human body is quite resilient. That dying is scary even when suicidal and that it's not a case of walking into the local supermarket and picking up the cheapest "erase me" kit. If you're not taking suicidal thoughts seriously before they become actions, then you need to change your mentality. There is no bar that people have to hit before they're "actually suicidal", and any of those barriers could crumble if a signfiicant additional blow is dealt to them in life.
Depression is your mind working against you
Why didn't they seek help? Why did they refuse help? Why did they just push people away that were trying to help? All of these show a massive ignorance towards what depression is like, and that's ok. We need to educate people, and mental illness is a conversation that has long been taboo. So ignorance is expected, but you have to be able to put aside your affront and recognise it's nothing compared to the inner turmoil the person is going through. Depression isn't logical and trying to approach it like it is won't help. When someone can't conceive their own self worth it's near impossible to believe that others can. Depression is your mind telling you that you deserve to feel this way. Depression is your mind telling you that help can only ever be temporary because you're the problem. Depression is your mind telling you to jump, because it's the only way to ensure nothing continues. It is your mind doubting every solution and labouring every negative, it is you telling you to kill yourself. It is the insidious trickery that forces you to live under that weight.
Thankfully I learned to break from it, and you can too. Councilling helps. Talking to people complete disconnected from your life helps.
When I was 16 I placed a bet with my friend at the time for £10 that I wouldn't live until 30. I couldn't see it. I was scraping by day by day purely for others and I couldn't conceive of a happy life so far into the future. It wasn't even dramatic, it was just a certainty to me.
Now I'm two months into being 30, and it's not been an easy road but I have that list and I love it. I have reasons to live outside of dependencies, I have things I love about life. I want to see, I want to travel, I want to experience. I'm in a good job, with a loving partner, in our own home. I live in a beautiful part of the country. We're getting a dog this year, and plan to get married and have children.
However none of that is what turned it around. I am not alive because of my SO (though she has been intrumental in her support of things I've shared). I am not alive because of my job. I am not alive because I have a nice house and money. These are all reasons I enjoy life, but they aren't what saved me. I am what saved me, and you are what will save you. Every day is a win. Every breath is a win. Every time you push those thoughts down enough to continue, it's a win. Every time you crack a little off the shell to let people know how you feel, is a win.
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Trigger warnings: depression, suicide, suicidal thoughts, sexual abuse, rape, detailing of wounds.
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Perspective is what allows you to win, and it's what depression robs you of.
Talk to people who know nothing about you. Tell them. Be kind to yourself. Death is final and not going anywhere, so pushing through another day to see what it brings is an overwhelming success. Keep doing that and you will climb out of that well. Even if it seems like there's no footholds, they will come. You'll never lose the memory of being in it, but it's that that will give you the strength to resist it whenever it whispers to you. You just need to keep winning long enough to realise that you and that voice inside your head are not the same, and that you are the greater of the two.
Not everyone gets to that stage though.
Every time I think about this I cry. Every time I talk about it my voice cracks. Every time I feel an immense hole in my heart. It's been 13 years and I can still feel the warmth of the blood on my hands. This is about an incredible woman I once knew, who we'll call Amy here. Amy had been my friend for years and had supported me throughout. Though I could never appreciate it at the time, and only later gained the perspective to do so fully, she was intstrumental in my own survival. She was gentle and warm person but prone to the 'bad lads'. She was also extremely attractive which meant the bad lads went for her, and it meant a ridiculous amount in her acknowledgement of me at the time. She came from an abusive home and was truly a diamond in the rough, so she empathised with a lot of the hurt I was going through and never shied away from spending time with me when her peers would reject me.
Over the years she grew less confident and more timid. She was raped by a boyfriend, abused by another and constantly found herself only in relationships where she was little more than a plaque to her partner. I helped where I could but she withdrew signficantly over time. She started to self-harm, drink excessively and other things that numbed her pain. It killed me to see, but it was impossible to break when I lived miles away and she kept going home to an environment that wasn't safe and detrimental to her health.
One day at 9:37pm I received a text message. I'll never forget the words:
I'm scared. I'm alone. I've messed up. I don't know what to do :( help.
She didn't reply to the next one and I knew this wasn't a joke. I threw myself down the stairs and into the car and drove as fast as I could to where she was staying. No answer on the front door, so I hopped the fence and ran to the back which was open. I called out her name, nothing. I ran upstairs and I saw it. Red drips on the landing, red smears on the walls. I went into the bathroom and crumpled on there she was. Unnaturally white, blood everywhere and crumpled on the floor. I took off my shirt and jumper and did what I could to wrap her arms and stem the flow but I knew fucking zero about first aid. I held her, I screamed out into the street, I softly brushed her hair as she faded slumped against me, waiting for the ambulance. I couldn't save her.
I adored her. I still do. She would have been 30 like me this year, and she would have been the most amazing woman. She would have been the most loving mother, and she could have done so much good for the world.
She can't though, and it tears through me. I know that many people she reached out to for help didn't take it seriously, and I had to stand next to many at the funeral. She was mocked for it, she was called weak and an attention seeker. She was none of them.
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Trigger warnings: depression, suicide, suicidal thoughts, sexual abuse, rape, detailing of wounds.
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So I literally beg of anyone to never hand-wave people that are coming out as being suicidal. Berid yourself of any personal bar of "seriousness" that a person has to hit before you take suggestions of suicide seriously, and make sure that every single one of your friends knows that you're there for them. Not in an unspoken way, say that shit to them. Tell them that if they ever feel down that you're there to talk to, regardless of how small or large it might be.
Suicide is still such a hush-subject that people – myself included – still can't openly talk about it even when we're not considering it, because of the baggage it brings. I can't tell anyone in my life chunks of the above currently. It would scare them, because they don't understand mental illness and have thankfully never suffered from it. Today I have to tone down the depression I experienced for the comfort of others, as were I to tell anyone close to me the knowledge that I once very much considered ending my life would apply a veneer instabilty that is neither accurate nor warranted.
This is not healthy. We must become much, much more accepting of suicide as a topic of conversation and as something people deal with. Otherwise we're all awkward on it until another person dies, and that's a horrific way to keep a conversation active. People need to start challenging their own preconceptions about it, need to start realising that suicidal people are people and that in each case you have an opportunity to help and an opportunity to harm.
It doesn't matter if it's a mocking comment on a forum that another depressed user might read or otherwise, it has an impact. It affects the way we, as a whole, treat suicide and it affects the avenues of help people have to survive using. If you find yourself willing to gamble over the life and death of people in misery, purely to throw a meme or a joke in, then you seriously need to reflect on that for a bit.
