(If reading this post makes you think you need to be worried about me, please read it again. I am just being honest about a possibility that exists for a lot of people.)
Death can feel like gravity. It can feel like you're killing time, but not waiting for anything. I've been going a long time without the Suicide Suck and it's a really nice feeling.
Maybe it's easier to blame something. Maybe it's easier to blame myself. The truth is I guess both things. I have a tender belly. I guess it's possible I got this way from too frequent wounding when I was a kid, that instead of toughening up I ended up constantly hanging on strings, but I might just have been born tender. The social justice movement to help me would just involve encouraging people to protect the tender-bellied among them. There's no obvious injustice that has caused every Suicide Suck of my life, but that doesn't mean that each one isn't a response to my environment.
It's weird because even though it appears for specific reasons, the reasons are different every time. The Suck is actually faceless, but it always looks like something. It's only lately that I realized there was only one lion, or rather, anti-lion.
Oh Suicide Suck. Maybe you will be the death of me, and it's weird to be thinking this in a completely Suck-free zone, at least a month's insulation between now and the last time I was in one. I feel so good. I mean plenty of the time I feel tired or angry, but normal-style, not the Suck, which is this kind of raging tearfulness bubbling up behind my eyes and advising me how to get rid of it.
But it will be back and I guess one time might be the last time and that's not so bad. We all have to go somehow and if my way is that way it doesn't negate everything that came before. After all fighting to live is a different kind of fight, because you only have to lose once. Adults who commit suicide have often spent years refusing to do so. It makes me mad that successful people who kill themselves end up being defined by killing themselves instead of the fact that they were able to become successful while wanting to kill themselves. If I ever get Sucked I want people to know that I had a chronic illness that was part of my personality but that the last minute of my life wasn't who I am.
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All very good points, well made.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about subtle environmental triggers. I'm fortunate enough to have never felt seriously suicidal, but I have had depression, and that was grounded in very subtle injustices that could seem like nothing to anyone else. I myself have had a hard time trying to pin down what caused my mental illness and where my insecurities came from, because I've suffered very little overt hate in my life. It's all insiduous things- a general feeling of isolation at school, a newspaper article that hit a nerve. Makes it a nightmare to justify my feelings to myself, never mind other people.
Glad to hear it's been a while since you had to deal with suicidal feelings yourself. Hopefully that good fortune will continue. :)
Here's hoping you never have to deal with those feelings again, and that if you do, that either way you're around for a long time! First off, that's just a wish on a human level, and a close second is that those of us who like your music hope it shall continue! Thanks for all the great tunes so far, and here's to many more!
ReplyDeleteWhen I just said, "and that if you do, that either way you're around for a long time!" I meant that if you do have to deal with it again, I hope that you will keep winning the fight, and have a full life, both in quantity and quality, of course!
ReplyDeleteI was in the middle of a Suck a while ago and it occurred to me that if a particular former friend had heard about me committing suicide, he would not be at all surprised.
ReplyDeleteWhich was enough to make me go, "not today."
I guess it's sort of ridiculous that something like that would matter to me, but it does because it seems like some people get this idea about you and they never get out of their heads that you're mentally unstable and that's all you are. Which is something I've been fighting against for a long time, with only mixed success.
I like your description of death feeling like gravity sometimes. Also the part about killing time, but not particularly waiting for anything. Both of those are very familiar to me.
ReplyDeleteBut I never really felt I could blame anything external for mine, because it was so totally random. Only a few times, out of so many as to be numberless, has there been any "trigger" for it; most of the time it just happens.
(I also have chronic nausea - as in, actual barfing, not as in "I feel like Jean-Paul Sartre today" - and migraines, so a lot of things "just happen" to me without any warning. I can just be going along, out walking or watching a movie or something, and then WHOOPS I'M GOING TO THROW UP! Similarly, I can be going along on an even emotional keel, or even happy, and then WHOOPS I'M GOING TO STARE AT THE WALL FOR SIX HOURS AND TRY NOT TO GET UP BECAUSE IF I GET UP I WILL KILL MYSELF.)
Also, I am finally watching the first season of "Game of Thrones" on Netflix and I find Syrio Forel's advice to Arya germane to this discussion:
"What do we say to the god of death?"
"Not today."
(Hooray, I can comment on your blog again! I couldn't for months, so I quit trying, but now I can for some reason.)
ReplyDeleteYeah I love the not today thing too :)
ReplyDelete