Please, please read if you’re considering suicide:
I have bipolar disorder and I’ve tried to kill myself 5 times. Every single one was a nightmare. I’m totally with you and understand you when you say you feel hopeless, lost, worthless or in pain. My depression is with me frequently and I often wish it would end.
The fact of the matter is that it will be with me, in some degree, for the rest of my life. And I’m ok with that. Because despite the difficulty and the occasional emotional torture, I know – I know – that life offers happiness too.
Relief does come, it will come, and it is majestic and beautiful when it does.
I urge whoever is reading this: don’t die tonight. Hold on. Peace is out there. It exists. Life can improve and become rich and vibrant and full and exciting. Isn’t it worth the struggle to resist suicide even if there’s just a chance of a better tomorrow?
I don’t know you, but I know what it’s like to be human and I’d like to say a few things to you and about you. Reading this means you’re looking for answers or hope, or both. Would it be pretentious, then, if I were to posit some for you?
In depression my self-talk turns dark. I tell myself all sorts of bad things about myself that aren’t true. Maybe you’ve experienced something similar. I want to tell you that those inner voices of doubt and guilt and shame are wrong. They are always wrong. They will never be true.
What I’m learning about myself is the same for you, so I’ll write it like it’s about you. You’re a good person. You’re worthy of love and happiness. You’re capable of extraordinary things. You deserve life. You’re alive now. The possibilities in your life are endless. Don’t give in, not now. As the poem goes,
Be the master over your mind, captain your ship away from death and find the sun on the horizon. Do something about your situation. Call a friend or a family member. Get out and take a walk. Throw those pills away, burn that rope, give up that gun to someone you can trust. Get help. Talk about it. There is enormous power in talking about your feelings. It has saved my life many times. Call a lifeline and just chat. They won’t judge you, or mock you, or hurt you. If it’s really bad, and you’re scared for your life, go to a hospital. Tell them everything; be honest. Insurance or not, whatever cost you have to pay is a penny compared to the hoard of gold that is your life. Get safe. Do it for you or for those you love or for God or for whoever. Get safe.
And whatever you do end up doing, don’t die tonight.
Yours truly,
Survivor
9 comments
ok i am living tonight! thank you for what you have wrote.
Good! Good luck to you. I hope you find help, treatment and/or recovery soon. I believe that people are infinitely more valuable than we realize, and that includes you! 🙂
If you found reasons to live, good for you but your experiences do not relate to what others are going through. Some lives are far more horrible than yours or mine and dying is an act of mercy. Life is not a ‘hoard of gold’, especially if you’ve really been going through a lot of misery and suffering with no end in sight.
It’s nice for you to get people a pep talk-I’ve almost always given positive contributions to people’s posts, but at the same time, prolonging someone else’s pain is not a good thing for that person even if you feel better thinking you’ve made a difference in someone’s life. You probably haven’t and most likely they’re worse off.
Now if there are people who haven’t tried every other route or avenue to fix their life, it might help them-but for those of us who’ve tried and failed-death would be the better course. The reason many of us are still around is simply because there is no surefire method to dying otherwise most of us, myself included would’ve ended it already.
I’m sorry you feel this way. I believe there can be recovery for everyone. It doesn’t mean the pain goes away, or even the pain becomes smaller at all. But there is always a way to find something positive about yourself. And learning to love yourself, even with the pain, is worth living for.
Do things have to be positive or negative? People spend a lot of time striving to be something other than what they simply are – everything turns back around on itself. People attacking positivity are attacking the spark of positivity within themselves, and people attacking negativity are attacking the spark of negativity within themselves. There is no avoiding it. There are no bright pure knights, or dark corrupted souls, just gray wobbly humanity.
Can’t we all just get along? Let’s have some licorice and drink fizzy rootbeers.
We live in an infinitely faceted diamond of perspective – it has so many different avenues and routes that most haven’t even been conceived of yet. One’s options are only limited by the mind’s ability to abstract them. Some people cope with their own suffering, which may in itself be completely hidden from others, by trying to help other people, much like the OP. Minds are weird, but that’s how it goes sometimes.
Minds are weird! Thanks for your perspective. So much more to life than we might think, especially when we’re depressed.
Thank you. Lately my PTSD and my bipolar depression have been getting to me. My circular, compulsive thoughts are getting really bad. Our feels like my brain is against me
Sometimes it’s hard to fight against feelings and thoughts, especially with a mental illness. But you can do it! Have you tried to find a counselor or someone to talk to about it? I find when I talk it through with someone, my brain comes back to reality a little bit.