Linked by Loneliness

I came across this site while researching ways to kill myself. Though the thought of suicide isn’t new to me–it has been a sidekick to my depression for over twenty years–the intensity and frequency of which I experience these hopeless moments has dramatically increased over the last few years.  I have now devoted hours upon hours online researching the various ways in which I can take my life in a relatively quick and painless manner, then more hours trying to verify the absolutes to these methods, and then more hours researching the means to the methods.  There have been times I have obtained supplies for taking my life and I have played around with it quite a bit over the years.  So much so that I have been hospitalized 18 times now.  I’ve also been on a multitude of drug cocktails, had ECT 40-some times, and last summer I left work for two weeks to go out of town to a Ketamine clinic to get infusions.  This doesn’t mention any of the self-medicating I’ve done in the past.  I used to drink, but it was making things worse.  I used to smoke pot, cut myself, punch myself when I became more comfortable explaining bruises than scars.  Those things only helped short-term but often made everything more complicated.  I’ve also done all the healthy stuff.  Exercise, go to school, stay busy, stay structured.  All of that and I still want to die.

I differentiate “feeling suicidal” from “not wanting to be alive anymore” by the thoughts and behaviors associated with either state. Most of the time “I don’t want to be alive anymore” which has a fairly broad range of activity, from self-imposed states of apathy and pessimism to avoiding activities that have helped me cope in the past to taking off my seat belt while driving. When I’m “feeling suicidal” though, there is an urgent, desperate need to end the smothering despondency that overtakes me.  At these times I can’t comprehend how I can experience so much pain and still be alive, still be conscious, still be breathing.  I don’t understand why such a brutal assault doesn’t kill me because even though it is purely emotional, the force behind it is so strong it feels tangible, like I am being crushed by some massive invisible density.

So it doesn’t feel like I’m “coping.”  The depression is ever-present and on good days it’s just really bad.  It feels like fight-or-flight all the time, and when I’m fleeing I’m just wanting to die, but when I’m backed into a corner I’m ready to take myself out.  I also have anxiety about the depression now.  I get anxious for the next big attack.  I try to make myself expect it because it happens almost everyday.  I don’t know what is worse: to be psychotic or to be aware of your own psychosis. There were a few days last week at work where I was certain that people were suggesting I kill myself.  It was heartbreaking.  It’s heartbreaking just feeling like people despise me so much they want me dead, but it’s made worse because I don’t know why.  I often feel that my depression is a punishment for something terrible I’ve done.  I just don’t know what I did.  And then there is this war between logic and, I don’t know, paranoia, psychosis, delusion?  The logic doesn’t win.  I guess it’s more like a stalemate.  Because on some level I know that I am so depressed I can’t see the world clearly and that is why I think people want me to kill myself or that I am being punished.  But there’s a difference between knowing and believing.  And then there is the matter of feeling, and the hurting is so powerful it is difficult to deal with the everyday struggles, much less with deep life struggles, an then the two combined.

These things have got me down, and so much else.  I’ve become disillusioned, cynical, untrusting.  Most of all hopeless.  I don’t feel that little light of hope anymore that kept me going, even when it was just the size of an ember at the end of a paper matchstick.  And I’m so tired.  I’m tired of being alone.  And I don’t try not to be anymore because I’m tired of having to defend myself and I’m tired of hearing the same things.  “You’ve just got to be optimistic. You can’t give up hope.  Tomorrow is a new day.  Things will get better.”  I say “The past seems to suggest things really do keep get worse, therefore optimism is illogical.  I don’t feel like I gave up hope, it feels it was burnt out.  I don’t want to face a new day, I don’t want to be in this nightmare anymore.  And how the hell do you know things will get better?  If you know something I don’t please tell me.  Otherwise keep your generic, pat optimism to yourself.”  But then there’s the people who like to say things like, “You have to take the good with the bad. Everybody has struggles, you have no idea what the person walking next to you is going through.  Do you really think your life is that much worse?  You do this to yourself.  Forget about the past, live in the moment. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”  I respond, “How do you take the good with the bad when you have a severely limited ability or, at times, an inability to feel any good?  And how is knowing that someone else’s life worse going to make me feel better? ((And should that make anyone feel better?)) I don’t always do this to myself.  You just can’t relate to me so I feel worse when I’m around you. And I’m not living in the past, but it has definitely affected me and just trying to ignore it is like pretending there are the ripples don’t exist when a rock is thrown into the water.  And, though it seems like I have a really low self-esteem and maybe I’m full of self-pity, really I am just so sad and I have been for so long that I’m having trouble staying above the surface, I’m tired of fighting, and I’m not getting what I really need.”

This is a long summary of a much longer story.  But for those who stuck through it, I hope it helps.  Because, like I said at the beginning, I stumbled on this site while looking for ways to kill myself.  But then I kept coming back here. And I read these stories, and I read them all the way through, even the ones that are really, really long and the writers worry they are burdening others with such a lengthy testimonial, but I never feel that way.  I know how it feels to feel that way, though.  I feel it now.  I felt it two paragraphs ago.  But so much happens when I read these posts.  Often I cry.  Sometimes because I’m astounded to have found that I am not the only one who feels this way, that there are people who can relate, that I AM NOT crazy, and it brings a sort of relief.  I’ve been told again and again that depression is a common malady, as if I’m being told, “You’re no different than other people who are sad, so stop dwelling in your sadness.”  It feels flippant.  Knowing that other people suffer doesn’t console me or motivate me.  But knowing how other people suffer shows me that I am not completely alone.  There is some ability to connect, and sometimes that is why I cry, because it hurts to see that others have to go through what I go through.  I read these and I don’t feel pity for the authors and I don’t see self-pity.  I see people who are just hurting the same way I am, and so startlingly often about the same things. I like the feeling of knowing that someone can relate to them, someone can empathize, someone can read through their entire story without being critical or angry or impatient, even if they don’t know it, because that is the purpose of writing on here, isn’t it?  To be heard, to not feel so alone, to have a place to talk and know you’re not going to hear the same things I’ve heard.  And that is such a common theme on here–loneliness.    If feeling suicidal is the sidekick to my depression, then loneliness is the  oppressive shadowy figure that haunts every scene, subtly reflecting in every mirror and window pane, deepening the shadows of a darkened room.  It is something that is difficult to express to others because it is often judged as an easy fix.  But there is a large gap between being around other people and connecting.  I haven’t felt connected in so long despite the fact that I am around people quite often.  One of the factors in feeling so disconnected is that it seems others don’t have the ability to receive this part of me that is so confused and afraid and alone and sad.  They may like the part of me the see, but hiding this other part is taking its toll.  They know I’m depressed, but I no longer want to make myself vulnerable. I don’t want to make anymore pain whether that comes from being dismissed, invalidated, or misunderstood.  I’m doing the best I can now, and maybe that won’t cut it, maybe its all going to end tragic, but its all I can do.

I hope that this rather long narrative can offer some comfort to someone, just like the other narratives on this site (long or short, poetry or prose) have given me.  Even if you never write something on here or share your story with anyone or even have anyone to share your story with (a dog, cat or a just some wall with a lot of character), a connection exists.  I know that because even if I end up taking my life, if this all gets to be too much and I can’t do it anymore, I have found some peace, at least for some moments, that have eased the deepest part of my grief.  What these stories have said to me and I hope what mine says to you is: “I acknowledge that you are Alone, and though we both are Alone, we are now somehow Linked.”