I’m done. And although there’s a sadness there, there’s an immense sense of relief.
I’m 34, and I’ve been fighting bipolar since I was 11. And it’s been a war, one I now know I’ve lost. I’m out of treatment options – been through therapy, been through pretty much every drug on the market, been through ECT and numerous other treatments. None of them have given me more than a year free of depression. And that year would be preceded by the gradual exit and then the gradual, inevitable decline. The latest one, I got 6 months out of it – and that was after 2 years of hell – 8 drugs, over 50 ECT treatments. I’ve fought incredibly hard to live, to create a life for myself, to give myself a future. I’ve done all the right things, I’ve asked for help when things started to deteriorate, I’ve maintained relationships when all I felt like was staying the hell away from humanity and curling into a ball of darkness. I’ve taught myself strategies, I’ve taken my medication properly, I’ve made sure to get out the house every day even if it was terrifying, I’ve tried to fight through the inertia, eat well, exercise, keep my sleep on schedule – all overwhelming things, but I’ve fought through, all in the vague hope I had a shot at a future that might not be as bleak as my brain was telling me it was.
I realised at the beginning of this month that the last year hasn’t really been my fight. It’s been a game of measuring my pain, my despair, against the pain I would inflict on the people I love and would leave behind. I’m under no illusions – there are people who love me, who care about me and would be scarred and devastated by my death. I’m not going to lie to myself on that one. My aunt killed herself – I know what suicide leaves behind.
Although I know depression clouds your view of your future, I look at mine and all I can see is an overwhelmingly bleak one. Previously I would think that if I could just survive long enough to find that thing, that treatment, that self-management, if I could just push through – even if it meant moving cities, fighting for a new doctor, fighting for a new type of drug, fighting for a new, experimental type of therapy – then there was a good chance I could stay well enough long enough to get an education, get into employment, have a relationship with someone, travel, write, have children. I knew this was a disease I’d have to live with, manage, change medications periodically, but I thought there was a chance I could achieve at least some of those things. Over the last 5 or 6 years, it’s become apparent that those things are unrealistic goals. As each goal became unrealistic, I’d try and find an alternative, try and come to terms with it and move on. I have a bunch of physical diseases to manage too, so it’s not just the bipolar that’s rendered them unachievable. Once upon a time, I had such promise. I don’t any more.
I’ve given myself three months. Three months means I’ll see if it’s just this time of year, if it’s the light and the festive season (which I hate), that’s making things so bleak. I don’t think it is. It also means it’ll be warm enough to go where I want to die. A remote place, somewhere I can camp, somewhere I won’t be caught and rescued. I’m a planner, a list maker. That three months gives me time to tidy my affairs, to leave as little practical mess as possible behind to clear up. I know the emotional mess is unfixable, but so is mine. I’ve reached the conclusion that there comes a point where I’m going to be a selfish bastard and put my pain above that of others.
I’m not talking to my doctors about this. I don’t want to end up in hospital – partly because I know the research, I know the lack of remaining options, partly because I know that place makes me worse. It’s a hellhole, in this country. Warehousing, waiting for medications to kick in. And of course, I’ve run out of medications to try, so it would be long-term warehousing, a complete surrendering of control of my environment, and it would require a gargantuan acting job to get out of there. I can’t talk to my friends about this. There are some, I think, who’ve seen the writing on the wall for quite some time but would still feel obligated to try and save me.
I don’t want to be saved. I’m done. I can’t fight any more – I don’t have anything left to fight with, or to fight for.
7 comments
Deadline setting a mind game that most people seem to enjoy playing around here. You know how that works, right? You must, because you described it in your second sentence; it provides a sense of relief. Any time humans experience pain in life, one of the tricks we like to employ is telling ourselves “just five more seconds”, “just a few more days”, or in your case, “just three more months”. It’s entirely irrelevant whether anything actually happens at the arrival of the deadline. In the case of suicide and how often you see deadlines proclaimed on this website, the case overwhelmingly more often than not is that nothing happens. But for the time being, while you tell yourself that you’re waiting out a deadline, it helps to be able to tell yourself that it will end soon. It’s how most people get through the week, “It’s already Wednesday, just two more days” etc. I can’t help but find it humorous when people always talk about having to get their affairs in order first. It’s suicide. The one time in your life it doesn’t matter if your bills are paid or your house is clean. You’re “leaving”, or so you say. I don’t mean to come across like a jerk, it just gets old seeing so many people proclaiming their deadlines here on this website, and obviously never being serious about it. I said it in a post I made the other morning, it sounds about as impressive as getting into a confrontation with someone on the street and saying “I’m gonna kick your ass!!!…. in a few weeks”. Suicidal people want to die, now. Ironically I’m really starting to think people on this website are the least suicidal in the world. Accounts here go on for months and days and years and everyone’s still alive. And that’s a good thing, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I actually want people to follow through with suicide, I just wish we could all get past the melodramatic things like proclaiming deadlines. “I’M DONE. I’M SO GONNA DECIDE IF I SHOULD DIE IN LIKE THREE OR FOUR MONTHS”. Come on, that’s not being done, that’s obviously still trying. You’ve been waiting for something to come along in your life to make you want to live and it still hasn’t happened yet, and you’re deciding to give it three more months. That’s great, I’m glad you’re not giving up right this moment and loading a gun, but let’s call it what it is. You’re not done. You’re actually signing on the dotted line to agree to three more months of this. Glad to have you on board.
I can’t say I know what you’re going through. I don’t think I have any actual mental issues, as a matter of fact I count myself as one of the people who questions whether mental disorders really even exist or if it’s all just a way to get people pouring pills down their throats. So many of these mental disorders don’t even have physical tests to prove it. Can I have a lab test done to prove whether or not I’m bipolar? No, it’s just the opinion of some psychologist or therapist who couldn’t get a real medical degree. I prefer to see proof of things that I’m being told. Even though they now claim that brain scans can show depression etc, I just heard a doctor on TV say “yeah, but the brain scans are still not generally used to reach a diagnosis”. Meaning whether or not you have a disorder is still just being decided by conversations you have with someone during talk therapy. No thanks. I wouldn’t start taking heart medication without blood tests to tell me exactly what’s wrong. Not gonna mess with my brain either.
With that said, if I were in your shoes, ready to end my life entirely after having tried so many different ways to treat what supposedly is wrong with me, just for the hell of it, since there is nothing to lose, I would experiment with tapering off my medications and not wasting any more time trying to get “help”. It’s pretty common knowledge how many downsides there are to a lot of these medications and it’s why I have never entertained the idea of starting to take any meds myself despite people pushing me to try it. So if you think you might be dead in three months anyway, what difference would it make whether or not you keeping taking your meds. Again I don’t know what you’re going through, if you think you’ll go totally psychotic because you stop taking them, then it’s probably not a good idea. I just don’t buy into this entire industry of prescribing medications that don’t seem to be backed by any actual tests or brain scans. In the era before someone decided to slap a name on a supposed disorder, someone who experienced emotional highs and lows was simply moody. Now there’s a name for it and a pill you need to take, although there is no clear explanation behind it, just a quick dismissive wave of the hand and a scribble on a prescription pad. I wonder how you go about even designing a pharmaceutical drug when you don’t exactly know what the condition is that you’re trying to treat or what physiological systems are involved in it. You say you’ve taken numerous different medications, if that were me I’d be curious to see what results I’d get if I just tried to detox all of it out of my system.
Anyways, good luck, hope something gets better for you.
@Spiritdying: for the sake of not sounding completely ignorant just google what “suicidal” actually means before you make a declaration that people here don’t fit the description….just please….google it
I always figured “suicidal,” just referred to the presence of suicidal ideation. But then again, I try to avoid saying people aren’t some category of thing that they ascribe to themselves. Because that would be an absurd logical fallacy which would give me a migraine. It’s kind of like how people say Beatles fans who actually like Yoko Ono’s music aren’t real Beatles fans because what the hell is wrong with anyone who likes Yoko Ono? Clearly they’re posers.
Labels are irrelevant because the emotions behind the motives to categorize yourself as such are there regardless of what you classify yourself as.
Like with most things, there is a spectrum of variance.
“Suicidal” basically means “having the intent or desire to act to end one’s own life.”
Some of us are “more” or “less” suicidal than others… but that doesn’t quite invalidate the lesser struggles of a less-suicidal person.
I frequently experience strong desires to end my existence. I have “decided” to do it, many times. But i have, so far, always “decided” to wait a bit longer, knowing that i don’t actually HAVE TO check out, just yet. It’s probably an incredibly foolish and overly-wishful notion, for me, that anything to come, could ever be “worth” waiting for… but i do it anyway, because of all the reasons every other suicidal person delays what feels quite inevitable. Sometimes it’s sub-optimal circumstances or timing; sometimes it’s fear; sometimes it’s sheer lack of any motivation to do anything at all (apparently, suicide requires some effort…).
I don’t quite agree that labels are irrelevant, but at the same time, they can be quite meaningless, inappropriate, undeserved, or downright wrong. But the important thing is that Other People will judge you, according to their own criteria, based on whatever labels you adorn, as well as whatever labels they place upon you, regardless of your approval.
So while we could say “labels are irrelevant,” they’re really not… even if they are incorrect or meaningless. Calling a thing what it actually is, and knowing how to appropriately discern such things, is a highly valuable and respectable trait for any person to both possess and embrace. Lots of people do it wrong, and so lots of things get mislabeled, which causes a lot of problems… and the only way to fix those problems, is to offer instruction and corrections to the cognitive paradigms of another person, which can be incredibly frustrating and tedious, even perhaps impossible.
Your post confirmed my decision more. I too am bipolar. I got into an argument the other day with someone that just doesn’t understand that “medical treatment” isn’t going to CURE our condition. It may lessen it, at least temporarily. And for some, it curbs it enough that they can have an enjoyable existence. For others, like myself, it doesn’t do enough for the long-term. My medication usually can prevent a complete break-down but its effects are getting less and less now. Why should we have to deal with this? Just so that others won’t grieve our loss? As hard as losing someone you love may be, if they aren’t happy, then its torture forcing them to live like that. I would be upset at losing someone, but I would feel the relief for them that they’re now at peace.
I don’t want to end up committed for the rest of my life…that’s just not living. Maybe if they give you enough drugs that you don’t even know what is going on, but I doubt any amount of drugs can let you escape long-term. And long-term is what matters…for me feeling temporary relief makes the lows so much worse and I spend the highs just waiting for the next swing to hit to take that relief away.
People impose a deadline because there are things they still want to do, people they still want to be with, plans need to be made in order to have a sucessfull attempt (failing an attempt because of bad planning is way too common), they might be expecting for a small miracle to save them (unlikely but hey, they say hope is the last thing you lose), etc.
Also leaving anything in order might be anything from sorting your stuff in order for your family not to fight over it when you’re gone (sad but it happens), writing letters to explain to people you think it might care…. the point i’m getting at is that if you make the rational decision to end your life for whatever reasons you might have, there are a lot of things you have to take care of, and that doesn’t mean you are not serious about suicide, just means you want to do it properly by your own means. Either that or as i said, you are expecting for a small miracle, even if in the end those never happen, lol.