On the brink of death

For the past 6 months I’ve been suicidal, and since perhaps, 3-4 years back I’ve always thought my death would be by suicide, sooner or later. In august last year, I began studying at uni, to become a nurse. I’ve never had many friends – or rather, I can only recall 2 good friends in my entire life, and I lost them both. So I’ve been lonely, for most part of my life. I was bullied extensively at school, I don’t know when it began – perhaps even at kindergarten. I honesly don’t really remember much of my life, I don’t want to remember. I wasn’t exactly abused at home – my parents tried their best I’m sure, but it ended up a mess anyway. Of what I can recall, mental health problems and economical problems were… Common, to say the least, in my childhood household. So to sum things up – from an early age I had a bad life, both at home and at school. It was as if my life was tailored to develop some serious mental disorder.
And it did. When I started studying at the university, I thought… here’s my chance, my fresh start, now things will finally begin to get better! I’ll get friends, I’ll study to become something I want…

But it obviously didn’t turn out so fantastic. I suppose I made some friends, I wasn’t bullied or completely alone by any means… But it still felt like I was a bit of an extra. I always felt like I was left behind, like I wasn’t invited to all the parties and social events, and so on… Maybe some of that was just my mental issues speaking, but to a certain degree there was probably some truth in all that aswell. I wasn’t popular, of course there were social events I wasn’t invited to… But I blew everything out of proportion, and I slowly began to develop a serious depression.

I’ve probably been depressed to various degrees before, for many, many years I don’t remember anything other than being this cold, sad, cynical and angry guy who just never talked to anybody. Thinking about how I would kill myself in a distant future… and so on. Perhaps if I had gotten help at that stage, things would never have gone this far. But this time, 6 months ago – I began to think about killing myself not in the distant future – but right there and then. I felt like, no matter how many “fresh starts” I have, I would still end up being alone. I felt like my family is all shit, and there’s noone else who likes me either. The things I did everyday just felt worthless, so why continue living. For several months, suicidal thoughts haunted me every single day. Skipping forward, I ended up being hospitalized not once, but 3 times in the past 3 months. Once in november, once in december, and once in febuary this year. I got a therapist after around 2 months of waiting time, at a specialized clinic, but I ended up quitting. She didn’t help me, she rather made things worse – atleast it felt like so. It felt like she judged me for cutting, and like she had a tendency of getting into blown out arguments with me.

As of now… I have a doctor hanging over me. She called me probably… 4-5 times last week, eager to do a interview that will finally put the diagnosis on paper. She is certain that I have borderline personality disorder, but the god damn system requires interviews and whatnot. Sure, I see the point in having to do interviews and so on… But the issue is, it takes forever for doctors/psychologists/clinicians to do these things. It takes forever until I can even begin the actual treatment for whatever it is I am suffering of. If I had begun DBT a month ago, I would probably not be at this point right now. But now… Now I don’t know anymore.

The rules of this board forbid me from mentioning specific methods, but… I tried killing myself last week, but I could not fulfill it. I didn’t have the comittment to overpower the panic, adrenaline rush, and the survival instincts that control you when you are standing on the brink of death. So for a moment, I thought I would live on. But my suicidal self had a backup plan, which is yet to come into motion. It’s hard to talk about it without mentioning specifics, but it feels like a method that I would be able to go through with. It’s actually quite a surprise that I’m still alive. If things out of my control had not ended up like they did, I would probably have killed myself yesterday. But perhaps there is a greater power to everything, or perhaps the world is full of random events that somehow happen to screw my life over each and every time.

I am now at a point where hospitalization is a simply absurd idea. A while back I knew a girl who had BPD, this was long before I even suspected I would develop it myself. She told me, she wouldn’t die that day or tomorrow – but for sure would she be dead in 15 years or so. Her mind was like chaos itself, but she had an utterly neutral face to the most horrific of ideas or events. It was like she was deep down, mentally disturbed at a level beyond logic. At this time, I didn’t think of it in terms like this. I rather felt pity for her, how hard it must be to live like that… But now… Now I see what she was talking about. I feel exactly like she described herself to me. Yesterday I watched probably a hundred so called shock videos – of cruelsome beheadings, self-inflicted pain of insane levels, and so on. And I felt nothing, yet I kept watching, video after video. I was in some way pissed, that things didn’t turn out how I thought they would. I had planned to die yesterday, but the world decided to screw with me once again.

Right now, I feel like I’m on the brink of death. But not in a state of panic and depression, but rather in a chaotically rational way. I feel like I might aswell live for another 20 or 60 years, but with a constant death-switch in my back pocket. I look out the window and see people. I think that these people are only so far away from death. Every person is only so many steps away from suicide, at any given time. I feel deeply and absurdly mentally disturbed, and yet content with my state of mind. I wonder how therapy will help a person such as myself. I feel like I am beyond all help – I do not need so called “help”. Society just wants to prevent suicide at all cost, because suicide is seen as close to a death-sin even by atheists. I suppose many of you have experienced this too. When talking to someone about how suicidal you are or something, there are few reactions which surprise me. Most people just panic and write something like “DON’T KILL YOUSELF!”, some bring up standard arguments such as “but think of all the things you will miss out on!”, “think of all the people you will hurt by killing yourself!”, etc.

It’s like, people are not so much incapable of living without me… People are rather, incapable of watching other people die in front of them. I read somewhere that journalists are told to watch their words when writing about suicide… To prevent other people from killing themselves too, or something like that. It feels so absurd, society just wants to prevent suicide no matter how much a single individual suffers. Regardless of wether I live or die, I stand on Schopenhauers side. I admit – I haven’t read a single one of his works, I’ve merly read about him on Wikipedia… But I find his arguments to be in line with my own view of suicide. To quote Wikipedia… “In an allegory, he [Schopenhauer] compared ending one’s life, when subject to great suffering, to waking up from sleep when experiencing a terrible nightmare”. I feel like, being on the brink of death – I am sometimes longing to die, and sometimes feeling existentially free on a whole new level. A freedom of willfully continuing to live, with the knowledge that I could end this at any moment if I so wished. Like Sarte… You always have a choice. Even if you climb up a mountain and find yourself at a dead end, you always have a choice. You can turn back… or you can jump down and kill yourself. There’s always a choice. I might be bending Sarte’s words in my own favor here, it was a long time ago that I read about that allegory… But it makes an interesting point. Continuing to live, for no particular reason, but simply because, with the knowledge that… I am only so far away from death, in any moment could I end it if I so wish.

I do not know when I will die. It might be next week, next year, next decade… or in 30 minutes. I could die at any moment, but for now I’m alive, yet on the brink of death.

(I hate myself enough to say that this… whatever it is that I just wrote, is a piece of pretentious crap coming from a lonely, mentally disturbed and sick individual)