My suicidal struggles…
…personal accountability vs protecting others from my pathos (by hiding it, or minimizing it)
…reaching out for encouragement and hope vs knowing I am incapable of actually sustaining it.
…wanting my life to have a positive impact vs suicide negating any such positive impact.
…confiding in a friend/family member so that I feel connected vs deeply hurting that friend or family member when/if I remove life from my body.
Professional help is more than an oxymoron it dangerous and unaccountable pseudoscience. Unconventional thought is not synonymous with crazy, nor is it criminal.
Ah, but if I were crazy, then my crime, my offense, would be pitiable, forgivable. No one, not even myself would be to blame. But I am not crazy and to label me so, even in jest, though forgivable is unacceptable.
Must my future be one of suffering indignities at uncaring hands, captive in some “home” where the burdensome are left to cloistered decay because loved ones find it is just too disturbing to visit? Where cries for help fall on stopped ears and mercy is anathema?
Yes. I am afraid. Afraid of wearing out the love of loved ones. Afraid of being side eyed, pitied, murmured about, judged. I am as afraid of connection and inclusion as I am of rejection and being abandoned.
I am afraid to live long enough to decline—mental, physical, or cognitive—to a point where I could no longer care for myself. I am afraid of losing my competency, of being denied autonomy of every kind – where I stay, what I wear, what medications I take, what I eat, when I wake, when I sleep, how I spend my time. I am afraid that body or mind will fail and I will be forced to live at the mercy of clueless experts plying me with poisons to make me docile and pliant, of being committed into the care of a psychiatric or nursing facility where I would be stripped of my voice, dignity, humanity.
It seems to me that my earthly fate is dim, regardless of whether I let nature consume me with age and infirmity or if I attempt and fail as so many do, as I have done.
So, the struggle is real, isn’t it? I am not crazy. I am scared.
Yet I admit that, speaking for myself only, my will or my fear is the wrong starting point. Clearly the center of the universe is not me, neither do I answer to myself only.
For now, being a caretaker is reason to hold off. But now a new fear dogs me, that of waiting too long, missing the window of opportunity whereby I will be either incapable or prevented from exacting my exit strategy.