mental health thursday

Tags

bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, depression, family, friends, life, limits, love, mental health, mental illness, moods, suicide

I’m going to put a Trigger Warning for Suicide on this one kids.

I’m going to talk some about suicide again and I don’t want to catch anyone off guard. Y’all know me by now – no gore or icky details, but I’d like to speak honestly. I’ve written about this before, and I’ll write about it again, and again, and again until no one ever feels compelled to take their own life.

If you’re fortunate enough to have never felt like taking your life was the only way out, count your blessings. No really, we’ll wait.

You go say a little prayer of thanks to the higher power of your understanding that you’ve never had to experience the kind of soul searing anguish in your heart that make you honestly believe that never ever breathing again was the best way to remedy the situation.

And then you need to say thank you again, just for good measure.

Feeling actively suicidal was the most unholy feeling I’ve ever experienced. Just think about it – hurting on the inside so fucking bad that you couldn’t see a way to make it stop hurting except to submit to the ultimate hurt.

It’s all about the pain and wanting to end it, but not have the foggiest fucking idea of how to do that. Because some of us awesome people don’t have awesome coping skills. We want to live, we want to be happy again, we want to know the love that people feel for us, but for fuck sake, we need that pain to go away. And we need some help.

That point of giving up, giving in to the pain and the suffering and just wanting to never ever care again – that, my friends, is the dangerous place. That is often the point of no return. That is the point where passively thinking to yourself that you want it to end in vague terms that don’t exactly mean anything changes to making plans, plans like you’d make to meet a friend for drinks. Only these plans aren’t supposed to be the kind you end up making again. And again.

And there are those misguided people who will tell you how cowardly suicide is. Yes, in a way, but no, not really. It depends on why, WHY does your heart hurt like this?

I cannot even fathom being bullied into suicide. That wasn’t me, never me. I took care of the bullying myself. I was never good enough for ME. Those voices telling me that garbage, trying to poison my soul, those all sounded like my voice. And in that respect, yes, I was being cowardly. I wasn’t willing to fight for the life my mother and father struggled for so many long years to give me. How selfish was that?

But this is the rub. I would not hurt anymore, but Mom and Josh and my nieces and my friends – the people who love me and value me would hurt so much worse. THAT would be selfish, selfish beyond all measure of the word. The kind of selfish that you carry with you into the afterlife and then with you when you’re born again, as some kind of bottom dwelling, garbage eating fish. Or worse – a politician.

Correction – I WAS that girl. I would still spend as much time and energy as it required to get someone the necessary help or talk them down, but I’m ok now, my voice says nicer things to me in my head these days. I’ve been okay for more than four years. Four glorious years. But it took hard work, lots and LOTS of it. And it took love, oh so much LOVE.

the most amazing mommy in the whole world

true love visits you in the psych ward on christmas eve

There are lessons today, kids – pay attention, this shit is important

There will be another day – take a chance that it’s going to be better

It will probably be hard again, no, it will almost certainly be hard again – but you can do this, you’ve done it before

This might be the truest statement ever written

I’m going to offer this again – if you need help, visit the site or call 1-800-273-8255. You are worth having an amazing life, and if you aren’t here, how can your life be amazing? If you don’t think anyone loves you, you’re wrong.

I LOVE YOU.