March | 2017 | RecoverytoWellness

As someone with OCD on self-harm and suicide obsessions, I never thought I would ever try to kill myself. I never thought I’d be someone with a self-harm history. I never thought I’d be the person who made a suicide plan, who showed warning signs and who would act on the thoughts. I wish I so much that I could be someone who had the thoughts and left them there. But now in my life, it’s hard to picture my future without, at some point, acting on the suicidal and self-harm thoughts again.

I keep holding onto this false belief that I will someday die by suicide. That such an ending would be fitting for me–that it is my “fate” and “destiny”. I keep holding on to the concept of self-harm and suicide as a means of coping with this moment’s stress. As if it is all better once I’m dead and can no longer experience anything in life again.

Because that’s what suicide ends; it ends the possibility of life ever changing, improving and getting better.

And it DOES get better.

I hold onto the concept of suicide like it’s a life raft–but in reality it’s an anchor. And it’s going to keep dragging me down and drowning me if I let it.

Yet I don’t know how to let go of it, or if I’m ready to let go–or if I can at all.

I’m scared. I’m scared because I’m playing with fire and one of these days I’m going to get burned. And at worst the damage will be so bad that I don’t live another day. And at worst worst I get burned and have to live with the disfigurement for the rest of my life.

People die by suicide. Every day a family, a friend, an acquaintance, a stranger is impacted because of someone’s burden becoming too heavy to bear alone.

Well, I’m still here to remind you that you are NOT alone. I’m still here to remind you that there is hope and help out there for you to reach out to. To remind you that suicide is everyone’s business and we carry more power than we realize to make a change in each other’s lives.

I’m still alive to say that my actions and inactions were a mistake. I regret the moment I held my tongue. I regret the moment I wrote my second suicide note. I regret the decision I made to be alone. I regret accessing my method, holding onto it and then using it.

Because nausea, hallucinations, slurred speech and not being able to walk straight isn’t as “fun” as my brain said it would be. Because scaring people, worrying them and disappointing them isn’t what my brain told me would happen–and it IS what happens. Because I broke people’s trust in me and now we’re all picking up the pieces to make me whole again.

I regret requiring and acquiring help in the manner of which I did. Because being picked up by ambulance from the Counseling Center again shouldn’t have had to happen. Because entering my seventh psychiatric hospitalization didn’t have to happen. Because receiving two bags of intravenous fluids on a hospital bed is my newest low point.

Because I foresaw where I was headed and I could have stopped myself before circumstances fell into place the way that they did.

But I chose not to.

Because I wanted to avoid life’s stress–which in retrospect is such a stupid reason to die. Because I couldn’t see a way out through the mounting deadlines that I opted for the ultimate ending. Because I had something to prove to myself–and one day that BS is going to kill me unless I move on from it.

The moment I came into the psychiatric hospital–I wanted to get back out to face my problems. My work on getting better starts on the outside.

So this is my new beginning again. I looked forward to returning to the outside world: where bathrooms aren’t opened by staff, codes aren’t called incessantly, I can watercolor and listen to music.

Despite my regrets, the intrusive thoughts have returned to the realm of my mind. I hope I’ve built up enough strength to let them go this time.

Otherwise, I don’t know where I’ll end up. And if it’s not writing articles and fulfilling my dreams–than it was a final mistake I won’t ever come back from.

If you’re struggling with suicidal ideation, reach out and talk to someone. Call a hotline; 1800 273 TALK. Or stop by the Counseling Center on emergency. If the crisis is immediate and life-threatening, dial 911.

Stay safe.

*Article written 3.22 and 3.23.2017

*Life update

*No bullshit in this piece, just real hard realizations and setting them out on the table. Haven’t been this vulnerable in a piece in a long time.

Thanks for reading. ❤ ❤ ❤

“Can suicide really be a choice if it’s the only choice available? How expanded or contracted our perception becomes, impacts the choices that we make.”

The quote above is from Mark Henick’s TEDx Toronto talk titled “Why we choose suicide.” He explains that perception is a constricting and expanding view by which we see the world through our biological, psychological and societal factors.

He poses his startling question towards the end of his talk, but it was so poignant and my writer’s block so thick, that I decided to start with it. He continues to pose a scenario for the viewer: “Imagine you stayed there, stuck in that narrow, dark place. My perception had become constricted, darkened and collapsed. I felt like an asthmatic that had lost his glasses in a hurricane.”

Mark goes on to explain his brushes with suicidal actions and his struggle with depression in his own life, and how important it is that we all start having the conversation about mental health conditions and suicide. He believes, as well as I, that these conversations are too important to not be spoken about, whether or not we are “ready” or “comfortable” talking about them–they need to be brought into the light and out of the shadows.

So, with that, I would like to discuss perspective–because it matters and it is important.

Google defines perspective as a “point of view or a particular way of regarding something.” To me, in my life, perspective is the ability to see beyond a current moment. Before my mental health conditions made my perspective constricted, I would be able to see ahead in my life, years ahead and have goals and dreams that I wanted to accomplish.

When the depression hit me that skill of perspective dissipated. At its worst, I recall not being able to answer what I wanted to do or planned to do that given day, a week, a month, a year later. I didn’t have perspective: the future was a blank slate and the past didn’t exist either. It was like being shrouded in a blanket of nothingness.

Even now, two years later from when that slip of perspective occurred, I do not operate with a larger sense of perspective. Nowadays I am able to have my natural explanation of what I want to do over the summer, into next semester, after college, onto graduate school. The depth of those intricacies is for another article, however. But I have the ability to perceive a year’s worth of time. I have vague ideas of other dreams like writing books or making projects come to life that I want to get done during my life, yet they aren’t clearly defined or detailed yet.

Now, if you asked me what I’d be doing five years from now? Ten years?

I still cannot comprehend that amount of time. For instance, I’m trying to convince my family for us to get another dog. My previous dog, which we had for twelve years, passed away in the summer of 2015 and while I’ve had two hamsters in the last year (one that’s still alive now); they’re not quite the same as a dog. Granted, I’m glad to have any kind of living creature in the household, but I have a special love and admiration for a dog.

So when my family argues that a dog is a lifelong commitment–I don’t see it. I am distinctly aware of working with the present moment, the next day, a week, a month and a solid year. Beyond that, I cannot yet think of it as a lifelong commitment. They just do not exist for me. There is nothing there for me to look towards.

Part of this, I believe, is because there is a deluded part of myself that believes in the message of the mental health conditions I live with that I am destined one day to die by suicide. There are many faults and flaws with that logic, but I digress.

And again, this works both ways–for the past and the future. If you asked me on a day in which I had a constricted perspective about my childhood, I wouldn’t be able to put myself in that reflective mind state to answer your question.

I’ll admit this self-reflection makes me feel as though I ought to be more alarmed than I am. Regardless, I believe there is more to be said about perspective than can be articulated in just one article. So I hope that you will pick up the next issue when I discuss more about this idea of perspective and branch into what future plans I do have for myself as well as coping strategies.

*From now until August 2017 I will no longer be including my full name in the publishing of these articles on my blog, as my new job may threaten my safety if the people I work with/for can find me, my things or personal details about myself. So, be expecting my about me section to change soon too, as I want to re-write it.

**This piece is old. Written February 22nd and 24th 2017.

***I have a new article ready and up for you guys soon.

Also, sorry for my absence. My new article will explain the last week, at least.

Stay safe, peeps. ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤