Trigger Warning: Explicit mention of suicide.
It was the end of August and I had a problem on my hands, in my heart, and troubling my soul. I had been going downhill for a few days and I couldn’t shake the mood swings from invading my mind. One lingering crisis after another and I was spent.
The lies in my skull became truths. The glorification of suicide heightened. I was becoming nothing and no one in a sea of nothingness. I stopped wanting help, my own or others, and I catalogued my thoughts and feelings via Twitter–for better or for worse.
It was time for me to say goodbye. It was time for me to bleed out and hopefully die. It was time to get the details of my plans in order–where would I put my stuff? Where would I do the act? Who would I warn–or who would I keep the secret from?
There are so many details involved. I fantasized over and over about the act, the response, the release.
I wanted freedom. I wanted the taste of it.
And just when the anguish and the pain of crisis reached its climax–I was stable. My mood had swung from crisis to stable just when I had made the preliminary decision to harm myself at the next available opportunity. Just when I had decided I had intent to act when school began again, it was gone.
To say I was irritated is less than true. I didn’t really feel anything.
Even when I tried to scratch myself–I wasn’t really in it. The built up pain had dispersed. I was something again in a world of something’s.
Caught off guard by the sudden change, I yearned and willed for the crisis to return.
There is something about the crises that I experience that brings me certainty. Certainty that dying by suicide is what I am meant to do. Certainty that I am not as significant as I once believed–as though in crisis that is when I see the most clearly.
But these are just the lies of the illnesses. And while this thought may enter my mind–it weighs little in the swarm of darkness. Somehow the shadows win. I stare off blankly into space–focused in on one or two objects–before my vision is engulfed in the fantasies of death and harm. I’m there physically but nowhere near there mentally. I don’t feel my heart beat, I don’t notice my breaths coming and going–I’ve just mentally checked out.
In a way, I think this may be a distorted manner of coping with not experiencing all of that crushing mental pain.
But there has to be another way out of it.
And that’s what I’m working on discovering. My biggest obstacle is when I begin to isolate, staying in my room where a lot of the fantasies occur, and when I stay within my head. I have to work on finding a way OUT; a way of re-embracing life on the outside and choosing instead to engage in all my adaptive coping strategies.
It’s been helpful for me to have re-framed cognition’s on my wall: thoughts that say I control my actions, I can take care of myself, I always have a choice, if I were fragile I wouldn’t have made it this far. It may prove lifesaving to continue keeping more of these notes around spaces where I will begin to occupy when doing unwell. I could create and artwork based on them, have a list on my phone and in my Coping Box.
Additionally, there is a new drawing I’ve begun that features all the helpful texts a friend of mine has sent me when I communicated that I was in crisis. I plan to have the texts in the background and a woman’s top half featured in it. I’m still debating on what pose she’ll be in and whether she’ll be in grey-scale or color.
Similar to this, I plan to ask a bunch of my friends to write me a letter or card–or something creative–that I can collect and reference when I’m doing ill well. This may allow me to shatter some of my brain’s lies and to remind myself that I do matter to people. I could even create a piece where I voice people I have yet to meet’s input.
Another thing that helped me was reminding myself that if I can come up with negative self-talk, I can also come up with positive self-talk–two can play at that game! This is what actually brought me out of my downfall.
Plus, writing this article. My articles for this semester have taken on a problem-solving nature, and I feel much better about that….
Article written August 27.2017
If you’ve come here from Twitter as a friend trying to help me in need, thank you. *hugs and bows* I will be writing a part II/separate piece further exploring that aid in another article. I want to write more about where I’m at NOW in recovery and how that transition came about. In it, I can also describe ways I can be helped better. Mainly, just listen to me actively and let my voice be heard. Easier said that done, especially if I’m not talking, but stick with me. Don’t give up on me. Even when I say I’m giving up on me, don’t give up. ❤ ❤ ❤
RecoverytoWellness 