Thinking About Suicide

Okay, yeah. Suicide is pretty much the worst case scenario for anyone with mental illness or anybody period. And trying to tell people you’ve thought about suicide in that incredibly passive sense, ‘I’m in a lot of pain. I could kill myself’ where you’re not making concrete pains or even really wishing for it, you’re just laying it out as an option, scares people (and yourself).

But, if you’ve been thinking about suicide for a long time (even in a passive sense), you think of it as a coping mechanism. And, on the scale of coping mechanisms, this really isn’t a healthy one but you can’t be angry that you’re still using it.

I remember when I was in the seventh grade and on the Power of the Pen team, I wrote about a girl considering suicide. She counted her mothers’ sleeping pills every time she was too sad or too angry to make sure there was still enough to kill her if it came to that (I got 2 out of 10 on that round – the adjudicator did not understand why a seventh grader was writing about suicide). She ended up flushing the pills when she decided she didn’t want to live with a safety net anymore. And it’s okay to have a safety net and it’s okay to think about suicide sometimes. You’re not failing. I still do sometimes, in the passive sense that reminds me that I have an out if my feelings get to be too much. I’m learning to replace it with other things, because I’m in recovery. I know that no matter how bad things get, there are other ways out that are so much nicer than a funeral.

But thinking about suicide was a safety net I used a lot and it’s a bad habit but I’m working out of it. It’s okay, and a little normal, if you’re still working on your coping mechanisms. Stay with me though, okay?