Being suicidal doesn’t necessarily mean you’re holding a gun to your head.
Sometimes, it means smoking a cigarette in the hopes that you’ll get cancer. Or jaywalking across the street without looking, because you don’t care if you get hit by a car. Sometimes it means having sex with a stranger, hoping you’ll get an STD. Or not sleeping and not eating in the hopes that the exhaustion will kill you. Or even not washing you hands in hopes that you’ll get sick. Sometimes it means being cruel to the people you love or ignoring them all together, because if they leave, you’ll have less of a reason to go on living. Or not setting your alarm for work, so you’ll get fired and have less of a purpose. Sometimes it means partying hard in hopes that your liver will fail. Or putting yourself in dangerous and potentially painful situations, so maybe it’ll be the last straw. Being suicidal doesn’t necessarily mean actively trying to die. A lot of times, it means not putting any effort into living.
I’ve heard so many times over the years that suicide is selfish. That the only thing the person is thinking about is themselves. Because if they were truly thinking about those that love them, then that thought never would have crossed their mind. And every time I hear this, I am just completely baffled by the ignorance.
If you have been following my blog you’d know that I’ve attempted suicide twice; but I’ve been suicidal more times than I can honestly count. And I can promise you, from the bottom of my heart, that I was not just thinking about myself when I tried to take my own life. Don’t believe me? Well keep reading. Because the terrifyingly hard truth is being brought to light.
November 19, 2007 at 8:32 pm, I swallowed roughly 350 Tylenol, 10 of my moms sleeping pills, 30 Advil, and a handful of whatever other random medications I could find in our kitchen cupboard. All of that was followed by choking down a bottle and a half of liquid NyQuil. What lead me to that? Well it certainly wasn’t pure selfish thoughts.
Depression was no stranger to my life and being a teen wasn’t easy. But it wasn’t something I talked about. I suffered in silence like most adolescents do. We’re told all the time by adults to talk to someone about the things that are troubling us. But when we reach out, its chalked up to being a hormonal teenager. So I saw no point in wasting my breath. I struggled to fit in with friends at school. I struggled to fit in with my family at home. I wasn’t popular. I wasn’t an athlete, I struggled to understand anything academic. I often forgot to do chores at home. I’d fight with my parents all the time. I just seeemed to cause problem after problem and nothing but stress.
So on that night, after so many tears shed, after fighting internally with myself for hours, I made the most selfless decision that I knew how to make. The decision to no longer be a burden to those around me.
And on February 2nd, 2009 at 3:50pm, when I tried to end my life for the second time, my thoughts were very similar to the first time. I was a burden. I caused so much stress to everyone. They all deserved better than that. A better friend. A better daughter. A better student. I couldn’t give them that. I had tried over and over again and continued to fail, over and over again. It wasn’t fair to anyone around me. So I tried for the second time to end all of that suffering that my family and friends were dealing with because of me.
This probably still doesn’t make sense to most of you. And honestly, that is okay with me. There are many things in life that don’t make sense to me either. But I don’t sit there and judge people for them. It’s not my place. I don’t belittle them or make them feel bad for their choices. And I certainly don’t tell them that they are selfish.
Suicide isn’t selfish. It was not selfish before. And it will never be selfish in the future. Take it from someone who has been there, someone who has been there more times than people realize and more times than I can count; not ONCE was my first thought selfishly driven. I’ve always thought of my family first. My friends first. And I’ve thought about myself last because that’s what I deserved.
Beautifully Chaotic 