It could have been me
WARNING: This post contains disturbing content about suicidal ideation and may trigger thoughts of self harm.
If you are having suicidal thoughts, call a friend or a helpline.
“He died of cancer… it is so sad. He was such a jovial person and was so successful. How could he have cancer?”
Does this sentence make sense? What does cancer have to do with success, a family or being a jovial person?
Now replace ‘cancer’ with ‘suicide’.
In the last few years we lost many famous people globally to suicide. To name a few… Sushant Singh Rajput, Kate Spade, Anthony Bourdain, … the infamous 27 club, the list goes on. Every time I read about one of these people, I thought, “it could have been me”.
Imagine what these seemingly successful people must have suffered to have taken such an extreme step. The hopelessness must get to such a debilitating point that not even the thought of loved ones can stop you.
Mental illness and suicide
Research shows that suicidal ideation is very common in people suffering from depression, bipolar disorder and other mental disorders. Suicidal thoughts occur more often than anyone ‘normal’ can imagine.
I was first diagnosed with Bipolar II Disorder when I was 18. I had a nervous breakdown and had to be hospitalized. The psychiatrist who treated me then, told my parents to put locks on all balcony doors and put away sharp objects. It is unfathomable how horrific this must have been for them.
Consistent medicines and therapy have helped me to deal with suicidal feelings but they haven’t gone away and I doubt they ever will. I don’t have to always be going through a depressive phase to feel suicidal either.
I’ll give you a few examples- if I am standing at a metro station, the thought of jumping off crosses my mind; or I’m in a tall building and I think how easy it would be to jump off, or I’m in the kitchen and just momentarily the thought of slashing my wrists. I know this is not easy to read but it’s the unfortunate reality.
I am not trying to get sympathy, that’s not my intention. What I am trying to do here, is to educate people about how people like me feel and what we go through on a regular basis. For a while I wasn’t sure if everyone in my situation felt this way so I spoke to a friend about it. She has bipolar too. Unfortunately it’s true and sometimes, some people act on their thoughts and are successful.
It’s not about what you have
When someone famous kills themselves, I always hear some people say, “But they were so successful…they had everything…they had a family….” and so on. That’s the thing though, it’s not about what you have but about what you feel. And when you have a mental illness, you are not always in control of your emotions or feelings. You may be successful, you may have everything you want but that will not fill the gut-wrenching unhappiness and pain deep within you, that comes from your brain.
The unhappiness brought on by a mental illness is extremely intense, all consuming and leaves you feeling alone and lonely. It is difficult to explain to someone what it’s like because I wouldn’t even know where to begin. It’s a very dark place and sometimes you fall into an endless, black abyss that takes every inch of your strength to crawl back out.
For people who commit suicide, I imagine it takes just a few moments of absolute bleakness and desperation to go through with what has crossed their mind hundreds of times. At that moment, nothing else matters. They desperately need their pain to end, and committing suicide is their most desperate attempt at seeking relief.
We mostly only read about successful, creative people who die from suicide and not people like you and me. WHO’s esimated number for deaths by suicide for 2020 is a whopping 1.53 million deaths globally. This does not even account for attempted suicides.
As a society we need to accept that suicide is a real problem and it is related to the other very real problem of mental illness.
How do I deal with it?
Like everything else, this is the hardest bit. Most often the feeling of suicide is fleeting, which means it lasts a few seconds or a few minutes at a time. I say ‘at a time’ because it may recur at regular intervals but in my experience, it does not last persistently for hours.
A few years ago, I was going through a very rough period. Every morning, I woke up feeling suicidal so I spoke to my therapist about it. It was unnerving and exhausting to wake up everyday wanting to die. He told me to accept that feeling, that I have felt it before and I will feel it again. He said to just stay with the feeling and tell myself that it will pass. This might sound shocking to you but it has worked for me. The idea is to normalize the abominable, try to observe the feeling and just accept that it is part of the illness.
I will leave you with a few important tips for what to do when you are feeling suicidal-
- Don’t be alone
- Call a friend, family or a hotline
- Get up and do something else like turn on the TV
- Step out if you can
I can tell you from my personal experience that while it doesn’t go away, it does get a bit easier.
If you are experiencing the symptoms mentioned above, please contact a mental health professional.
I am not a mental health professional. All blog posts are based on my subjective experiences and opinions.