Venting How do non-suicidal people feel?

[Eideprius]

As a child, I had a time when I really wanted to die. I felt terrible, cried all night and thought about suicide the whole time. I never tried, and after my parents found out, I get better. But not good. I've never felt great.
I can't remember the feelings I had before this time. I know I was often stressed and anxious as a young child, but maybe I still felt happy.

The thing is, I don't know how i should feel. At what point I can't expect more.
I can't remember many moments in the last few years.
I only remember one moment in my entire life when I was happy. Where I felt like this moment makes life good. And I was at least happy enough to remember it. When I'm otherwise happy, it's more of a break from unhappiness and my own thoughts.
Maybe I also just forgot all the happy feelings in my past.

And I wonder why and how other people feel like they want to live. I have felt terrible in the past and would say I am feeling better and calmer now, but I still think about ending my life. Moments like this where I don't feel that deep emotional pain are rare, but still not enough to move on. More like I'm in peace with dying. And I'm afraid that this is maybe all I can feel. That I expect more, but there is no more.
Do other people feel something that I don't? Or is what everyone feels just not enough for me to live?
I really don't know what I have done wrong in life, that I have ended up like this.

 

[willitpass]

I have brief moments of respite through my days where I feel okay enough. Sometimes I let out a genuine laugh. But that is just a short mask of my true feelings. Enough to make it through the days, but not enough to feel happy. There have been periods of my life where I genuinely felt okay most of the time. Ocasional periods where I felt true happiness. But they are few and far between and always interrupted by a depressive period. And when I have these periods it is always still in the back of my mind that death would be preferable. That suicide will still be my end. That the depression will always come back. Mental illness is a thief. I will never know what it is like to experience happiness without a shadow of suicide hanging over me. I don't remember what it felt like before I became sick as a child either.

 

[Forever Sleep]

I'm similar to you in that I began having suicidal thoughts early on in life- aged 10. I don't think it did occur to me prior to that that I wanted to be dead. I wasn't always happy as such but it wasn't as bad as wanting it all to be over. Still- it feels kind of pointless trying to work out how I felt as a young child because- even if I turned out as a non suicidal adult, I doubt we think like we do when we're children. There are usually fewer responsibilities and maybe we just live in the moment. All I can really remember is being obsessed with play- like most children I suppose.

I suppose it does make it harder though when someone wants to give 'recovery' a real shot. Like- what is it we should even be aiming for? I know what you mean.

 

[Praying 4 a Miracle]

My situation is pretty tragic, I feel, because for approx 57 years I was very happy, and healthy. Then I allowed myself to get stressed out over something that caused me to have a mini-stroke. Now, I have so wicked insomnia (basically have barely slept at all for 2.5 years) which is causing all kinds of other health problems.

One little mistake, took my eyes off the ball for a few seconds, and boom. It can happen in a heartbeat. The mortal life is so fragile, and then a bit of bad luck and it's basically game over. After all those years of hard work and happiness, it's a very frustrating reality. I so wish that we all had a time machine so that we go back, do it again, and avoid the tragic accidents this time!

 

[vitbar]

My depression has always been episodic. So I've kept knowing what it's like without the depression.

For me it's not even that I'm happy and having a continuous wonderful time. Most of it I'm just living, but without that horrible weight, and without thinking about it, or its absence, at all. I do still have sad times and happy ones, but I can have them without the thoughts and feelings in the background.

It's weird how when depressed I struggle to remember feeling different. What I can remember seems unreal or like it happened to someone else. When I'm not depressed I don't think about the depression, and struggle to explain it in any detail. When the episodes settle over me it all comes flooding back. It's so familiar. Often don't realise they've started or stopped untill a few days in or out.

Since finding a medication combination that works for me I feel okay or good most of the time. They haven't completely got rid of the episodes. What remains of them is milder. The ideation is still present. I think it is an ingrained part of my personality now.