Cloud Busting
Formerly pinkribbonscars
- Sep 9, 2023
- 408
Once, when I was 13, I asked my grandma what it means to think about suicide sometimes. She told me it means I didn't want to die, because if I truly did, I wouldn't have confessed this to her. Instead, I would slit my little wrists and go bye-bye.
That day I learned to suffer in silence.
In a night of desperation at the tender age of 14, I committed a parasuicide as a cry for help. Attempting suicide was the only way to prove one's pain is real. That was what grandma taught me, after all. If I died, I wouldn't care. If I didn't die, perhaps I could get the help I didn't know how to ask for otherwise.
I remember asking my grandma once if people who write suicide notes didn't really want to die and just wanted attention. She said yes. I deliberately did not write a suicide note that night with this platitude in mind. I wanted my pain to be perceived as real.
It worked. For the first time in my life, my grandma took my pain seriously. She also discovered I didn't stop cutting. I will admit I began to cut openly and no longer cared who saw. Was it for attention? Yes, because for the first time in my life, I had proven to others (and thus myself) that I was a genuinely fucked up and broken girl. My pain was no longer dismissed.
I have developed a much more nuanced and healthy approach with age, yet even now, this sentiment still pumps deeply throughout my veins. As an afab, it pains me that the pain of woman is dismissed because they complete suicide less than men. One of the reasons I wanted to ctb was to prove my pain was real and not for sympathy or show. I wanted to Not Be Like the Other Girls I guess.
Mass hysteria, malingering, and feigning illnesses for attention or sympathy or monetary gain is a well documented thing. The internet is full of examples. How do I know I'm not one of these assholes?
Why am I so obsessed with what others think? Only I can know the true extent of my pain. People are bad judges of this, considering how many people are shocked at the suicides of their loved ones. How do I internally validate my own pain without begging for the same validation from others?
That day I learned to suffer in silence.
In a night of desperation at the tender age of 14, I committed a parasuicide as a cry for help. Attempting suicide was the only way to prove one's pain is real. That was what grandma taught me, after all. If I died, I wouldn't care. If I didn't die, perhaps I could get the help I didn't know how to ask for otherwise.
I remember asking my grandma once if people who write suicide notes didn't really want to die and just wanted attention. She said yes. I deliberately did not write a suicide note that night with this platitude in mind. I wanted my pain to be perceived as real.
It worked. For the first time in my life, my grandma took my pain seriously. She also discovered I didn't stop cutting. I will admit I began to cut openly and no longer cared who saw. Was it for attention? Yes, because for the first time in my life, I had proven to others (and thus myself) that I was a genuinely fucked up and broken girl. My pain was no longer dismissed.
I have developed a much more nuanced and healthy approach with age, yet even now, this sentiment still pumps deeply throughout my veins. As an afab, it pains me that the pain of woman is dismissed because they complete suicide less than men. One of the reasons I wanted to ctb was to prove my pain was real and not for sympathy or show. I wanted to Not Be Like the Other Girls I guess.
Mass hysteria, malingering, and feigning illnesses for attention or sympathy or monetary gain is a well documented thing. The internet is full of examples. How do I know I'm not one of these assholes?
Why am I so obsessed with what others think? Only I can know the true extent of my pain. People are bad judges of this, considering how many people are shocked at the suicides of their loved ones. How do I internally validate my own pain without begging for the same validation from others?
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