Hi all. Just wanted to document my journey in case it helps someone else who finds themselves in a similar place.
I am one of those people who would "surprise" others around them were I to CTB. I *look* like I should be happy, I often behave in an uplifting, positive and open way around others. But inside I am quite sad and in quite a bit of pain. I connect with others and behave in an uplifting way around them simply because that helps reduce the pain. But at the end of the day it doesn't seem to reduce the pain enough. All suicide intervention seems focused on convincing people that they are loved/wanted in the world, but I know people love me and want me in the world...it's just that *I* don't want to be in the world.
Background to help you understand: my mother, a wonderful and exceptional human, once remarked that I was "not a happy child". In fact, from a very young age, I would say stuff to my parents like "it's your fault that I'm alive; all my suffering is because of you". Mom said that if there was ever a time when I was happy, it was when I was under 5 years old and lived in an apartment complex where we (me and my sister who is older by 5 years) were good friends with the kids who lived on the floor above us. Then my parents moved to a bigger home and apparently I was never as happy since. Meanwhile, my sister was described by my mother as a child who would "bounce off the walls" (with her happiness/energy). So no parental trauma to heal here; my sister grew up with the same parents as me, and I am pretty confident my childhood environment would be classified as a loving one.
I was an odd child though - in hindsight, probably "on the autism spectrum". Did well in school - you could say I had "Asperger's" (I know that's an antiquated term but people still seem to recognize it). I suppose that, because I'm female and I figured out social skills enough to blend in as neurotypical by my mid twenties, no one ever bothered to formally diagnose me. As a result of just being wired differently from everyone else, I had trouble understanding others growing up, and others routinely misunderstood me, so I felt profound isolation when I was young. And then on top of that, I figured out I was queer in the mid 2000s (and in India), and got outed as a 9th grader in my conservative high school by someone I had trusted. That was when the suicidal ideation started (my first suicide attempt was when I was just shy of 14). I suppose life has been chronically kindof painful since. There were other negative experiences, a notable one 5 years ago while I was doing my PhD (I got targeted by bad faith accusations, again from someone who I had trusted, and again with a homophobic angle to them, and the system that was ostensibly set up to protect students failed to do its job). That was a mess, and even though the truth eventually came out (too late to change the material damage that was done but helpful psychologically nonetheless), I was in a bad place for over a year and the pain still haunts me. So at the end of the day, pain has been a part of my life to a greater or lesser degree for what is now the majority of my life (I'm almost 31 now).
I've come to a place where I really don't think there's much scope to heal. The person who outed me in high school apologized, and I accepted her apology. Others have not apologized, but I have come to an understanding of why I can't expect an apology from them; everyone has there own journey to go on. I really do think I'm at a place that current therapy practices would call "acceptance".
I've tried my best to find joy in life. I've picked myself up and done decently well professionally and made friends and such. But pain keeps appearing in one form or another - it's simply unavoidable when you open your heart up to people, and especially when you have triggers scattered everywhere due to the C-PTSD. And at some point I decided that it really is quite selfish to expect another person to live simply because YOU want them to live. I hear all the anti-suicide people keep saying stuff like "you are loved! you will cause so much pain if you leave" and I think "yeah but what about what *I* want? All I'm hearing is what YOU want from ME."
I explained the way I was feeling recently to my parents, and my Mom, exceptional human that she is, understood. She has been through deep depression herself. My dad didn't get it until my mom explained it to him: "imagine you're a cancer patient who is in a lot of pain and you just want to die, but everyone around you is not ready to let you go so they want you to keep trying one more cure". I love my mom for being so understanding. She is the person who would me most heartbroken by my death, but she understands. The anti-choicers can take their entitlement and fuck off.
I told my therapist today that I think I'm one of those people born with a higher sensitivity to suffering. Like, just thinking about the state of the world globally is enough to get me very down, and the world has been in a messed up state my whole life. I can't selectively tune it out and focus on just myself as easily as other people seem capable of; the only option I have for "tuning it out" is to blanket shut down, and that's where my depression manifests.
And my girlfriend is very un-accepting of me when I get too depressed. She has an anxious attachment style and sees me killing myself as an act of abandoning her. And then she guilts me for expressing SI by saying I'm triggering her fear of abandonment and sending her the message that she "does not deserve love". In other words she feels entitled to have me live so that I can love her. What am I left to conclude but that she doesn't actually care if I'm suffering, as long as she is happy?
From all the research on near-death experiences, I've come to believe that life after death is not actually bad. In fact, it sounds like a truly peaceful experience. Heck, I wonder if the reason babies cry a lot and sleep a lot is that our soul is VERY unhappy about being wrenched out of what sounds like pure peace and forced into a physical body. Maybe that's the reason I was so unhappy as a kid - if you want to get metaphysical about it, maybe my soul "wanted" to die very young (my mother's body did try to expel me out of her uterus from just a few weeks in, and she had to be on bedrest for most of the pregnancy so that I would not be born a premature kid...again, my mom is a wonderful human).
And yes, many people enjoy life and it sounds like their soul "intended" to have that life, i.e. they weren't forced into living against their will. I like to view those cases using the metaphor of a video game. Souls sign up to play the "game" of life. Most souls do it on normal difficulty, and those of us who struggle with mental health "illnesses" are doing it on hard difficulty. And people who are born with high sensitivity to suffering happen to be doing it on extra high difficulty, because not only will they be suffering, but most of their suffering while be wholly incomprehensible to others. Maybe my soul thought "I'm going to be born into a life of financial privilege, with the intellectual skills needed to be successful and contribute to the world, so maybe if I crank up my sensitivity to suffering it will mean I am motivated to do a lot of good in the world! Let's give it a shot!" and then my soul realized "fuck". And has been wanting to press "quit" on the game since age 14, but was too caught in a sense of guilt to go through with it.
I don't know.
Point is, today I told myself "I'm going to try a few more therapies, and if I'm still not satisfied I'll catch the bus". And I fucking feel...good. At peace. Willing to move. Because I've given myself an exit. I'm no longer requiring myself to stay here no matter how bad shit gets.
And I've just been very open with everyone about it. I told my therapist, and the law is such that a therapist can't hospitalize you unless you're expressing a concrete plan. So the law is on my side. I told my girlfriend, and she wanted to get me hospitalized but then again I pointed out that the law is on my side. I mean yes, I may get hospitalized anyway - I've already been hospitalized twice. I'll just wait it out. Eventually, the insurance will expire and they'll find they have no reason to keep me, because once again I'm not expressing a concrete plan. At this point it just feels more like a when than an if; I'm anticipating that the extra therapies I'm going to try either won't work well enough or won't be accessible enough to make me change my mind...yes, I know my therapist said "you can't take that decision back"; I countered that I can't take the suffering caused by being alive back either...death does not have zero value, and choosing to live is not always net positive.
Anyway, just thought this would be a safe place to share and document my journey for those who might be curious how it goes. I know it would have helped me to hear more stories like my own. Conventional anti-suicide discussion REALLY backfires for me. Just makes it so obvious to me that people don't get it.
I am one of those people who would "surprise" others around them were I to CTB. I *look* like I should be happy, I often behave in an uplifting, positive and open way around others. But inside I am quite sad and in quite a bit of pain. I connect with others and behave in an uplifting way around them simply because that helps reduce the pain. But at the end of the day it doesn't seem to reduce the pain enough. All suicide intervention seems focused on convincing people that they are loved/wanted in the world, but I know people love me and want me in the world...it's just that *I* don't want to be in the world.
Background to help you understand: my mother, a wonderful and exceptional human, once remarked that I was "not a happy child". In fact, from a very young age, I would say stuff to my parents like "it's your fault that I'm alive; all my suffering is because of you". Mom said that if there was ever a time when I was happy, it was when I was under 5 years old and lived in an apartment complex where we (me and my sister who is older by 5 years) were good friends with the kids who lived on the floor above us. Then my parents moved to a bigger home and apparently I was never as happy since. Meanwhile, my sister was described by my mother as a child who would "bounce off the walls" (with her happiness/energy). So no parental trauma to heal here; my sister grew up with the same parents as me, and I am pretty confident my childhood environment would be classified as a loving one.
I was an odd child though - in hindsight, probably "on the autism spectrum". Did well in school - you could say I had "Asperger's" (I know that's an antiquated term but people still seem to recognize it). I suppose that, because I'm female and I figured out social skills enough to blend in as neurotypical by my mid twenties, no one ever bothered to formally diagnose me. As a result of just being wired differently from everyone else, I had trouble understanding others growing up, and others routinely misunderstood me, so I felt profound isolation when I was young. And then on top of that, I figured out I was queer in the mid 2000s (and in India), and got outed as a 9th grader in my conservative high school by someone I had trusted. That was when the suicidal ideation started (my first suicide attempt was when I was just shy of 14). I suppose life has been chronically kindof painful since. There were other negative experiences, a notable one 5 years ago while I was doing my PhD (I got targeted by bad faith accusations, again from someone who I had trusted, and again with a homophobic angle to them, and the system that was ostensibly set up to protect students failed to do its job). That was a mess, and even though the truth eventually came out (too late to change the material damage that was done but helpful psychologically nonetheless), I was in a bad place for over a year and the pain still haunts me. So at the end of the day, pain has been a part of my life to a greater or lesser degree for what is now the majority of my life (I'm almost 31 now).
I've come to a place where I really don't think there's much scope to heal. The person who outed me in high school apologized, and I accepted her apology. Others have not apologized, but I have come to an understanding of why I can't expect an apology from them; everyone has there own journey to go on. I really do think I'm at a place that current therapy practices would call "acceptance".
I've tried my best to find joy in life. I've picked myself up and done decently well professionally and made friends and such. But pain keeps appearing in one form or another - it's simply unavoidable when you open your heart up to people, and especially when you have triggers scattered everywhere due to the C-PTSD. And at some point I decided that it really is quite selfish to expect another person to live simply because YOU want them to live. I hear all the anti-suicide people keep saying stuff like "you are loved! you will cause so much pain if you leave" and I think "yeah but what about what *I* want? All I'm hearing is what YOU want from ME."
I explained the way I was feeling recently to my parents, and my Mom, exceptional human that she is, understood. She has been through deep depression herself. My dad didn't get it until my mom explained it to him: "imagine you're a cancer patient who is in a lot of pain and you just want to die, but everyone around you is not ready to let you go so they want you to keep trying one more cure". I love my mom for being so understanding. She is the person who would me most heartbroken by my death, but she understands. The anti-choicers can take their entitlement and fuck off.
I told my therapist today that I think I'm one of those people born with a higher sensitivity to suffering. Like, just thinking about the state of the world globally is enough to get me very down, and the world has been in a messed up state my whole life. I can't selectively tune it out and focus on just myself as easily as other people seem capable of; the only option I have for "tuning it out" is to blanket shut down, and that's where my depression manifests.
And my girlfriend is very un-accepting of me when I get too depressed. She has an anxious attachment style and sees me killing myself as an act of abandoning her. And then she guilts me for expressing SI by saying I'm triggering her fear of abandonment and sending her the message that she "does not deserve love". In other words she feels entitled to have me live so that I can love her. What am I left to conclude but that she doesn't actually care if I'm suffering, as long as she is happy?
From all the research on near-death experiences, I've come to believe that life after death is not actually bad. In fact, it sounds like a truly peaceful experience. Heck, I wonder if the reason babies cry a lot and sleep a lot is that our soul is VERY unhappy about being wrenched out of what sounds like pure peace and forced into a physical body. Maybe that's the reason I was so unhappy as a kid - if you want to get metaphysical about it, maybe my soul "wanted" to die very young (my mother's body did try to expel me out of her uterus from just a few weeks in, and she had to be on bedrest for most of the pregnancy so that I would not be born a premature kid...again, my mom is a wonderful human).
And yes, many people enjoy life and it sounds like their soul "intended" to have that life, i.e. they weren't forced into living against their will. I like to view those cases using the metaphor of a video game. Souls sign up to play the "game" of life. Most souls do it on normal difficulty, and those of us who struggle with mental health "illnesses" are doing it on hard difficulty. And people who are born with high sensitivity to suffering happen to be doing it on extra high difficulty, because not only will they be suffering, but most of their suffering while be wholly incomprehensible to others. Maybe my soul thought "I'm going to be born into a life of financial privilege, with the intellectual skills needed to be successful and contribute to the world, so maybe if I crank up my sensitivity to suffering it will mean I am motivated to do a lot of good in the world! Let's give it a shot!" and then my soul realized "fuck". And has been wanting to press "quit" on the game since age 14, but was too caught in a sense of guilt to go through with it.
I don't know.
Point is, today I told myself "I'm going to try a few more therapies, and if I'm still not satisfied I'll catch the bus". And I fucking feel...good. At peace. Willing to move. Because I've given myself an exit. I'm no longer requiring myself to stay here no matter how bad shit gets.
And I've just been very open with everyone about it. I told my therapist, and the law is such that a therapist can't hospitalize you unless you're expressing a concrete plan. So the law is on my side. I told my girlfriend, and she wanted to get me hospitalized but then again I pointed out that the law is on my side. I mean yes, I may get hospitalized anyway - I've already been hospitalized twice. I'll just wait it out. Eventually, the insurance will expire and they'll find they have no reason to keep me, because once again I'm not expressing a concrete plan. At this point it just feels more like a when than an if; I'm anticipating that the extra therapies I'm going to try either won't work well enough or won't be accessible enough to make me change my mind...yes, I know my therapist said "you can't take that decision back"; I countered that I can't take the suffering caused by being alive back either...death does not have zero value, and choosing to live is not always net positive.
Anyway, just thought this would be a safe place to share and document my journey for those who might be curious how it goes. I know it would have helped me to hear more stories like my own. Conventional anti-suicide discussion REALLY backfires for me. Just makes it so obvious to me that people don't get it.
Last edited:
