Suicide? - A Memoir

This is a memoir about my suicidal tendencies from an early age.

Anyone who’s had suicidal tendencies in their life might relate to a lot of what you’d read in here. At the very least, I hope this can help you as much as it’s helped me to write it down. If you’ve ever had suicidal thoughts, you realized that you begin to think of things objectively. You think of the particles that make up your body, and where they’ve been, and where they’re going to go. It makes you imagine non-existence, which is difficult to do, terrifying, and peaceful all at once.

I remember when I was very young, around seven years old, I was sitting on the back steps of my dads’ apartment. It was a cool, cloudy day"very comfortable. I was completely alone in the small backyard covered with trees. I began to breathe in and out very deeply with my eyes shut; a meditation technique I learned from my grandmother. I kept breathing deep breaths like this for several minutes. Eventually, the sound of my breathing became all that I could hear, and it was more like a rush of water than anything else. With every breath I felt less and less a part of myself. Eventually I had disappeared entirely and I felt as if I was just in utter blackness, and I even began to question the blackness. I began to ask a lot of strange questions. “Why does anything exist at all? Why isn’t there just nothing? What would it be like if there was just nothing? How do I know that I’m even real? Well I’m asking the question so I must be real.” I had not realized it at the time, and would not realize it for another fifteen years or so, but I had stumbled across the simplest syllogism in the world; “I think, therefore I am”. I consider this the Dawn of my Consciousness. As far as I’m concerned, this was the day of my birth.

     My earliest memory of suicidal thoughts, I must have been nine or ten, and I remember it clearly. It was around the time my dad married my step-mom, who treated me like a real mother would, and I thought of her as such. I was in the kitchen and for some reason I needed a knife out of the drawer. My step-mom was about fifteen feet away from me, watching television. I remember thinking, “I can end my life right now.” I began to think objectively; realistically about things. I was a little tiny consequentialist. What would my mom think? What would my dad do? Who would I effect? Who would I hurt, and how much? How painful would it be? How quickly would I die? Do I even have the strength to do it? Would I have to see the look in her eyes as she ran over to me before I died, or would I be dead before then? Nothing serious happened. I rubbed the knife across my arm to sense the reality of what I was contemplating. But I didn’t hurt myself.

     Thinking about suicide--and I mean really, genuinely contemplating it--makes you consciously aware of just how fabricated our illusion of structure really is. Everything that is arbitrary stands out like a sore thumb, and you see the world at its core and you’re left feeling entirely alone, like a naked apple core falling down a well. You realize that your very consciousness is just a series of chemical reactions in your brain, which ultimately decides how to control your motor functions according to your sensory perceptions and how it is processed. You feel unbelievably bare. You see the strings connected to the puppet you call the body.

 

“O that this too too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!

Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d

His canon ’gainst self-slaughter!”

-Hamlet

 

     In high school--a Catholic school--I became extremely religious. This made my suicidal thought experiences very interesting to look back on. My line of thought must have been something very similar to what many other suicidal Christians had thought. I remember hearing at a spiritual retreat once, “Suicide is a guaranteed ticket to Hell.” It was stated exactly like this. When I became suicidal, I had always just thought of ending the pain. Now there was a new variable in the equation: Hell. I was convinced that suicide, instead of ending my suffering, would only prolong it eternally.

 

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

-Mark Twain

 

     Out of high school and into college, I began to get more involved in studying my religious convictions, and there I began to question it. This lead to a struggle with my faith and the eventual abandonment of it all-together. As a more skeptic-minded person, in my suicidal stages I began to think of things more objectively again, but this time I was able to comprehend much more than my feeble developing mind as a child. I still get depressed, and I still get suicidal. I think about non-existence, and I hate it. I don’t want to do it. We all do it eventually but I don’t want to rush into it, but there is a sickness in me that is pushing me saying, “GO! GO! DO IT NOW!” I fathom the emptiness that death would be, and contrast it to the feelings I have in life. There’s only a little bit of difference. The only thing that has kept me from actually doing it is the thought that I will have no more thoughts. It’s better to be depressed than to be nothing at all, right?

This began today (on 9/12/11) as a short summary"a paragraph about a song; just trying to cure the boredom between classes. I had started to analyze the lyrics to “La Mer” (by Nine Inch Nails) in my notebook because I was bored, and that turned into a sort of autobiography or memoir. A paragraph analysis turned into several pages of rant. It felt good to put this all down on paper, so I decided to find a blogging website and post it online. I think it’s time for me to try and heal. Suicidal thoughts were something that I’ve dealt with mostly privately throughout my life. I went to Google and searched, “somewhere I can write about stuff.” I posted this on the first blog site that came up, and also on WritersCafe.org. This is almost identical to what I wrote in my notebook, so it’s very raw. I changed a bit here and there for phrasing and rearranged a few paragraphs but it’s essentially the same raw emotion. I was born with a brain wired to have constant cycles of severe depression, and so was my biological mother. I have dealt with this in secret for the most part, and now I’m sharing it with you gentle strangers.

 

 

 

La Mer

 

“And when the day arrives

    I'll become the sky

    And I'll become the sea

   

    And the sea will come to kiss me

    For I am going

    Home

   

    Nothing can stop me now”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t0eqPm3XHI

Reviews

[NoelleRash]

I completely understand this. This has been my struggle for a while. "I was born with a brain wired to have constant cycles of severe depression" really hit home. When you are clinically depressed, people will ask you "cant you just try to be happy?" I don't know how to convey to them that I do, its just not that simple. Suicide and thoughts of death are, for me at least, not out of unhappiness but just exhaustion. I get sick of fighting. Writing helps. It makes me not fight with myself, just accept it all. I'm so happy to not be alone. I'm glad someone can so elequantly describe these feelings.

[Arielle Ann]

well suicide as you explain here is ..(well cant say the words)...m trying to add some more...suicide doesn't solve anything...you leave without proving yourself...if you die out of hatred,then did you harm those people for whom you suffered?no...if you die of self contempt...did you lift yourself up in your eyes?no...if you die of hurt..were you happy when you died?no...what about your parents who will die each moment with grief,maybe shame from the cruel society...no no no...suicide doesn't solve anything...a wanderer in peril his soul will turn into....I agree with you...while suicidal one should think of the particles the body is made of....and its non-existence???!!!oh!!....your piece was enlightening...it shall help many others...thank you so much for sharing this...it speaks much more than the worthless sites giving so many useless solutions!

[Michael of Gilead]

I detest suicide because i have seen the wreckage left behind in several instances.

With that said, i also believe a person has the right to end their life when they see fit, usually in the case of a fatal, horrible ending coming.

Unfortunately the people left behind are the one's who pay the cost of suicide.

p.s. The quote from La Mer is rather romanticizing isn't it....

[Gilad Levanon]

This is very, very interesting. I would like to pose a question, though... Have you considered the possibility that the nothing you fear beyond death is actually conscious? Have you thought about the 'maybe' that all existence has a collective, unified consciousness? Do some research into Taosim, Bhuddism and the concept of 'nirvana' - not the band, but the seventh realm of consciousness in which we are all one and all at eternal bliss. These philosophies are not the fairytales of religion that I'm guessing you might consider Christianity to be, but rather they are the philosophies of wise and ancient cultures who were more deeply connected to the universe than we are today. Thank you for sharing.

[alice]

Depression and it's wonderful friend, misery has always been a part of my life for as long as I could remember, which I really don't want to and I have contemplate it, begin the action of that wonderful, cowardly bliss of, failed suicide. I always stopped at the flesh, blade has always been my choice, but pride and shame always stopped me. Why would I want to destroy myself? I have achieved so much despite the cost of strife. I have lost so much, I have dealt with so much. Tragedy has always been part of my life, suicide and death goes hand and hand. My family has a history of it and I don't really want to be part of that sad story. So, yes, thank you. If you can be stronger and stand against the thought of suicide, so can I. One day at a time. Life, will always be a struggle but the few moments of happiness will always outshine the bad.

[Katie]

I think that everyone contemplates suicide to some degree, though for most of us it's more along the lines of "I wonder how it would feel if I (insert method of death here)" Although I find it rare for someone to write so openly about such a subject. I think more people should be able to share their pain/experience with depression and suicide more openly, it is pieces like this that open those doors.

(You are a victim of the WC hyphens-turn-in-to-quotations problem, You may want to fix that)

[Coyote Poetry]

I believe most people look at death often in a life. Death will come sooner or later. Suicide is a odd thing. Some people lose control one time and can take the final journey. The great writers like Hemingway got tire and blew his brain out. I believe his death was too much s**t he had seen in a life of great experiment. I lost two brothers to suicide. One day for small reasons such as fear and disappointment. Hung them selves leaving the family with questions and sadness. A very strong story. Open the door to many more questions. A excellent story.
Coyote

[Larry Dyson]

A shared feeling...ty..if you ever want to talk about the feelings I would be glad to listen..