The Undercurrent of Suicide
A safe place
“The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.” Frederick Nietzsche
Is the river of suicidal thoughts that has been playing in the background,actually been saving my life?
A jolly post for a gloomy Sunday my fresh pineapples! I know I know, seems like a bit of a bleak dark little topic…but…I decided a long time ago to be very open about the conversation around suicide and you better believe, because of the last couple of months, I am sticking to my guns.
Now I don’t know how many of you have ever suffered from anxiety…. But I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark and say, probably quite a few, right? And I am talking about that body numbing,brain sliding, crippling, untameable, not breath throughable anxiety. Well, then I am right there with you and I wondered if, you beautiful pieces of tangy, enzyme eating fruits you wouldn’t mind if Igave you some history of my mental health….I mean…you don’t really have a choice because…well…I am going to write it in the next paragraph…soz.
I am not going to go way back….back into time (kudos if you got the reference) because nobody needs an entire anthology of the mental health of Aine….that’s a whole psychology book no one asked for…BUT…we will go back to when I was between the ages of 18-20 when my mindteetered between anxiety and paranoia. I genuinely thought people were coming to get me..don’t ask me who or why…they were just coming and, in my mind, there was nothing I could do to stop it.At its worst I would wake up in the middle of the night with a fear that it was only a matter of time before I would be found….it was 5am, no one was looking for me at 5am, I don’t care what kind of imaginary villain you are!Anyway, I would leave the house and walk, walk wherever I could and just keep walking.
One of my safest places was the Tate Modern, I’m not really sure why, I just found myself there one day, sat on a bench on the first floor, looking over the mezzanine. Tourists would be milling in, making noise, talking, kids shouting and finally…finally…after weeks of being tormented, I would fall asleep. So it just started to be the direction I would walk in.At the time, either my boyfriend back then would come and find me and take me home or I would wake up, hunched over on the Tate Modern bench, wipe the inevitable drool off my face…..ah the open mouthed sleepers, I feel for us all….and walk or get the bus home.
Everything would feel sort of, hazy, but easier in the cold sunlight. And as I dragged my numb body down the Southbank to head home, I would stop and look over at the river. In these moments, the same question would always flash across my mind “What if it never goes away?” and just then, a calm quiet would blanket me as I would answer “You could always end it all”
Are you still with me?! Ok good…I know it feels like a lot to take in and trust me, it was a lot at the time too. But here we get to the point of this little drag down memory lane…..the thought that I had the option to commit suicide is exactly why I didn’t. What these thoughts actually made me do was see it as a last resort, which meant that I gave myself the illusion that there were endless possibilities of recovery. I want to pause here to just say that this is my own personal relationship with my river of suicidal thoughts. There are so many people out there who do not experience it in this way and feel that it is in fact their only option. Part of my mind is forever with these people aswe fight with everything, we have…but not all of us win…I just wanted to let you all know that.
Now, this inner monologue of suicide always being an option is, of course, not the only thing that has kept me alive all these years. Therapy has changed my life, as has studying psychology, talking myself down and generally finding my joys…living..I suppose you could say, also the amazing people Iam lucky to have in my life. The irony does not escape that, in order to manage my mental health, I balance on a line between living in the joys of life and ending it all.
So lets bring us all the way back to now…I know, what a journey I take you all on, you lucky fruitbowls….so over the last few weeks or perhaps the last 2 months, it all sort of merges into one thesedays….shhhhhh I’m not old, youre old!…. I have been riding a bumpy road of anxiety, and it is a newform of anxiety, oh fun, I love new things. It has just sat in my entire body and about 3 times a day will release a stream of bodily anxiety. That’s right…no thoughts in particular, because they have all morphed together like when you used to mash all the play doh colours together until it was just a lump of discolour. My body would just shake and suddenly need to move, and move violently, it needed to attack and be attacked all at the same time in the most aggressive of energies. And one of the only ways I found to get rid of it, or at least try to tame it, would be to cycle. And guess where I would cycle towards?...yep…The Tate Modern. Like my brain stored it for 11 years. Although the anxiety is different, the reactions aren’t and that need to leave where I am and move, are still the go to.
About 6 weeks ago, it was late, and I was trying to cycle my downward spiral away, and I stopped on Blackfriars bridge. It is not the first time I have stopped and stood on this bridge to look out at the view and the water. But this time, a familiar thought occurred to me, “I could just end it all” and I leant heavily against the side of the bridge, wondering what the feel of the sharp water would be as my body hit it. I looked down at the lights shimmering in the water, closed my eyes and took a breath, got back on my bike, and cycled home.
What perhaps is useful to understand here..and needed, is, this is all part of the same mental illness.
Don’t you see? I write so peacefully, and with humour, about a river of suicide that runs through me in order to stave off the anxiety. My friends, this is no way to go through life. And I need to make this very clear, the idea that the thought of suicide is what really saves me is not ok. It may feel that way when I am in the throws of bad anxiety and it may seem that way when I eloquently put it into words. But understand, that a part of the reason I write so…freely and happy go lucky about this subject is for fear of stigma.
That’s right, it’s 2021 and people still fear talking about the want to end their life because we worry about being met with “urgh, this again” “you just do it for attention” “well you haven’t killed yourself yet so you probably won’t” “If you really wanted to then you would”…..And you know what, their right, I probably won’t, but not because then I won’t see all that wonderful attention I will get…because that’s how mental health works, right? Insert idiot smile here….but because of what I would leave behind and , in all honesty, having had the conversation with others who often feel the way I do, alot of us are still here because of what it would do to other people.
BUT! It’s ok, sit up, sorry, it all got a lot, I know. Hold my hand here for a bit. The bright side to this is, in the last week, I have started to feel better and the anxiety as subsided, and, along with it, my suicidal river has evaporated and there is just a sort of wet puddle stain. I have started getting my creativity back, as you can see by this long overdue post. Yes, when things get so bad that it feels too much to handle, the current of suicide runs fast and swift, which keeps me alive in those empty moments. But it is not an option, not ever, it is a mechanism born from mental illness which, in turn, makes it a mental illness. It does save my life in those lower moments, but it doesn’t make me who I am, nor does it replace those feelings of happiness, joy, love and sarcastic tendencies that really, truly, make me…well….me…alive and well.