I can't even really tell you the first time I started having suicidal thoughts, I think they probably evolved over time. When I was little and stressed out I would fantasize about running away. I wanted to escape the stress and in my little mind running away could fix that, then slowly as I got older I realized I would be better off dead, more accurately it would be easier for everyone I cared about if I was dead. I felt like I was a disappointment. I wasn't good in school, I wasn't good at sports, and I could be annoying at times. I was the youngest of three girls and very immature. I got on my sisters nerves like any normal little sister does at times. Somewhere some how I eventually began to interpetate people being annoyed at me as they didn't like me. I have always had a deep love for my family and friends and I was continuously hurting them. The easy solution was for me to not be around them. I at first thought about running away, and that eventually turned into suicidal thoughts.
As I got a little older I began to understand that I wasn't really a disappointment to my family and friends. Sometimes I would just get on thier nerves and they didn't hate me forever. They didn't really hate me at all. When I was in eighth grade things got rough again. I was bullied. I wasn't doing well in school. I began to think very seriously about killing myself. I didn't tell a soul. Suicide was talked about in school, and the one thing I heard was to get help. Get help if you are having those thoughts, get help if someone told you they were having those thoughts. So much of what I did as a kid was attention seeking. I was afraid someone would just brush it off. I was afraid of being judged. I was afraid of hurting those I love. I realized that people did want me around and if I wanted to be dead that would hurt them. So I kept my mouth shut. I didn't tell a soul.
The thoughts never went away. Sometimes they would be worse than other times, but always in the back of my head was that lingering thought that the world be better place without me in it. Even when things were good, if I let someone down I would immediately go there. When things were good I could easily think the thought and then go on like nothing was going on. I hid it from everyone. I was afraid that if I admitted I was suicidal that I would be looked at differently. That people would tip toe around me, that I would loose friends. I was afraid that I would hurt everyone I loved because people don't understand suicide. So I was protecting them from me. During some of the bad times I went to counseling. It helped, but eventually I would work through some things that were stressing me and I got good at hiding my thoughts again.
About three years ago things got really rough. Usually through my life I could pinpoint what was making things harder. In eighth grade it was being bullied. A bad spell in college was when my parents were going through their divorce. This time was different. I was happily married, my dad who had been sick was doing really well, I had a good job and worked with people I liked. Yet for some reason most of the time I wanted to kill myself. I decided that I needed help. I went to my doctor and talked things over with her. She set me up with counseling and I started taking some antidepressants.
In my counseling sessions for I started to learn that my depression and suicidal thoughts were okay. That was huge for me. It was okay. I didn't have to fake it. I didn't have to hide it. I had spent my life shielding myself and everyone around me from what I thought was something that I shouldn't feel. It didn't matter what others thought or what I thought my feelings were valid, they were real, and most importantly it's okay to feel them. Then I began to understand something else. If I disappoint someone they still like me, and they understand. They understand that I had a long day at work and want to cancel plans the same as I would understand if they canceled on me. I stopped worrying about pleasing others. The final piece to the puzzle was realizing that I had gotten used to wishing I was dead so much that it was my go to coping mechanism for stress. I started to realize that I needed to pinpoint what was bugging me. If I had suicidal thoughts, it was usually because I was stressed out about something else. So I needed to change my way of thinking. An examples for this is On my way to work I would think I wanted to kill myself. In truth I just didn't want to go to work and hated driving on the S-curve. By realizing what was actually stressing me out helped.
Eventually things started to get better, but just like those thoughts gradually came over time, it also has taken time to heal. I am not completely better. I never will be. By pretending I was fine for so many years was a lie. I have clinical depression and anxiety. I always have and always will. I will continue to have good spells and bad spells and it's perfectly okay that I do. It is a part of who I am. I opened up and wrote this because it's important to understand that their is nothing wrong with mental illnesses. I hid it because I thought there was. By hiding it I wasn't healing and faking what was real. I am writing about this to help people who have depression to get help, and to help people who do not have depression to understand what it's like and how to help.
Love you Sara. In your good spells & your bad spells, love you.
ReplyDelete