***Trigger Warning – mentions sexual assault and suicidal ideation
*** If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or a crisis, please reach out immediately to the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741. These are free and confidential services.
Considering When Life Is Complete
Throughout my life, I have often considered when I have wanted my life to be complete. I have considered at more times than others even how to end my life. I attempted suicide on two occasions – at 18 and at 22. The final thought of an attempt happened when I was 32, but instead of going through with the attempt, I walked out of my apartment and drove to the bookstore and half-heartedly purchased a book that prompted me to seek counseling for my suicidal ideation.
From that point, I sought the help of a cognitive behavioral therapist and began the course of redirecting my life path. Through talk therapy, I came to realize that I did not really want to die. I just wanted the overwhelming pain of the pervasive sadness I battled to end. I learned the diagnoses and terms of the depression (clinical, major, chronic, dysthymia, double) and anxiety disorders I battled as well as the remedies that were necessary to help me along the way (psychotropic medications for depression and anxiety).
In therapy, I also delved into the topic of my family and their narcissistic ways. Oddly, I was the one who ended up teaching the therapist about narcissistic personality disorder. It was then that I learned that many therapists had their own niche that they preferred to always deal with and most did not want to entangle themselves with narcissists which is one of the reasons the therapist I dealt with said that most therapists she knew would never tell their clients if they had personality disorders because not doing so made it easier for them and the client.
Nevertheless, I still felt at times that I was getting nowhere with what I truly needed to get to the bottom of … and that was the core root of my pervasive sadness. The therapist had even diagnosed me with having complicated grief or prolonged grief disorder, and I went on to research this and found that such grief is about stories of loss that cannot be told. In my case, I still had a story that I needed to connect to and with in order to get to the root of my issues.
In the end, therapy was only a catalyst to me choosing not to complete the end of my life. At times, therapy actually increased my ideation because, on the surface, I was still battling with narcissistic personalities that made life feel unbearable to me at times on top of the long-term and complicated grief I was already suffering. Needless to say, I realized that therapy was not the “be all cure” that I needed it to be. I had to take accountability for my own healing and do the work to heal myself. So I rolled up my sleeves and dove in with the idea that I would either sink or swim.
I chose to swim. I chose to breathe. I chose to live.
Currently, I am choosing to swim even when I feel like I am sinking. I am choosing to breathe, and I am choosing to live.
It has taken me years to understand the correlation of a traumatic episode of sexual assault in my life to make the connection to my pondering thoughts of suicidal ideation. It now all makes so much sense to me. Yet, I think about how unfortunate it is for others to never reach this point … that it never makes sense and that suicidal ideation becomes a completed act. When I think about this, it actually makes me hurt. It brings tears to my eyes because I know what it is like to suffer in silence for so many years.
My mind kept a buried secret that eventually became forgotten although it still remained a part of me. The agony of my internal suffering has willed me to give up at times. There have been countless days where I have closed my eyes to sleep and hoped to not wake up or when I have contemplated taking a dosage of medication dangerously not recommended for me. Yet, I would stop myself for so many reasons or I would wish the thoughts of self-concluding myself away.
The echoes of “You have so much to live for and be thankful and grateful for” would arouse me into retorting back that “I am grateful, but I’m still sad. I. Need. Help.” I recalled having the most struggles when I was an avid church goer and member. Well-meaning [and sometimes not so well-meaning] Christians would be quick to chastise me for not believing God hard enough or choosing to shun away the goodness of Jesus. I would even be told that I was either oppressed or possessed by demons because I was not casting down vain imaginations and evil thinking.
Yet, on the flip side of all of that, I would turn to scripture and see the sufferings of Job, David, and even Jesus who was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” There were never really any explanations for these situations except to say that one of the three was without sin. Nevertheless, I often wished that someone else would simply understand me or at least just try on my shoes to know what I felt so that they were better able to understand me, but I found no one except for mimicking narcissistic individuals who sought to siphon my energy.
It has been quite a learning experience, and I am currently in a much better place. I can now say that I do not want to consider when my life is complete because right now I am just beginning to to experience my life while feeling very much alive [if that makes sense]. I know my best days are ahead of me even when those days may come with obstacles, but I do know for certain that I do not want to die.
I know that I have just always wanted the internal sadness within me to subside and die. In my life, I want to be content and live a life of peace. The realization is that circumstances come and go, and “this too shall pass” gives me the knowledge that there are more days to come for me if God so wills them, and there are more days of my life that are worth the challenge for me to live.
Stay tuned because there are more posts to come. Thank you for reading.
My Voice Unchained 