National suicide prevention month

20 Dec

Dear Suicidal Ideation, (Part 1)

The first time I met you was after a car accident and my first concussion. I was 15, grounded from doing everything, and I just wanted to die.

I told my step mom and she cornered me in the kitchen with a knife, pushed me against the counter, and screamed, “You want to kill yourself—fucking do it!”

I was afraid of knives and her. But I wasn’t afraid to pop pills and to take high doses. Lucky for me, I never took the wrong combination or overdosed. This was before Fentanyl was everywhere and before it became popular to drop a bunch of pills into a bowl at at party and take a handful. Before you started using these drugs to steal the lives of too many.

My sister likes to remind me of the time I chugged Pepto Bismol, which is funny to me now.

The truth is, I lived with you for almost twenty years. So I know you well.

I read about you the other day, in this article:

Rosenberg found that “kids who enjoyed a healthy level of self-esteem felt like they mattered to their parents, they felt they were important and significant.” Subsequent studies of mattering identified it as a fundamental human need and a basic driver of our behavior.

When I read that it became immediately clear why having two children to care for has silenced you. My fundamental human need to matter, my dream of being a mother, of having a family to love and nurture, it’s here now. No thanks to you.

I know I wouldn’t have made it out alive if my low level of self-esteem gave into you. Instead, it learned to fight against you. It convinced you I’d fail at killing myself and just end up with a more fucked up body and mind. It took the reins time and time again telling me:

“Sure, you suck at life, you’re not where you want to be, you’re a lazy, fucked up, sorry excuse for a human, and you’ll never amount to anything, you make horrible choices, you’ll never find true love, and you’re destined to lose everything good. But if you try to escape this fact, it will only get worse.”

This is how we learned to live together for so many years.