(no subject)
So, I want to try to explain feeling suicidal. Depression varies from person to person, so obviously this will as well. Still, I think there are enough common elements to be worth trying to explain how I see it.
It's like you're standing on the brink of a chasm. The longer you look down, the dizzier you get, but you don't have the power to look away. You start feeling like a light breeze could tip you over. Fortunately, you have tethers holding you back -- say, people you love / who love you, lingering hope for the future, religious beliefs, whatever -- but the chasm feels like it's pulling you in, and those tethers are straining. Sometimes, you're scared they'll snap and there will be nothing to keep you from falling headlong. Sometimes, you hope they will, because you're tired of the tension and falling seems so easy in comparison to living with the weight of depression/fear/despair.
"Where do you see yourself in five years" becomes laughable, because you can't imagine a future without that chasm anymore. You know you'll fall, you just don't know when. You can't see any landscape but that chasm, and if somebody tells you to shut your eyes or step back or whatever, you have to laugh because all that assumes there's anything beyond the chasm, that it's not pulling you in, that you have any power to move.
You stand on the brink too long, even the strongest bonds will wear thin. You'll warp, subtly, because it isn't normal or natural or safe to stay there -- humans have a strong instinct for life and all -- and your thoughts will start reflecting the dissonance in little assumptions and sympathies.
Being suicidal is a kind of sickness that sucks you in and saps your ability to resist it. Maybe there are some kinds that can be escaped under your own power. My experience is that your only power is to ask for help -- you can't move on your own, not like you need to if you want to be safe again. Feeling suicidal makes you feel suicidal makes you feel suicidal: you just keep getting dizzier.
It's like you're standing on the brink of a chasm. The longer you look down, the dizzier you get, but you don't have the power to look away. You start feeling like a light breeze could tip you over. Fortunately, you have tethers holding you back -- say, people you love / who love you, lingering hope for the future, religious beliefs, whatever -- but the chasm feels like it's pulling you in, and those tethers are straining. Sometimes, you're scared they'll snap and there will be nothing to keep you from falling headlong. Sometimes, you hope they will, because you're tired of the tension and falling seems so easy in comparison to living with the weight of depression/fear/despair.
"Where do you see yourself in five years" becomes laughable, because you can't imagine a future without that chasm anymore. You know you'll fall, you just don't know when. You can't see any landscape but that chasm, and if somebody tells you to shut your eyes or step back or whatever, you have to laugh because all that assumes there's anything beyond the chasm, that it's not pulling you in, that you have any power to move.
You stand on the brink too long, even the strongest bonds will wear thin. You'll warp, subtly, because it isn't normal or natural or safe to stay there -- humans have a strong instinct for life and all -- and your thoughts will start reflecting the dissonance in little assumptions and sympathies.
Being suicidal is a kind of sickness that sucks you in and saps your ability to resist it. Maybe there are some kinds that can be escaped under your own power. My experience is that your only power is to ask for help -- you can't move on your own, not like you need to if you want to be safe again. Feeling suicidal makes you feel suicidal makes you feel suicidal: you just keep getting dizzier.