CW suicide, suicidal ideation.
I imagine a different conversation.
Not the real one where you told me
How uncomfortable it would feel
To bear that much responsibility.
The conversation after the event
You have with some other person.
If only she had told us how she felt
Or reached out before it was too late.
I'm ok at the moment - I find it very hard to talk about when I'm not. Part of why I've had so many terrible bouts with suicidal ideation is that there were other things going on that were genuinely much more urgent than the deteriorating state of my mental health.
The evidence is finally piling up to demonstrate that depression isn't caused by having unbalanced brain chemistry, it's caused by distress, trauma, stress, burnout… It happens for reasons. There's a lot that I'm working on, but there are also things I need help with. I've never asked for help without being deeply anxious that I would be a nuisance, or putting too much pressure on the other person. It's loaded, asking for help to get out of something that makes you feel suicidal. I try to be easy to say no to.
But it's a hard thing, trying to make it easy to say no when what I'm asking for is help with not wanting to die. Needing to be worth the difficulty and the discomfort. Needing to be someone it would be worth enduring discomfort for, to be someone whose life is worth saving.
If you're on the other side of this with someone you care about… if you are scared and you feel like it's too much pressure, that may be true. You may be facing a too-heavy load. But it may be lighter than the load of losing someone this way. I know people who have lost people to suicide. The haunting question of 'could I have saved them' is a terrible thing to live with. If they asked you for help, then they thought you could keep them alive, or give them a reason to keep themselves alive.
The immensity and drama of someone being suicidal can make it all too easy to imagine that what you have to do in face of that must surely also be immense and dramatic. It probably isn't. Can you help a person feel like they have some worth? Can you express care enough that they might be able to imagine the world won't be better with them gone from it? When you're at those edges, small things can be life saving. To be needed - a bit, valued - slightly, good enough for someone, important to someone…
Perhaps the scariest thing to accept is that a small action from you - some small kindness, some well considered words, some supportive action - might be the difference between life and death for someone else. Your slightest comment has the power to save or destroy another human being. That's true whether you acknowledge it or not and regardless of whether you act deliberately based on knowing that. To know that of yourself, to accept the power and the responsibility, is to become someone who can save lives, and make life worth living for other people.
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