To me, the thought of no longer experiencing mental pain is in some ways quite pleasurable. I guess this is what people feel to some extent when they want to end their life.
Some days I feel like I don’t want to die, but I also don’t want to live.
Well, most of the time I’m not really living, I’m just existing. Existing in a world of wrongs and rights, but where the wrongs are so overpowering that nothing seems worth it. I’m blanketed in that black fog once again, and no matter how bright my fog lights are, I just can’t seem to see clearly, let alone find the right path for my journey.
A few months back on an ordinary Thursday morning, I was sat in my car, too terrified to move incase I even thought about hurting myself. I sobbed and sobbed endlessly on my steering wheel, just wanting to be out of this situation, out of this mindset. Painfully wanting to be under my duvet at home, where everything seemed rosy. I’d have done so much to extract myself from that state, that place, that circumstance.
Looking back at it now, I kick myself for how silly it was to think like that, but I also feel guilty and ashamed.
Recently, however, I’ve seen these thoughts from a different side. Last month, I lost a friend to suicide. A kind, generous, warm-hearted person who loved fishing and carpentry and seemed to be full of life. I know deep down that he was in a lot of pain, but we helped each other through. The last time I saw him was the night before he died. Surrounded by people and music and cherished loved ones, we hardly spoke, but I felt a sense of acknowledgement in the air between us, like we understood how the other was feeling with words unspoken. I’m using all my conceivable energy right now to try to avoid writing “I just wish” or “what if”, but at the end of the day I am a human being after all, tapping keys on a computer with a hugely complicated brain and normally very negative ways of thinking inside my head. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I didn’t realise he was feeling that low. I didn’t realise, no-one realised, and that’s the problem.
A few days after he passed, me and my partner got a tattoo of the hand stamp which was the door entry for the gig that last night we saw him. It’s a tiny anchor on our wrists that remind us to keep in contact with those who are struggling, ask them how they are, and take care of them if we can. I feel like I’ve never known anything so important in my life than this piece of information, hence why I got it permanently drawn on my body. A small, constant reminder to just be there. I’ll never know what or who it might help in the future, but just the fact that it might help is enough.
The funeral was the day I finally realised how many people loved and cared for him. The decision to take his life has left a family without a son, a brother, an uncle, a cousin, a nephew, a fiancé. As heartbreaking as this situation is right now, I really believe it will make me a much stronger, good-willed, clearer-thinking individual, and I am determined to let his spirit live out through everything I do.