Content warning: mental illness, self harm, suicide, suicidal ideation

Every day I think about killing myself.

They call it “frequent suicidal ideation”, which is a fancy way of saying that I think about killing myself a lot. The term isn’t usually used to describe instances of heartbreak or frustration or physical pain or unbearable sadness that makes you think about throwing yourself in front of the Metro train. Those are transient suicidal thoughts. Ideation is reserved for people who make plans.

People like me.

It doesn’t take anything in particular to trigger the images – nothing conscious, anyway. I can be just sitting at my computer working and the image will appear in my head of putting the barrel of a gun into my mouth, tasting the oil on the cold metal, hearing the hard snap of the hammer being pulled back. It just appears and won’t leave until it’s ready to go, whether a couple of seconds or five minutes.

Of course, the images can be triggered by events, too. Seeing something that reminds me of a future I don’t have, or of a love that decided I couldn’t make them happy enough, or of a chronic pain, or an illness that won’t go away  – those can certainly cause the images to flood into my mind. But often it’s just an idle thought or memory  running through my mind unbidden – an image of making love to someone I adore, or of walking someone through my old museum house in Gaithersburg, or of being able to really write again, something that people respond to. A palpable sense of loss will always bring them on.

But the worst, predictably, are those that go past simple transient thoughts and into ideation. For example:

Checking into a hotel with a largely empty overnight bag. Putting my ID, contact information, note, and my final instructions on the desk beside the hotel’s stationery kit.Taking a long hot bath, then getting dressed in something appropriately sardonic. Lying on the bed and taking the cocktail of drugs to end my suffering. Sometimes it’s via injection, in which case there’s a segue to finding a source for the heroin or morphine. Yeah, morphine would be better. I know I like the way it feels, and it’ll knock me out. But it always ends with the warm black velvet curtain falling over me, wrapping me in its eternal embrace, absolving me of my manifold sins and taking away the pain of living.

That’s just one example. There are plenty of others. There will probably be at least one more before I get to sleep tonight. It’s something that I have to live with. (So far.)

When I had my cats I knew I had to stay alive because no one else would be able to take care of them. As their numbers dwindled, that safety net became tattered, and eventually they were gone. But my father remained, and I knew he would be heartbroken. Now, he, too, is gone. But what about my partners, my lovers, or my friends who would be hurt by my death? They, too, have largely faded away or otherwise rejected me. For the first time in a long while I have no “special someone” to share my life with, to let us share our joys, to help give me purpose, a reason to get up in the morning, or when needed, to light a lantern in my shadows. My friends, too, have become distant, our friendships the victim of COVID or of distance or of simply growing in different directions.

I know that some of you are silently protesting right now, saying that you would be devastated should I carry through any of these film clips my brain screens for me multiple times each day. And I know that you’d mean it, I do! But I also know that I’m not a part of your lives, and that within a week the “devastation” would be gone, replaced with the need to get the roof fixed or dealing with a new boss or having a new love in your life or just your own problems of daily life. Sure, when something might come up to remind you of me you’d be sad for a moment, but your life would continue. I don’t blame you for that; in fact, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Life, as they say, goes on.

So why am I writing this? Is this a cry for help, a plea for someone to hear me? No, it’s not. At this writing, at least, I don’t have any plans to carry through with these scripts. If things are this hard for me, some of the more daring of you might ask, why haven’t I done it yet? It’s simple.

Hope.

Depression – particularly MDD (major depressive disorder) and TRD (treatment-resistant depression), both of which describe me – is not curable. It’s not something that any amount of exercise, meditation, therapy, or medication can eliminate from your mind and body permanently. However, it is possible for it to go into remission. This is something I didn’t know until a few weeks ago. Because none of my treatments have been fully effective, I assumed that the best you can get is an alleviation of some of the symptoms. Apparently, it is theoretically possible for me to stop being depressed, at least for a while. I have a hard time even imagining what that would feel like. 

Of course, the federal government and the medical establishment aren’t in favor of making the treatments easily available to patients – the feds because some of the treatments are experimental, and the pharmaceutical/medical establishment because there’s too much money in keeping people unhappy.

Still, the hope that something new will come along that will grant me that feeling of freedom, at least for a while, is what sustains me.

But those of you who don’t suffer under the oppressive weight of major depression can’t easily understand what it’s like. This essay is my small effort toward helping you to understand what we endure on a daily basis. The hungry, gnawing darkness that eats us alive. The eternal fog that’s keeping us from seeing the world clearly. The sucking void that drains us of energy and desire and life. The hideous spawn of neurochemistry and traumatic experience that makes us the living dead.

Throughout my life all I have wanted is for other people to be happy, to be able to live their lives as they choose without fear or pain. Along the way I’ve done what I can to try and nudge humanity in that direction with all the force of my words and deeds. While this is not a cheerful essay, it’s my hope that it will help you understand the plight of those in your lives who live under the shroud of this horrible darkness.