Suicide
This article has a rather stark title compared to my other ones, no sly little joke or further expansion on the specific nature of my discussion. There’s nothing really humorous I can put there to alleviate just how fucking heavy a read this is gonna be, and there’s no short little summation of this article. It’s not just my experiences with suicide, it’s about how we handle the topic of suicide, how we might have put our feet on the moon, but when it comes to matters of the mind we’re still grasping at straws a lot of the time. There’s no hashtag, or foundation behind this to continue some sort of advocacy, I’m just a voice on the internet, opening up about something seriously traumatic that happened to me, in hopes it can open the conversation, in the hope that I’ll somehow come to terms with it, even a little bit.
April 1st, 2015, a date that’s not gonna leave my mind any time soon. The explanation of the context that helped contribute to my attempt would take up almost another article, and there are names and facts I would rather not divulge online with this. I’d been struggling with depression and anxiety for quite some time before, a pre-existing mental condition that was exacerbated by a number of other factors. The pressure of exams, various things going on at home and in my social life, all just fed into the swirling whirlpool of nastiness that was my mind at the time. One particular thing set off a chain of events and my head just spiralled out of control. I was disgusting, I was a fuckup, I was a disgrace to my family, to my friends, to everyone. My presence on earth was a negative one for everyone. With these feelings that had always been a shadowy constant overwhelming me, I couldn’t handle things anymore. I attempted to hang myself. A belt, around my neck. Fuck.
The feelings of guilt, disgust and failure felt after a failed suicide attempt are hard to explain to someone who has never attempted, none the less they are crippling and horrific. I was in shock that I could perform an action of such violence on myself, ashamed that I’d both tried to exit my situation in such a way and that I’d fucked it up. It’s a traumatic experience. Recalling it is enough to set off a depressive episode, I need to check myself and know when to take a break when dealing with material that involves suicide. It took me a long time to be comfortable with talking about it, fearful even considering it could bring me back to that place. Even writing this piece has been a long, drawn out affair, but it’s something I needed to write. To come to terms with what happened. To break the stigma on suicide and put a face to the statistics. For I’m not an exception or an isolated case, for everyone who survives a suicide attempt there is someone who doesn’t. With 12 million to be cut from mental health services in this country, a severely gutted sector that so many depend on and yet so many cannot avail of for a multitude of reasons, that number is set to go up.
As a nation, Ireland has a hard time talking about mental illness. Though strides have been made in recent years, with high profile figures one would not associate with mental illness stepping out and speaking about their experiences, we still have a long way to go. The stigma against suicide is still extremely prevalent, failed attempts are often greeted with an “it was all attention seeking” rather than relief someone had not taken their own life. Folk who had never been faced with holding a blade to their wrists or standing at a bridge staring into the water below condemning it as the “easy way out”, not considering how utterly harrowing mental illness is, and how bad things must have gotten for someone to consider suicide as an option. If we’re going to bring down the number of suicides in this country, we need an end to the stigma, we need honest conversation, we need to bring this serious topic out of the darkness and address it with the gravity and respect it deserves.
April 1st, 2015, a date that’s not gonna leave my mind any time soon. The explanation of the context that helped contribute to my attempt would take up almost another article, and there are names and facts I would rather not divulge online with this. I’d been struggling with depression and anxiety for quite some time before, a pre-existing mental condition that was exacerbated by a number of other factors. The pressure of exams, various things going on at home and in my social life, all just fed into the swirling whirlpool of nastiness that was my mind at the time. One particular thing set off a chain of events and my head just spiralled out of control. I was disgusting, I was a fuckup, I was a disgrace to my family, to my friends, to everyone. My presence on earth was a negative one for everyone. With these feelings that had always been a shadowy constant overwhelming me, I couldn’t handle things anymore. I attempted to hang myself. A belt, around my neck. Fuck.
The feelings of guilt, disgust and failure felt after a failed suicide attempt are hard to explain to someone who has never attempted, none the less they are crippling and horrific. I was in shock that I could perform an action of such violence on myself, ashamed that I’d both tried to exit my situation in such a way and that I’d fucked it up. It’s a traumatic experience. Recalling it is enough to set off a depressive episode, I need to check myself and know when to take a break when dealing with material that involves suicide. It took me a long time to be comfortable with talking about it, fearful even considering it could bring me back to that place. Even writing this piece has been a long, drawn out affair, but it’s something I needed to write. To come to terms with what happened. To break the stigma on suicide and put a face to the statistics. For I’m not an exception or an isolated case, for everyone who survives a suicide attempt there is someone who doesn’t. With 12 million to be cut from mental health services in this country, a severely gutted sector that so many depend on and yet so many cannot avail of for a multitude of reasons, that number is set to go up.
As a nation, Ireland has a hard time talking about mental illness. Though strides have been made in recent years, with high profile figures one would not associate with mental illness stepping out and speaking about their experiences, we still have a long way to go. The stigma against suicide is still extremely prevalent, failed attempts are often greeted with an “it was all attention seeking” rather than relief someone had not taken their own life. Folk who had never been faced with holding a blade to their wrists or standing at a bridge staring into the water below condemning it as the “easy way out”, not considering how utterly harrowing mental illness is, and how bad things must have gotten for someone to consider suicide as an option. If we’re going to bring down the number of suicides in this country, we need an end to the stigma, we need honest conversation, we need to bring this serious topic out of the darkness and address it with the gravity and respect it deserves.
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