Those Thoughts

I've been holding back a little, and I have my reasons: some to protect me, some to protect others, but I feel like I need to write about it at some point.

The first time I can remember thinking about wanting to kill myself or die was probably when I was around 13-15 years old. I spent a lot of time alone in my room in those days - countless hours awake in bed staring at the ceiling or wall and wishing it would all just cave in on me and put me out of my misery. At 15 years old, I sneaked out of my room as quietly as I could in our tiny apartment and went to the kitchen. I got a knife out of a drawer that squeaked so incredibly loudly. I sat down on the kitchen floor and looked at the knife and looked at my arms and cried, trying to work up the courage to do it - then my mom came out of her room to go to the bathroom. I was spooked, so I put the knife back quickly and just sat there in the kitchen floor, listening. I listened to her go back to her room and shut the door, then I got up and went back to my room. (Side note: I wonder if my mom had any idea. Probably not. She probably thought I was sneaking food in the middle of the night.)

That was the last time I can remember really wanting to kill myself until last year. Last year, my suicidal thoughts came on like a freight train. It had been so long, over a decade, since I had those thoughts. I thought they were gone forever, and then my boss told me that I didn't get a promotion because she felt my mental health was going to interfere with my ability to perform better than my co-worker. I wasn't so much upset at not getting the promotion than at the shattering of this delusion that my mental health was under control - that my mental health had stood in the way of anything I wanted. The devastation was slow-building, but when it reached a crescendo I was waiting at a stop sign and I thought, "I could drive off of the bridge. Wait, no. There are structural barriers in place. I can't do that. Maybe I could just accelerate right into oncoming traffic, right now. It'd be so easy." I drove straight to my husband's workplace, met him halfway across the lobby, and collapsed against his chest, crying and telling him exactly what I was thinking about. We got me help that day. I almost went inpatient. I wasn't safe. I had to give up my car keys for a couple of days because of those thoughts. My boss made me take a four-day weekend after I told her what was going on. Later, I thought about using pills and I hopped up and handed my husband every pill I could think of that I could potentially harm myself with. I had him hide them for me. It was not a good week or so.

Since then, the suicidal thoughts have been semi-regular... maybe every couple of weeks or months. I don't know. I'm not really keeping track. I know they came when I had that paperwork freak out at my new job. I know they came last week when I was so emotionally overwhelmed by that whole mess that I wrote about before. It's not frequent, but it's there and it's dangerous, so I tell people. I tell people every single time, mostly my husband since he's in the best position to do something about it immediately.

I just needed to say that. I needed to be real about it, for me as well as for others.