Famous last words
Each day that passes reduces my faith that things will get better.
This evening, I began drafting the letters I would leave behind, should my pain finally reach the point of completely exceeding my ability to cope. Favorite Person, Curly, Soul Sister, my mother, my father, my dear sister, my grandmother. Other friends that have touched my life in some way. They will all have some last vestige of me, once I've gone. If I leave.
A normal person would be deeply disturbed by this, by the urge to begin putting down the thoughts I'll leave behind, but this feels more like an inevitability than anything. It's as though the whole of my existence has led to my inhabiting the depths of distress that drives people to contemplate ending their own lives.
It's truly a strange state to exist in. There's the continued awareness that this...this urge is completely nonsensical, and that it won't actually solve anything, and that regardless of what the depression tells me, other people do care and that they'll be hurt terribly if I were to no longer exist. And yet the feeling persists, an eternal gnawing in my soul, a tiny voice at the back of my mind that whispers of relief. Always there, even while I'm feeling good. Always present.
I've grown so used to the constant suicidality that it has long since ceased to feel abnormal. It's just something else to deal with, no stranger than anything else rattling around in my head. I'm jaded to it, and while I should be concerned by this, it barely registers.
It's almost funny, really. I stopped posting regularly last year because the act of relaying what was going on in my head was too distressing, and now I'm posting with some regularity because what's going on in my head is too distressing to put anywhere else. I'm still struggling to cope with no longer being able to tell Favorite Person what's going on (or much of anything, for that matter...), and I'm terrified to really tell anyone else the whole truth. And yet, there needs to be some outlet for the darkness that swirls inside, because getting it out in some fashion is the only tool I still have to prevent it from consuming me entirely - a prospect that seems to circle ever closer as time passes.
The most difficult aspect of explaining what I wrestle with to anyone is that my desire to end my life doesn't stem from a desire to die, not really. I just want the misery to end, and since nothing else that I've tried seems to have worked - not counseling, not antidepressants, not healthy lifestyle changes - quitting the game feels like the only option I have left. A solution to an intractable problem, not a true wish for death.
I don't really see other options for myself.
On the topic...I've been doing some reading about cyanide toxicity and cyanide poisoning, and it's discouraging that while ingesting cyanide powder is an extremely effective means of committing suicide (97% success rate, according to Lost All Hope.com), it's also agonizing, and for my purposes, slow. I want to go out quietly and peacefully, not in convulsions so intense they shatter my vertebrae, not flooded with adrenaline and lactic acid, not in absolute terror because it feels like I'm suffocating, no matter how deeply I breathe.
Above all else, I'd want my death to be very clean and painless. No gunshots to the head or slit wrists to leave behind massive amounts of gore for someone else to clean up. Finding my corpse would be traumatizing enough; I wouldn't want to further scar whomever finds me - which, at this point in time, is most likely to be Favorite Person, with Curly being a very close second - by subjecting them to the deep red of my lifeforce spilled onto the bathroom floor. It's strange to me, in a distant way, that this is even something that factors into the method I choose, avoiding the creation of a mess to be cleaned by those I'd leave behind.
Inert gas is a method I know for a fact would work, but it would require more planning, since I don't already have access to cylinders of helium or of nitrogen. That would need to be purchased, though helium is easy enough to obtain. Then there would be the question of obtaining an oxygen mask, and the challenge of figuring out how best to rig up a connection between it and the tank, controlling the flow of gas to just the right rate.
My propensity for planning gets displayed in the oddest of situations...
Lately, the feeling of disconnect that I'm so familiar with has extended from a sense of being disconnected from the people around me to a sense of being disconnected from existence. Things don't really feel real; it's an odd sensation that's hard to explain. Or rather, it doesn't feel like I'm actually real, like I'm just some specter drifting along, only perceptible as a shadow or an echo to the more solid people around me. A thing neither noticed nor seen. A tangle of wordless thoughts and emotions and little more.
I keep telling myself that people care, but it's so hard to maintain that belief when I can't see evidence to support it.
This evening, I began drafting the letters I would leave behind, should my pain finally reach the point of completely exceeding my ability to cope. Favorite Person, Curly, Soul Sister, my mother, my father, my dear sister, my grandmother. Other friends that have touched my life in some way. They will all have some last vestige of me, once I've gone. If I leave.
A normal person would be deeply disturbed by this, by the urge to begin putting down the thoughts I'll leave behind, but this feels more like an inevitability than anything. It's as though the whole of my existence has led to my inhabiting the depths of distress that drives people to contemplate ending their own lives.
It's truly a strange state to exist in. There's the continued awareness that this...this urge is completely nonsensical, and that it won't actually solve anything, and that regardless of what the depression tells me, other people do care and that they'll be hurt terribly if I were to no longer exist. And yet the feeling persists, an eternal gnawing in my soul, a tiny voice at the back of my mind that whispers of relief. Always there, even while I'm feeling good. Always present.
I've grown so used to the constant suicidality that it has long since ceased to feel abnormal. It's just something else to deal with, no stranger than anything else rattling around in my head. I'm jaded to it, and while I should be concerned by this, it barely registers.
It's almost funny, really. I stopped posting regularly last year because the act of relaying what was going on in my head was too distressing, and now I'm posting with some regularity because what's going on in my head is too distressing to put anywhere else. I'm still struggling to cope with no longer being able to tell Favorite Person what's going on (or much of anything, for that matter...), and I'm terrified to really tell anyone else the whole truth. And yet, there needs to be some outlet for the darkness that swirls inside, because getting it out in some fashion is the only tool I still have to prevent it from consuming me entirely - a prospect that seems to circle ever closer as time passes.
The most difficult aspect of explaining what I wrestle with to anyone is that my desire to end my life doesn't stem from a desire to die, not really. I just want the misery to end, and since nothing else that I've tried seems to have worked - not counseling, not antidepressants, not healthy lifestyle changes - quitting the game feels like the only option I have left. A solution to an intractable problem, not a true wish for death.
I don't really see other options for myself.
On the topic...I've been doing some reading about cyanide toxicity and cyanide poisoning, and it's discouraging that while ingesting cyanide powder is an extremely effective means of committing suicide (97% success rate, according to Lost All Hope.com), it's also agonizing, and for my purposes, slow. I want to go out quietly and peacefully, not in convulsions so intense they shatter my vertebrae, not flooded with adrenaline and lactic acid, not in absolute terror because it feels like I'm suffocating, no matter how deeply I breathe.
Above all else, I'd want my death to be very clean and painless. No gunshots to the head or slit wrists to leave behind massive amounts of gore for someone else to clean up. Finding my corpse would be traumatizing enough; I wouldn't want to further scar whomever finds me - which, at this point in time, is most likely to be Favorite Person, with Curly being a very close second - by subjecting them to the deep red of my lifeforce spilled onto the bathroom floor. It's strange to me, in a distant way, that this is even something that factors into the method I choose, avoiding the creation of a mess to be cleaned by those I'd leave behind.
Inert gas is a method I know for a fact would work, but it would require more planning, since I don't already have access to cylinders of helium or of nitrogen. That would need to be purchased, though helium is easy enough to obtain. Then there would be the question of obtaining an oxygen mask, and the challenge of figuring out how best to rig up a connection between it and the tank, controlling the flow of gas to just the right rate.
My propensity for planning gets displayed in the oddest of situations...
Lately, the feeling of disconnect that I'm so familiar with has extended from a sense of being disconnected from the people around me to a sense of being disconnected from existence. Things don't really feel real; it's an odd sensation that's hard to explain. Or rather, it doesn't feel like I'm actually real, like I'm just some specter drifting along, only perceptible as a shadow or an echo to the more solid people around me. A thing neither noticed nor seen. A tangle of wordless thoughts and emotions and little more.
I keep telling myself that people care, but it's so hard to maintain that belief when I can't see evidence to support it.
Comments
Post a Comment