At 27, I’ve settled into a comfortable coexistence with my suicidality. We’ve made peace, or at least a temporary accord negotiated by therapy and medication. It’s still hard sometimes, but not as hard as you might think. What makes it harder is being unable to talk about it freely: the weightiness of the confession, the impossibility of explaining that it both is and isn’t as serious as it sounds. I don’t always want to be alive. Yes, I mean it. No, you shouldn’t be afraid for me. No, I’m not in danger of killing myself right now. Yes, I really mean it.
How do you explain that?
Wow did this feel like it was written for me. The analogy of treading water, ultimately resigned to the idea that at some point, you’ll succumb, but hoping it isn’t soon.
Recently, I took a trip to Europe. There I was able to experiment with micro-dosing shrooms, and it really helped me find the connection to life and others that I’ve been missing. No, I wasn’t blitzed off 5 grams, wandering around with saucer plate pupils, I was micro-dosing while on an antidepressant which dulls the effect considerably. On one particular occasion, I opened up about some troubles I’ve had to two nice guys that were at the same concert with me. They were incredibly drunk (I’m sober from alcohol 5 years) so I felt safe in confiding stuff to them that I might normally hide. In our conversation, I talked about how these events manifested in suicidal thoughts and a half-hearted attempt, and their reaction? “Us too.”
I then went around for the rest of the night, and whenever I talked to a guy, I’d randomly add “hey, I’m glad you didn’t kill yourself.” and every single man I said that to teared up and thanked me (I said it to one woman and she looked at me like I was crazy, so I stuck with guys after that haha).
Suicide death hasn’t been this high since the great depression, it’s clearly linked to the predominant financial stress we all feel. They refer to them as “deaths of despair.”
I don’t know why I’m writing this but I feel like my comment should have a point so I’ll say this: Voting to advance social welfare saves lives. Literally.
Men generally do not have community spaces or social support networks at this moment in history. It’s something that urgently needs a social movement to address that also doesn’t involve bigotry, flag-waving or outright nazism as an antidote.
I am glad you didn’t kill yourself, too. Stay strong.
I personally think men are more likely to be successful at suicide, because men are conditioned to not mind dying by society so they will enlist in the military. There is a LOT of propaganda teaching young men the best thing they can do is sacrifice themselves.
Women attempt more because their quality of life is worse. They just don’t succeed because they are taught to be nonviolent and that it’s bad for them to die. They also have less access to guns, because again, we have a huge military culture here that pushes gun ownership on men for military enlistment reasons. Imo women attempt more with poisoning because women are often highly distressed about what they eat/thinness (eating disorders genuinely kill people).