hey, im glad you got someone you've decided to talk to. i am still here, and i'm going to continue to try my best, ok?
okay yesterday was Bad but I did get help and it's okay, I didn't do anything I can't repair that alone shows me I've grown from four months ago
Witnessed. I have never gotten to the attempt point of suicidal ideations, because I think of the steps and go "wow that is too much effort fuck it" So i don't totally understand how you feel, but I am very proud of you for being able to reach out for help during your relapse.
idly looked up the LD50 of prozac, ran the calculation. just like last time. i dont want to do it again i don't i don't
If it helps, I have both almost managed to kill myself - winter of '09 I took two vials of fast-acting insulin to induce a fatal hypo (blood sugar crash) and took an entire bottle of sleeping pills so it wouldn't wake me like it normal does. My mum found me in time and I was taken to hospital, put on a glucose drip and had my stomach pumped - and nearly died of illness (ironically, it was diabetic ketoacidosis brought on by malpractice, which is the exact opposite issue to a hypo.) I saw some weird shit the second time. If you ever need someone to vent to or just listen, PM me for my skype handle if you want to IM someone whenever our timezones overlap. Witnessed, bro.
In case anyone is watching this thread: I made a thread for a shiny new issue! I hope you read and provide assistance if you are able
I joined Kintsugi so I could reply to this thread. I request forgiveness for any trespass against community norms; I'm very new here. Birdy, I am glad you’re okay and had people to talk to, both in person and here on the forum. My almost-suicide was over twenty years ago. So I have a very long “afterwards.” I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently, though, because my, um, anniversary is almost here. Spring is always kind of unsettling for me, all that noisy greening I expected never to see. I thought I’d have winter’s still grey sky forever, if that makes sense. I don’t know if the far-future perspective is useful at all for dealing with something a handful of months ago. Probably not, but it seems worth a shot. I never got over it. Most of the pain and depression dried up and flaked off and blew away eventually. But the weird feeling of wrongness never went away for me. It’s a magnet that bent my whole life around itself. But - and here’s the thing I felt compelled to make an account to talk about - not entirely in a bad way. I know I’m not supposed to be here, alive. This is all like some sort of sci-fi alternate universe episode showing what would have happened if one tiny thing went different from the actual true event decades ago. Logically I understand that life isn’t scripted and there’s no “supposed to happen” but I kind of understand that the same way I understand that maybe I’ll wake up and discover that everything I know is a weird dream and I’ve been a pigeon all along. I mean, sure, it could happen and it’s an interesting philosophical argument, but it’s not really a possibility I’m capable of taking seriously. I have much less depression than I used to, but I still live with the sure knowledge that I was supposed to die then, and at this point it seems likely I always will. I am a ghost haunting my own life. It’s not actually an unhappy feeling. I don’t feel like I’m a terrible person who doesn’t deserve to live or anything negative like that, I just know I’m not supposed to be here and that’s how things are, there’s no moral or value judgement attached to it. Since I’ve been thinking about it anyway, I started writing approximately one hundred thirty one thousand and seventy two words long about all the concrete ways that outlook affects my life, but this is long enough already. Here’s the most important thing, though: Spoiler: mention of death in a hospital context I volunteer at a hospital. I keep watch with patients who are dying and don’t have anyone else, maybe their family and friends are distant and can’t get there fast enough, or estranged, or sick, or the hospital can’t contact them. I keep watch. I sing. I hold the hands of the dying, if they wish. I am very good at this, and that is the best thing about me, and my favourite thing about myself. My best and truest self. I do not turn away, no matter their pain or fear or hope. I know, a tiny bit, what death is, but there is nothing in me that needs to look away from it. Nobody goes down into death unknown and unloved if I can help it, and often I can. I am quite certain I would not be able to do this if my personal history were different. I guess I’m trying to say: I hope the weirdness of the whole almost-died thing will unravel with time and conversation, Birdy. Judging by everyone else’s answers, it probably will. “Strongly affected by a near-death decades later” seems to be rather a minority experience. But if it doesn’t fade into “so that’s a thing that happened I guess,” if it weirds your whole life like it did mine, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some of the parts of myself that I like best grew out of my long ago near-suicide. I hope things get better and stay better for you.
Thank you, so much. I'm amazed you made an account just for this thread and I'm really glad. I have some of that sensation too, like I was meant to die. I lived by a very narrow margin. So I resolved that I had to live well to make it count, and not waste the effort of the people who saved my life. It's nice and interesting to know that it just sort of becomes A Thing That Happened for a lot of people, but it's also good to know that it doesn't have to be that way, and that it will be alright if it never does fade. It's too soon to really know but I think it will stay with me. And I think that would be alright. It sounds kinda melodramatic, but like. I'm pretty sure it changed my life? Equally melodramatic, but...I think this is kind of how you feel too - I have this sensation that I really did die. But I came back. I think it's partly because I started saying "when I died" instead of "when I attempted suicide" for convenience, but the thought took root. It feels like I came home from a really long way away. Sometimes I think about the possibility and shiver. I dunno. In any case, thank you so much for responding.
I've been meaning to respond to this thread for a while but I'm never sure what to say except to go 'same hat!!', but maybe that's useful? I've almost died a couple of times (accident, someone punishing me, suicide attempt) and honestly I don't cope with it a lot of the time, but when I'm better at coping I just remark that I must be pretty good at living if the world wants me dead so much and it hasn't happened yet. Witnessed; living on after a near-death experience is hard and it stays hard even years later but you get tools to work with it and it can get a bit easier. Good therapy helps, if you can find someone decent. Finding community is really useful. I've found that even in abuse communities I worry that my stories sound A Bit Unreasonably Dramatic and it can be hard to fit in, but there'll always be people with similar experiences (as this thread has shown). (Sorry if this response isn't helpful, but I wanted to at least pop in and wave, so to speak.)
No yeah, that's really cool. All responses are good. I wanna get a bunch of different points of view and stuff to think about from other people's experiences. and yeah, community is important. feeling not alone is important. and I figure you are pretty fucking good at living
