I am typically pretty private about my suicide attempt, for reasons that can be both obvious and unexpected. There is a lot of what you would imagine: suicide comes with a pretty hefty social stigma (though, thankfully, people are increasingly willing to discuss it) but, more than anything, it is deeply uncomfortable for me to talk about what was probably the worst day of my life, even to people who I fully trust. I realized recently that I have never actually taken the time or energy to artlessly describe my feelings on my attempt and on suicide in general to anyone, and I have certainly never written it down. However, I feel that it’s been long enough now that I feel fine truly going through it and, while posting it publicly may seem unusual, I hope it can serve as a future reference for anyone who wants to read about suicide in detail and, just maybe, help destigmatize it along the way.
On the morning of May 6th, 2021, I attempted to kill myself. I did it through overdosing on Tylenol; I have since forgotten what the exact dose was, but it was enough to make the hospital staff’s eyes go wide. I have done my best to, at least, not actively remember a lot of the details from that day, but unfortunately there is a lot your mind won’t let go of even if you want it to. While I have long forgotten the exact extent of the stomach pain the medication caused me, I remember exactly what throwing up active charcoal feels like. I don’t remember what time I got discharged, exactly (though it didn’t take longer than a day or so), but I do remember how long I slept for and when. I remember the IV drip on my right arm hurting like hell and forcing me into all sorts of uncomfortable positions. But, perhaps tellingly, what I remember the most are the antics of the old man who was directly to my right and who, in what felt like a Benny Hill routine, repeatedly refused to go home in an ambulance and demanded that a family member come pick him up at 4am.
I say tellingly because this is something that gives me lots of cognitive dissonance. Your brain hates you after you unsuccessfully try to kill yourself: your conscious mind is upset at you for ending up with the only option that forces both you and everyone around you to suffer, and your reptilian brain wants you to live to an extent that I genuinely think is impossible to describe with words. In that cloud of infinite negativity, I think it’s only natural that I’d remember something that I genuinely found very amusing and which has gone on to be an anecdote that I tell to this day. The cognitive dissonance probably also helps me remember that I ratted myself out; I didn’t have to be dragged to the hospital, I self-reported after my unconscious mind won the battle ensuing me taking the Tylenol and convinced me that I had to try again. Understandably, this lead to the nurses thinking I did it as a cry for help, because it’s honestly a little hard to believe that one would go through all the trouble of attempting suicide and then not see it through.
I am very lucky I self-reported, though. Had I waited a couple hours to do something, I could very well have ended up dead, or with severe liver damage leaving me with some sort of chronic condition. Even with how the timing worked out, it was not a foregone conclusion that I’d make it out unscathed, or even at all. To hear the nurses tell it, it was a pretty close call. Staring down the barrel of death like that is an experience I don’t wish on anyone. It terrifies you at the most primordial level, so much so that it changed my outlook on life entirely. I now regularly consider myself extremely lucky to be alive, even as I count the three years that have elapsed since as probably the worst in my life yet. I’ve been getting better, but I remain a very depressed, anxious and paralyzed person, and I am nonetheless constantly elated to be on this Earth alongside everyone that I love. Going through my suicide attempt clearly ruled out a possible repeat in the future.
Or did it? I would love to end it there, on such an unequivocally positive note. Indeed, the above accurately describes how I feel almost all of the time. But, as long as we’re being honest, I don’t think the possibility of a future attempt is zero, or even trivial. You see, suicide doesn’t just happen because of the absence of meaning; that is obviously part of it, but I think it also needs its own athletes in this particular game of tug of war. To put it as plainly as I can: throughout the years, I have developed what I can only describe as an aesthetic obsession with suicide. I think about suicide nearly every day, both in the context of myself and others. In what is probably one of my weirder regular thought patterns, I sometimes come up with creative projects that involve my own suicide in some way. It brings me no pleasure to do any of these things, it’s not that I enjoy thinking about suicide, I just can’t help it. I use the word obsession very deliberately.
This is, obviously, not enough to drive me to suicide under good, neutral or even bad circumstances. But when the going gets really tough, true rock bottom, and I feel like my life has entirely lost its purpose, suicide can help me concoct a new meaning, which I find incredibly dangerous. It brings me no pleasure to admit that, while I have never seriously considered it since (I have never made a plan, for instance), I have occasionally put suicide back on the table in the years since my attempt. This will hopefully become less of a risk as my life stabilizes in the following years and I find my footing again, but I think it’s good that I’m cognizant of it regardless. There is very, very little room for error with this stuff. Getting lucky once was enough. I don’t want to need the luck again.
We all have things we’d rather leave behind but that we have no choice but to carry with us, and I guess this one is mine. It doesn’t have to be a dramatic situation, but a faux pas from me could be fatal. It is vital that I (as long with you, if you relate to any of this) stay vigilant of my own impulses and don’t let things progress to a dangerous stage again. Act as if there is no room for error, because there may very well be none.
Hopefully this helped you learn something new about the subject or work through your own thoughts on it. If not, well, at least now you know where I’m coming from.
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