It’s funny because I don’t know when it all started for me. I don’t know when the switch flipped and I started to feel less like myself and more like a shell of the person I used to be. Hell, I don’t know if it was a switch flip at all. Maybe it was a slow progression – one that I think I saw coming all those years ago while I sat on my bedroom floor crying for reasons I couldn’t name. I was 18. Just graduated from high school. I had no idea what I was doing. Sitting on my floor, staring at my blood-red walls and picking at my dingy beige carpet I tried to think my way through the pattern that I was only just beginning to see emerge.
Why am I so sad?
I don’t know.
Why can’t I do anything right?
I don’t know.
Why do things feel so hard for me – things that are normal for everyone else?
I don’t know.
Why do I keep ending up sitting on this floor with hot tears falling onto my cheeks in this blood–red room?
I don’t know.
Should I tell someone about this?
No. You are fine.
I never figured out an answer to those questions. I never did feel fine.
So maybe that is the moment it all started – maybe this was it. Maybe it’s not a point that I can draw on the timeline of my young adulthood. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Because that 18 year old girl pushed herself off of that worn old carpet, walked out of her room, and told herself that things were okay. Told herself that things were just fine. That girl lied.
The first time I thought about suicide was two years later: New Years Eve 2014. In truth I don’t remember much about why I was in such a bad place. What I do remember is being alone. Loneliness creeping behind me and wrapping its dull fingers around my neck. I felt choked by the feeling. I felt as though there was nothing for me. I got into my car – as I would so many times after that night – and drove over the bridge leading to the beaches off the southern shore of Long Island. The bay under the moonlight always had a calming effect on me. For years after that night I would drive over that bridge in a habitual way I couldn’t see was problematic at the time. But that night nothing calmed me. Looking into the water I began to wonder if the best thing for me – the best thing for everyone – would be if I drove right over the edge.
The guardrails were weak – they looked almost as pathetic as I felt. If I got out of the car I could probably bend them with my hands. I most likely wouldn’t have to go very fast to blow them away. The bridge was icy – it could look like an accident. I wondered how long it would take me to fade into the cold darkness.
I honestly couldn’t tell you what stopped me that night. But I made it to the other side of that bridge dry as a bone and warm in the comfort of my old Volvo.
I sat parked out side of my house for an hour that night, crying in my driveway as my family counted down to the New Year in my living room. I scribbled a long-winded entry into my journal, watching my tears spatter the pages and my breath fog the windows of my car. Those pages of my journal were ripped out days later when I finally felt – well, not better, but present. I didn’t want to remember what I felt. Or I didn’t want to fully admit it – and three pages in my handwriting was as close to admittance as I had ever come. They only physical reminder of that night is a short journal entry from days later. A few sentences:
“New Years was scary. I’ve never scared myself before. I’m not going to let that happen again.”
It didn’t. But I would think about death after that. My death. Often. Almost every day. Driving over bridges. Looking out of windows of tall buildings. Staring onto the subway tracks. Opening a medicine cabinet full of pills. All of the different ways it could happen. All the different ways I could end my life.
I told no one this, of course. Not seriously anyway. I had no real problems. No reason to be depressed; a word I refused to let slip through my lips. I resigned myself to making jokes. To becoming the cynical, funny friend. I would tell my friends that I thought about killing myself, but it was never a good time for me. Laughing to hide the way I felt, but never remedying it.
Only once did I let someone in. It was a cool spring night and we were sitting on a jungle gym at his old elementary school.
“Do you ever think about death?” My eyes were glued to the stars in the sky. Orion’s Belt in clear view.
“What do you mean?” He asked.
“I don’t know. Like sometimes I look at the subway tracks and think ‘one step and its all over.’ You know?”
“No. I don’t”
“Oh.” I shifted uneasily on wooden plank beneath us.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know. But you’re worrying me.”
When I got home that night he texted me before I fell asleep. He wanted to know if he should be worried about me. If I was serious about what I said.
I never answered him.
See, suicide was always there in my mind, but it was never a serious consideration – not after that night on the bridge. Death has always been like a destination on a map that I never felt compelled enough to visit. I drive lazily around it, mulling the idea of going to that point over in my head just to turn the car around in the end.
I would take that “drive” many times after that point, but eventually I stopped seeing my suicide in every thing around me.
I never saw a doctor. I never got a diagnoses. Depression isn't something I know I have. It's something I could have. Or had. But there's something about writing the experience down that makes it all feel so real.
I still drive over the bridge. Long midnight drives where I blast my music from the murky sounding speakers of my car. Windows rolled down even in the cold of winter. I still think about death. It's there all of the time. It never goes away. But I don't think about my death. I think about what it means. What comes after. I think of death as the end point to my story - one that will (hopefully) be very, very long.
I do not feel lost anymore. I don't feel Loneliness' grip on my throat. I don't feel the desire to jump in front of the train - not in the same way I did before. But I am not better. Sometimes I still feel foggy. Sometimes I still get into moods where absolutely nothing feels hopeful. It's a feeling that radiates through my whole body making everything happening around me seem dull and dim. But I'm getting through it. I'm recognizing that it is happening. I'm living to see another day. And that's more than some people get.
Depression has always seemed a dirty word to me. I don't think that way anymore. I don't think the idea of seeing a therapist is scary. I don't think asking for help, when I need it, is pathetic or weak. And no one should think those things. Because it can be the difference between jumping off the bridge and making it to the other side.
