As I Lay Dying

This picture, taken from Jhonen Vasquez's comic Johnny The Homicidal Maniac, was my iPhone's lock screen for a very long time. At the worst of my depression there was something infinitely validating about stark contrasts and shaky lines, something that was far more comforting that any sunshiny optimism could have ever been. I suppose that people mean well, but their cheer in the company of my depression felt like the sun above a cemetary: difficult to look at, unwelcome, unwanted, altogether uncaring.

I dreamed once that I was twenty-seven and dying of a terminal illness. Something unspecified: dreams can feature a great wealth of detail, but I don't remember this one. Something frightening. I remember the fear and anger I felt in the dream, how jealous I was of everyone else and their health, how sad I was to die. Towards the end of the dream a doctor came and told me that I would have another year left, that I would die at twenty-eight, and this I remember most vividly: a sweeping, stunning sense of freedom. Time yet to live.

Suicide is weird. Depression is an emptiness of spirit, a sense of not wanting anything, really, not desiring, not caring. Your instincts become dampened. All those inner workings that mark hunger, tiredness, fight-or-flight stop working reliably, if they work at all. I drank endless cups of coffee and struggled to focus on neuroscience textbooks while my thoughts slowly reverted, each and every day, to the unshakable sense that I was going to die soon. In this way, your own suicide feels inevitable: it's not that you want to die, specifically, but that you will die and you cannot do anything to prevent your death. I wasn't afraid. I was resigned to what just felt like my fate.

When you're suicidal, your body starts rehearsing how you will die. Your thoughts consider how pills would weigh in your mouth, how water would feel over your face, how sharp objects would feel on your skin, how falling would feel as you fell. It's unconcious. I wouldn't open a textbook and think, "Today I'm going to consider how I will kill myself." I would just try to do anything, and slowly my thoughts would wander away from schoolwork and back towards suicide.

In its own way, it felt like home. A familiar space to return to, time after time after time.

And it only really seems weird when you look back on it, whether it was years ago or yesterday. After so long suicidal ideation just feels normal. Hi, my name is Kathryn and I'm going to kill myself. The dining hall coffee is really good today, don't you think?

It used to make answering "How are you?" with any degree of honestly very, very awkward.

#suicide #mentalhealth