Suicide spaceship

Feeling suicidal isn’t as hellish as you’d imagine. 

The thought of finally being free from the shitpit of your life is more like a feeling of deep relief, like sinking your tired, sick to the bone body into to a warm scented oil infused bath. It feels like you might be able to finally rise above your pain and ascend to the suicide spaceship of freedom. 

At least that’s how the idea of topping myself feels for me. 

It’s a fucker of a thing to write about because I fear what people’s reactions might be. More of those scared, pitiful looks from people who have never felt this and the small erosion of my flailing career as those in the business of entertaining, shrink away.  
Mental illness is sexy only when you’re young.

I am meant to have my life together by now.  I don’t really. 

Oh and the comments on the social medias that will follow this, make talking about my suicidality seem like a serene stroll in the fecund rainforest. 

‘I’m here if you need’... ‘ You’re so strong and brave.’ .... 'You’re not alone’ 

…….. please don’t. 

The truth is I am alone when I am in my darkness. 
To quote the seminal Seuss in ‘Oh the places you’ll go.’ 

“Alone is something you’ll be quite a lot. Alone whether you like it or not.”
Yeah. Seussian science. 

I’m not saying all my friends are fucked because they are not there for me. 

This simply isn’t true. They are there for me but they can’t fight this battle. 
They can help me feel less alone and do so by loving me and checking in. 
They do this.  Bless ‘em. My dear friends love me despite my mess. 

No matter the efforts, I am alone. 

I know people want to be there but they can’t always be and besides, this isn’t about them, it’s about me and my sometimes broken shit brain.   

I’m alone in my head and that’s where my Aleppo is.  
The one of the things that we all secretly share is that ultimately we are all alone.

It’s a funny, sad paradox…. 

Anyone who thinks differently believes in a god or a benevolent universe and that’s at least one delusion I don’t have. Sometimes I wish I did, it must be nice. 

One of the closest times I have ever been to actually doing it was post a car accident, nearly 2 years ago 

It was a strange surreal feeling; watching the sea and thinking about my dead body floating in her perfect blue. It shocked me. That night, I nearly called an ambulance at 2am with the thoughts swirling around, my brain was being a fucking arsehole troll and goading me into a decision I felt to thick with bleak to stop. 

But I did stop it. 

Earlier that day I was at the beach when the sea called me in. That gorgeous giantess knew how sad I was and seemed to want to help. The dead star in my heart weighted my broken body down and the drag was fucking immense. I would not weigh that much in the sea. I would float. 

I wanted that fucking relief so much but I couldn’t do it as much as I ached for it. 

So I made a deal with the sea. It involved me writing the world’s greatest book before I could reward myself with ending my pain and floating into her largeness.  See what I did?…  yeah, I pulled a swifty with my own darkness. 

The next day I went to my therapist and told her that I was suicidal. I didn’t want to fucking tell her. But not being honest with your therapist is like faking orgasms…. It’s fucking pointless and shit doesn’t get better by pretending.
I thought she’d admit me to hospital. I didn’t want to go, I don’t want to be drugged. I didn’t want the shame of failing at another fucking thing. 

She didn’t send me off to the psyche ward. She asked a few important questions about my grand suicidal plan, I didn’t actually have anything solid. Then she said I was doing a great job of looking after myself and that I was pretty fucking smart for tricking the sea. 
She reminded that I just had a really big car accident only 2 weeks before I was in shock and that I had Acute Traumatic Stress Disorder plus I was also having a really hard time dealing with loneliness and homelessness.

She helped me remember my brilliant realisation from years before, that the urge to end my pain was different to wanting to die. 

I know this. I mean I usually know this, but sometimes I forget. Most of my death thoughts are because I am hurting so much and I just need relief. 

Not being in pain makes sense and I just needed to find a better way out of my pain but doing so involves hard work. I don’t want more work. 

I was fucking completely exhausted because I was already fighting with all I knew for my shitty messing fucked up life. 

I was homeless staying at my friends place while they relocated, my son had disappeared in a teenage haze of hubris and hadn’t called even after he knew about my car accident, and even my on again off again lover of 20 years hadn’t come over the night of my accident, despite him being 10 mins away. 
I’ve had no family for a long time, I mean I do have family but they really don’t like me. I embarrass them I think. Anyway I was alone and I had to keep fucking fighting despite my utter, complete and abject exhaustion and loneliness. 

Then my therapist gave me homework and told me to invite friends over for dinner because I was isolating myself. FFS. I rolled my eyes and left. 
What a stupid fucking idea. 

A week later, I did what she suggested, it was a weird dinner and me being me, who is always uncomfortably honest about my mental stuff told them that my therapist told me to do this dinner party. But my friends were lovely and forgave my burnt offerings and I actually had a beautiful night. 

I’m lucky I have friends like this. I know this.
They made me feel better just by loving me they way I was. 

It was a good idea that dinner; my therapist wasn’t stupid. I was. Typical. 

So the suicide spaceship didn’t pick me up and take me to Nirvana that time but it sparkles and hovers near me when I am down. Oh I get down a lot. 

And not like James Brown. 

I have episodic reactive depression. Basically that means when shit hits the fan I sometimes hit the floor and don’t get up for a while and most things feel pointless and nothing really feels good. It’s childhood abuse stuff mixed with a genetic predisposition. It’s mostly manageable with therapy and is always lovely when it ends.
Like having a bliss shit. 

I have to be really careful with my life choices, like I can’t drink like I used to, or take party drugs, I’m a shit and annoying drug user anyway so I can’t numb my pain with substances, which is ultimately a very good thing I reckon. 

But I do like getting drunk but that shit just brings the spaceship closer. 

So when the death star hovers and the dead star drags, I lay, sit and walk like a zombie in my own private hell day after fucking day. 

And I fight to keep living because I know it will pass. 

It always does. 

There’s only one thing that stops me from planning my own beautiful death in my fog of doom. 

It would hurt the people I love. I know this hurt. 

I’ve been really hurt by my friends killing themselves. 

Why would I add to it? 

I can’t do that. So I fight. 

And in my darkness at 3 am with my failed life mocking me with garish anxiety clowns popping in and out of my slumber as I sob into my pillow and suicide Scotty wants to beam me up, I shrug, roll over and think of my funeral with my fucking shitty family taking over like they do and ruining the day of mourning for my friends and I think of my friends feeling like arseholes for not being there even though they couldn’t because no one can be there 24/7 and I imagine their faces and I feel so sad I’ve let them down….. and then I see my son walk in.   
I see his face. FUCK! 

I realise then I can’t hitch into the galaxy just yet.  I made a decision when I was 20 to have a child. It’s my job to teach him and guide him. I need to do better, I need to find a better way. I need to do the fucking hard work. I need to show him how to fight for life. 

So weeping still, I roll over, turn my wet salty pillow to a fresher side at 4 am and try to sleep. 

Day in day out until… 

Today. 

Today I am still a bit of a mess, I don’t have my life together, my family still don’t really like me,  6 months ago the job I loved liquidated a few weeks after I injured my wing and then I got rid of all my lovers. 

I’m ok but. 

I just had a lovely cup of tea, there’s soft rain falling, I’m in ugg boots in my temporary but beautiful home, my injury is getting better, I can play guitar again now, I can write, my son and his friend are coming over to learn how to sew, they might not turn up but I’ll be here though. 

And the sea and I still laugh at the joke I played on myself….

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