Content Warning: Mentions of depression, suicide and the death of a friend.
Beloved,
The last my thoughts were this preoccupied with death was between the years I was 12 and 16. At the time, depression was heavy thing on my back – weighing on me like the ghost of Megumi in the movie shutter.
During those years, I spent a lot of time creating and consuming content that had a lot to do with death and dying. I wrote poems about what I wanted people to do at my funeral and my favourite book and movie was the Book Thief which is narrated by death himself. I pondered a lot about what happens when people die, what they must feel and what’s next.
I also spent most of my time thinking about ending things. Even now, years later it is hard to write that point blank – that I thought a lot about killing myself and how to do it. My therapist at the time called it active suicidal ideation. I attempted to do it about four times that I can remember. The fourth – over a whole decade ago – involved a handful of pills that ravaged my body painfully. I really thought I was going to die but then I didn’t. I stayed half awake, half asleep all alone in my empty dorm room for a day and a half. Then when I got up I cried myself even hollower than from when I puked out the drugs. It was the most alone I ever felt.
You would think, after that, I’d have found myself back into therapy. But I did not. Instead I dragged my feet the best I could and started concentrating more on finishing my first year of college. I buried myself in the work and numbed everything else the hell out to the point I made the deans list. I also started telling my friends an abridged version of what I was going through. Butchering some parts so they couldn’t piece together that I was way more volatile than they knew me to be.
If there’s a silver lining from that particular time in my life is that it made me realise I could not go through with it. I couldn’t take my own life. It was too scary and painful and I had never been a big fan of pain. But the urge to die did not dissolve with my willingness to do it myself. After 16 my thoughts got more and more consumed with just hoping something would do it so I didn’t have to. My mind was filled with images of me being hit by on coming traffic. Of me waking up and just not being there any more. Of me being gone. Preferably as soon as possible.
I didn’t know it then, but that was also another form of suicidal ideation. Just passive but still very worrying because I still wasn’t very keen about being alive. Still I went on. I built a bigger life. Busied myself with work and hobbies to fill whatever leaking thing was draining my spirit. But the hole didn’t fill, I just got better at ignoring it.
I folded the thought. Occupied my time to the nines so I didn’t have to think about being miserable. About wishing things would just end for me. And time, as it usually does, passed on and the years went and I had almost mastered the art of ignoring the misery.
Then one day I woke up to the news that my friend has passed on and the whole world tilted sideways. My friend and I had many conversations over the years about how he wanted to live forever. Until today I do not know if he meant it. But he once told me, ” you need to learn to want to live tomorrow, Purps.” (Purps was the nickname he affectionately gave me.) I don’t have the text anymore. It is lost to in the ether of unbacked up chats – which is a shame. I do not remember what I answered but it must have answered something along the lines of “getting through today was just fine thanks.”
Finding out about his death drove me into a spiral. That folded shelf unraveled, and suddenly thoughts of people dying — of wanting to die — were once again front and center in my mind. For a while I fell into a despondency so deep I didn’t know if I’d ever come out. The grief made life lose all meaning and importance. How could he, of all people, just be gone like that. Suddenly I was 13 again, thinking, yet again, about death and dying.
There was no great epiphany that changed my outlook during this time. One day I scrolled through my friend’s Goodreads account and thought, perhaps as a way to remember him, I would read all the books he’d read that were also on my to-read list. Then I thought, gosh, it will take so much time to read all these — even more once I add the ones I want to read that aren’t on his list. That thought sent me spiraling again, and I picked up a notebook and started writing down everything I wanted and needed to do. It was a long exercise that took the better part of two days. But when I was done, I remember thinking: what a shame it would be to die before I got even a quarter of this done.
The thought hit me like a freight train. Because for once, in 27 years of living, the thought of dying as soon as possible was not a welcome one.
These days I’m still thinking about death. Quite a lot, actually. But for once, it feels like an inconvenience rather than a destination. Death is something I now hope will take its time arriving at my door. That is a feeling I have never had before. For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be gone as soon as possible. Now, for the first time in my life, I don’t want to die today. I find myself thinking again of the text my friend sent me “You’ve need to learn to want to live tomorrow, Purps.” Damn. He’d be so proud of me.
I can’t genuinely say that I’m having a grand time. Life is still messy, and there are days that feel heavier than others. But I want to be alive six months from now. And though I’ve made peace with the fact that life will unfold however it unfolds, I also think it would be nice to be here a year from now. To have filled that year with things worth living for. And when that year comes and goes, I hope I’ll still be hopeful enough to want another one after that.
