A Noose Around My Neck
Suicide is a funny gift I used to analyze from time to time. It seemed to me a reckoning that my soul longed for.
I’m not sure why that is but I knew I had an agonizing pain and I wanted it to stop at all costs. Seemed to me that death would end it all.
When I was 16 and finally able to drive, I found myself mesmerized with the thought of getting the car up to a good speed and running it full speed into a concrete wall. I’d visualize the details, the sounds the crash would make. I could even smell the twisted metal as it encased me like a tomb.
I even vividly dreamed about crashing.
I’ve heard it called suicidal ideation now. Here’s how Wikipedia explains it: “ Suicidal ideation (or suicidal thoughts) is thinking about, considering, or planning suicide. Suicide is not a diagnosis for the DSM-5, but is rather a symptom of many mental disorders.”
Seriously?
For me it didn’t feel like a mental health symptom. It was a condition of my heart. My body had kept a heartbeat for me but by the time I came out of such abuse, it’s beat skipped most frequently now to find freedom.
I didn’t see freedom anywhere around me. Furthermore, wasn’t it my right to take my life if I wanted to? Oh, some religions say I’ll never recover from such a sin. Was I asking to recover or redeem myself?
To the contrary — I wanted to set myself free. Free from the pain. Free from my parents’ abuse. Free from the hatred I held towards myself for not knowing any other way out.
I wish people could be kind about suicidal thoughts and attempts.
It would have been for me, not a crying out in a desperate attempt to be noticed — who the hell was even looking? It was a very personal cry to myself to have the suffering of being alive — end.
My teenage years just brought another burden. A burden to keep myself alive. I didn’t come into those years with gratitude and joy. I was bummed by them. Now, I had to try to bury everything that had been done to me, put on a happy face and thrive. It was my turn to become an adult.
Say, what? How was I supposed to do that? I’d only been taught to let others take from me. How was I supposed to give now to myself?
So, you know what I did? I picked another abusive relationship to jump into. That way, I died slowly each day. No growth. No burden to change what I knew.
The gift? I was still alive.
Originally published at http://prisonerbynocrimeofmyown.com on June 21, 2021.
