Wanting to Die VS Not Wanting to Live

Trigger Warning - Suicide.

For a while now, I’ve felt like I have nothing to look forward to. People are always telling you to leave the past behind you, but the past isn’t my only problem, it’s the future and the present as well. I think that no matter what has happened to you in the past, or how terrible your present life may seem, you can find motivation to keep going in the hope for a better future. It’s easier to move forward when you have something to move towards. But if you have nothing to look forward to, what’s the point?

You work hard in school because you want a particular job or want to get good grades, but what if you stop caring about these? You stop working hard because you have no reason to do so. It’s the same with life. You may not have the hardest life at first glance. You may not have a terrible job, be drowning in debt, be recovering from an accident or another traumatic event but when you have no particular reason to live, every little obstacle is harder to defeat.

It will sound stupid if you’ve never experienced this but there have been times when I’ve dropped something and thought ‘If I killed myself I wouldn’t have to pick that up’. Now, picking something off of the ground obviously isn’t a difficult task and of course I’m not going to kill myself because of it but this is my immediate reaction to situations like these. My alarm goes off and I think ‘You know, if you were dead you wouldn’t have to get up right now’ or ‘If I wasn’t alive I wouldn’t have to clean that’. It’s irrational, yes. But that doesn’t make it go away. Neither does acknowledging that what I’m thinking is irrational. 

“Actually, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

For years now, I’ve made a distinction between actively wanting to die and not wanting to live. Wanting to die is more of an urgent threat. It’s the ‘Don’t let Amber near the medicine cabinet’ kind of threat. Wanting to die is like a sharp, shooting pain whereas the pain of not wanting to live is dull and heavy – and always there.

Not wanting to live is sort of the absence of a reason. I feel like I have no particular reason to live but I have no particular reason to end my life either. So, I just keep going. With an emphasis on the just.  I just keep moving, not necessarily forwards or backwards. I’m just moving, purposelessly. And maybe at any moment I’ll find a reason. But I’m scared because it could just as easily be a reason to die as a reason to live.

“Now listen, life is lovely, but I Can't Live It. I can't even explain. I know how silly it sounds . . . but if you knew how it Felt. To be alive, yes, alive, but not be able to live it.”
-Anne Sexton

Usually I try to end my posts on a more positive and hopeful note. But as I’ve said I’m not feeling too hopeful at the moment. But that’s OK. It’s OK to experience symptoms of your illness. It’s OK to feel your feelings.

I think a lot of people are only accepting of people’s mental health stories upon reflection. ‘You can’t share your struggles, only your testimonies of change or victories of recovery’. Don’t get me wrong, those are so important, and we should definitely keep sharing these but if we only do this, we are essentially ignoring the symptoms and struggles of life with a mental illness. If we only talk about mental illnesses retrospectively, how will anyone gain any understanding about what living with the illness is like? How will those who are still struggling feel less alone if we only show the highlights? How can we help ourselves if we ignore the parts of ourselves which need helped?

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