My depression and I are just fine.
*Please note the theme of this story is self harm and suicide, if triggered please seek help from your local crisis center*
This year I fell in love, I fell in love with my work. Very few are as lucky as I am to have this experience ,especially so early in my career. I have not only fallen in love with my work, I have fallen in love with a lot of things, my husband, my family, my friendships, where I live, where I work, the people I work with ,it is indeed a long list and to sum it up I love where I am and what I am.
With all the love in my life I do however live with depression and suicidal thoughts.
I can not exactly tell you when it started but my first attempt at my own life was when I was 16 years old, I was lonely and overwhelmed by something I cannot even remember now. Ten years later I have highs and really low lows. At its worst I was 22 years old and all I could think about was ending my life. God has an interesting sense of humor, I am now working as a Suicide Prevention Officer. My past experiences with suicide and self harm are information that I have not yet shared with my employer or anyone other than a very few people, my confidants. Without minimising the queer experience I feel like I am still “in the closet” of some sort.
I refrain from calling my work as a Suicide Prevention Officer a job opting to call it my work because it gives me a lot of fulfillment and within it I feel as though I am living to my fullest potential. A question I was asked during my interview for the role of ‘SPO’ was “what are your thoughts on suicide?”, this question caught me off guard as the role I thought I had applied for was very technical project management public health role. “It is a waste of a life!” I spat out , I too was caught off guard by the harshness of my own words. I did not think I would be hired.
Not many people get to live after they are dead , I did and I do everyday. Each day I am confronted by the people left behind after a suicide, the families that lobby for policies to be changed ,the families that dread holidays or their loved one’s birth/ death day and the friends that grieve in secret wishing the could have done more. I am haunted by the devastation I would have left behind if I had swallowed 2 more pills or had that razor cut a centimeter deep. Even in knowing this I am sad to report that to this day I still struggle with thoughts of suicide and I have depression, its on my doctors record.
This could be a lie but according to Hollywood movies if you are in pit of quicksand, the more you fight the faster you sink. I view depression just like falling into a pit of quicksand ,it has taken me time but I have learnt to accept it and I have stopped fighting. Accepting depression may seem counterproductive but we all know that the first step to healing is by accepting that you have a problem.
Like the chronic illness it is, depression comes and goes, it has days its really bad and days when its in “remission” .My outlook on life is very much a dependent on my depression. Accepting my depression has allowed me to prepare for it and to be self aware, to know who is driving decisions. When I feel depression coming on I warn my circle and tell them to shelter themselves but also to help me see the silver lining, depression is really good at hiding the silver linings of things.Dear reader, do not feel sorry for me I am thriving!
Whilst I am thriving, I know that in Australia there are more than 8 deaths by suicides everyday, my work requires me to know these numbers by heart and in the town I live the names of the people who died, their families and who they were and what they loved. Monthly I am in meetings with important people discussing how we can bring this number down, I sit in those meetings with my little secret knowing that I could have been or still could be one of the 8. We discuss problems that feel bigger than us and we use equations to target at risk populations, yes, there are equations to calculate a persons probability of dying by suicide but for me at the end of the day the answer lies in acceptance.
The campaigns around mental health in Australia have almost got it, we have campaigns like “its okay to not be okay” , “are you okay day” and a thousand others but nothing has been done to show us what it is to live with depression and suicidal thoughts , if they do, wanting to kill yourself has been shown to be solved by a good old bubble bath or an unnatural chat with neighbor you hardly know,yeah right?! “Its okay to not be okay” WTF does that mean? For people who are suffering nothing feels okay about not being okay! The more we fight, the quicker we sink. Acceptance for me looks like me going through an emotionally exhausting day at work or anywhere else, wanting to end it all ,recognising and acknowledging this feeling , calling one of my four confidants telling them I want to kill myself and them telling me that I just had a bad day tomorrow might be better or worse but lets eat dinner and talk about nothing whilst waiting for tomorrow. Rinse and repeat.This is exactly how I have survived a decades’ long of suicidal thoughts.
In our bid to “normalise” mental health issues we are starting to exclude the people that need help, there is absolutely nothing normal about mental health issues.One’s reaction of failing a test should not be wanting to kill themselves, this is a true story by the way, I have wanted to die over things that looking back now seem a tad bit irrational ,the list includes missing a train, getting rained on , being yelled at by a stranger, misplacing my laptop among many other misfortunes. Mental health issues are anything but normal. I would like to claim that I reached to this conclusion by myself, I did not.My husband with the help of human biology explained to me that I probably have a shortage of serotonin or other hormonal issues (something to that effect my brain switched off through the technical terms). Knowing this has made it easier to request for medication, have mental health days and more proactive in help-seeking ,as far as I am concerned my mental issues are like cancer, cancer never really goes away, patients go into remission.
Over time I have grown fond of my depression and suicidal thoughts, constantly about death makes life that much sweeter! So please do not offer me your sympathy ,your thoughts or your prayers my depression and I are just fine.
