I Am Not Always Very Attached To Being Alive: Living With Passive Suicidal Ideation

After that, I celebrated each birthday with surprise because each age I hit was one I assumed I wouldn’t reach.

I know exactly this feeling. I often expected the escape from terrible depression would eventually be suicide. I still expect to die by my own hand when my quality of life declines from health problems or old age in the future.

Funny thing is, my father was the same way. He procured for himself whatever drug is administered in right-to-die cases and warned me that he had it a number of years ago. But he never asked for it when he went into hospice due to age-related health issues. He clung to life until it was gone.

I don’t always want to be alive. Yes, I mean it. No, you shouldn’t be afraid for me. No, I’m not in danger of killing myself right now. Yes, I really mean it.

How do you explain that?

Just like that? That's how I do it at least.

I reassure people that I know I'm lucky to have people that care about me and that I never want to hurt anyone. I should stop saying "don't worry, I'm stuck here" but that is how I feel. I'm only still here because it's wrong to hurt other people just because I don't want to exist.

I thought I was alone in this

Wow did this feel like it was written for me. The analogy of treading water, ultimately resigned to the idea that at some point, you'll succumb, but hoping it isn't soon.

Recently, I took a trip to Europe. There I was able to experiment with micro-dosing shrooms, and it really helped me find the connection to life and others that I've been missing. No, I wasn't blitzed off 5 grams, wandering around with saucer plate pupils, I was micro-dosing while on an antidepressant which dulls the effect considerably. On one particular occasion, I opened up about some troubles I've had to two nice guys that were at the same concert with me. They were incredibly drunk (I'm sober from alcohol 5 years) so I felt safe in confiding stuff to them that I might normally hide. In our conversation, I talked about how these events manifested in suicidal thoughts and a half-hearted attempt, and their reaction? "Us too."

I then went around for the rest of the night, and whenever I talked to a guy, I'd randomly add "hey, I'm glad you didn't kill yourself." and every single man I said that to teared up and thanked me (I said it to one woman and she looked at me like I was crazy, so I stuck with guys after that haha).

Suicide death hasn't been this high since the great depression, it's clearly linked to the predominant financial stress we all feel. They refer to them as "deaths of despair."

I don't know why I'm writing this but I feel like my comment should have a point so I'll say this: Voting to advance social welfare saves lives. Literally.

I’ve explained it like the episode of Family Guy where they have a reality show made about them and Stewie says “it’s not so much that I want to kill Lois, it’s that I would very much like for Lois not to be alive anymore.” I don’t want to kill myself, I just don’t want to be alive.

Its so pleasant to read an article that talks about this.

I know im not alone in this cause im fairly open about it, but therapy is a trap because i get pigeon holed into that actively suicidal person before even being able to have that conversation.

You could take Marin Preda's approach: use suicide as a figurative escape hatch that you don't have to use, but gives you the solace that there is a choice, which helps make other choices in an absurd world, which paradoxically makes it easier to endure through absurd situations.

My take, informed from decades of personal experience, is the most effective form of suicide prevention is to create an environment (world), in which one can legitimately and actively, choose to participate in when we’re at our most vulnerable.

For me, my depression and suicidality spawns from my inability and unwillingness to develop my sociopathy to a level required to be mistaken for an acceptable participant in the world today.

Oh hey this has been my entire life since I was a kid. I'm 45 now. I still wish I was dead lol.

NB4 get help; I am on like seven medications and have a very good psychotherapist (the kind with a doctorate, not just a certification).

I've had this since my teens. Some days, weeks, even months are harder than others, but no matter what I always feel like an attention-seeking fraud for not being "serious" about suicide, like others who actually try it

I cope through humour, mostly. I affectionately refer to the train station near me as my "get out of jail free card", for when things get too much and I eventually succumb. It' somehow helps to know I'm kidding, but also not kidding. Though I've thought and planned enough to know if I did ever really do it, that's probably not what I'd do.

But yeah. I find all I can do is take each day as it comes.

It is so amazing to read an article I can relate to so well. Because as someone who feels very similarly and constantly about the pointlessness of life but not always an active suicide plan, it also feels lonely. Not lonely as in having no one around me but lonely as in that there's no one else who truly understands how I feel about life. Because when I mention it, my therapists get worried and want to talk about a safety plan. I’m glad I have a safety plan but that’s not what I’m going through. I just don’t know what’s the purpose of my life in this world sliding toward doom and so i keep getting automatic thoughts that I’d be better off dead. Which is different than I want to kill myself. And so I don’t talk about it most of the time.

I’m grateful for the bravery of the author to write about this feeling so well and put this article out into the world. It made me feel a little less alone.

Thank you so much for sharing this. As somebody with a similar mindset it's been very difficult to explain this to people, even my therapist. I'm going to send this around to my loved ones and hopefully open up a conversation.

“We really don’t know [the impact of] having more casual conversation about suicide,” April Foreman, licensed psychologist and executive board member at the American Association of Suicidology, told me. “Stigma is lower than it’s ever been and suicide rates are as high as they were during the Great Depression. If reducing stigma alone saves lives, the suicide rates should be going down.”

This part stood out to me, because I've wondered for a while now if Internet culture and/or mental health destigmatation has increased the number of people talking about suicidal ideation, or if suicidal ideation in the general population has increased to the point that it inevitably leaks out, that we can't help but talk about it more because it's so pervasive.

On the one hand, things seem pretty bad right now in a variety of ways, but on the other hand looking at history, "bad times" are quite prevalent and often in ways "worse" than we're facing now. But there might be something unique about the bad times we're currently facing: perhaps the things that make them bad seem uniquely catastrophic or uniquely hopeless, perhaps our support systems are uniquely weak, perhaps our day-to-day lives are uniquely unfulfilling or unsuited for our monkey brains, or perhaps we got too accustomed to "uniquely good times" in the latter half of the 20th century and now things feel uniquely bad by comparison.

I don't know if there's really a way to tease out cause and effect here, especially when the vast majority of people are not comfortable being 100% honest about their suicidal ideation even in professional settings due to residual stigma and the fear that being too honest could mean trading one's freedom for grippy socks.

Good article, and relatable. It pops into my head on an almost daily basis, "Ugh, this situation is terrible. At least when I'm dead I won't have to deal with this anymore. Hmm...no, not yet."

I felt pretty much the same, for years, right up until the moment I found out (or rather, admitted to myself) that I am trans. I wonder how much more fun my life would have been up to this point, had I known earlier.

Boy howdy do I relate to this. That feeling of just treading water, feeling like I wouldn't mind just slipping under, but with no active plans. Feeling like I can't talk to any of my family or friends because of how they would respond.

I fear that I'm on this path. Like I don't want to die, I just often find myself thinking how much of a pain in the ass it is to be alive. Right now, if I didn't have children I'd be in a different place; the fact that I have others relying on me is enough to make me care. But I fear that once they are on their own, I won't feel much reason to stick around. I'm actively working on mental health but I can't shake this apathy in the deep down of my brain.

I feel like I couldve write this, its insane.

After they know my default state, will I be self-conscious? Will I regret it? Will they ever forget it, or will it shadow my every move and our every conversation? Will they become too aware, watch me too closely?

I'm friends with a few recovering alcoholics, and we've had conversations about similar issues. They make a joke about alcohol, which would be normal in most contexts, and now I'm not sure if I can laugh at it. They say they "went out last night", and there's a small, but perceptible change in the conversation because I'm bracing for bad news.

I don't want to have those reactions, but it feels callous to ignore them. I know I'm not my brother's keeper, but I still want good things for my friends.

Not suicidal, but I've Almost died before and I wasn't afraid and I didn't have any regrets, I'll accept it whenever it happens it'll be alright

For me it's not helpful to be clinical about suicide, to treat it as a pathology to be treated or cured. It's an existential question. Not thinking about dying, not killing oneself, is just as much of an action as thinking about suicide or committing it. As a society, we have normalized the former and stigmatized the latter. Objectively, though, we decide to not kill ourselves every time we wake up and go about our day. I'm just someone who accepts and engages with this choice.

I decide to be alive because I usually have hope for the future. Sometimes I don't, and I consider the alternatives. This is impossible to create a product for because my feelings are tied to the health of the planet. The biggest things contributing to my "suicidal ideation" are the extinction rate, the rising CO2 level in the atmosphere, and the retreat of the alpine glaciers.

I mean. It just is.
You make the choice, and you stick with it.

I made the choice when I was 16 when I decided it was a permanent solution to a temporary problem. That keeps the door open for if I face a permanent problem, but otherwise removes it from consideration.

Now I just laugh at how surreal the experience of thinking of suicide when life is fine. And when I find myself in a position where I don’t find the ideation surreal, I go back on antidepressants.