a still life is the last i will see of you

I read an article last week about the gray area of being suicidal. Suicidal ideation is treated as a black and white symptom -- yes, no --- off, on --- danger, safe. It isn't. Not always. Feeling suicidal can be as complicated as thoughts of death in between moments of life.

I'm in a dark spiral and I can't find a way out. I'm not alone, either. Around me I see distinct pools of darkness, consuming and sucking and suffocating. Yet we're all separate, blocked by barriers stronger than ourselves. There's no reaching out, there's no saving each other. Instead we watch each other drown with a detached misery.

I work hard to distract myself from these feelings. With varying degrees of success. Lately its been more difficult. Its not that I don't think I have anything to live for. I love my husband. I love my dog. I think we could have a good life ahead of us. But I don't know for sure. All I know is it isn't here yet. Instead we're struggling in almost every aspect. Financially. Socially. Emotionally. Feeling fulfilled. Feeling sexually satisfied. Dealing with one stroke of shit after another. If we can only get through this... then what? Our future is as terrifying as it is hopeful. Where will we live? Will we truly be able to start over? What if wherever we go, we end up alone? Will we ever have the happy family we dream of? Or is it all impossible? Are the answers we're relying on just lies we tell to help us feel better?

If I could, I would just stop. Just sit, and not move, and not think, and not try, and not feel. That's what feeling suicidal is like. I don't imagine pills and knives and ropes. I imagine nothing. I imagine the nothingness inside of me expanding, filling, pushing out, becoming my entire world. Its a desperate and dismaying desire. I hate wanting it, I feel myself needing it, I am spinning and closing my eyes and crying and breathing fast and falling and tearing apart and screaming and I am perfectly and horribly still.

But none of this really matters, does it? Because when things matter, you can see it. There are changes. There are actions and reactions. There is help and there is a way to succeed. You know when things matter. Its part of human intuition. And this doesn't matter. I know that all too well by now. None of this matters because tomorrow will be just like today. It will feel the same, only worse because its added to all the yesterday's I felt this same way. Its one step forward and two steps back. As misery adds up, it is negatively multiplied by the ability to reach happiness. Twofold. Threefold. Tenfold. Countlessfold.

At this point I doubt my ability to recognize true happiness. The amount of times in life I thought I've found it, only to look around and realize that tangible feeling hasn't been around for awhile, makes me distrust myself. I clearly don't know. The only thing I do know that those who try to tell me what true happiness is for myself are just as wrong. So I'll keep guessing and second guessing and being wrong and trying again and figuring out I wasn't even looking in the right place to begin with but being no closer to knowing where the right place is. Its exhausting. It is so tiring. I can sleep and sleep and sleep and I will never feel like I truly have the energy to begin this search one more time. But what choice do I have?

None at all.

love,
lisapink