TW: suicidal ideation

I’ve written a lot before about depression, and shared the excellent article I read about passive suicidal ideation and looking for things to keep you afloat. Rereading some of those articles today made me realise that January is always a really hard time. But this year has been different, because it’s been winter blues mixed with grief, hopelessness mingled with determined optimism.

Mostly what has been new for me in the last few weeks, some of the worst I’ve had recently, is how dangerous RSD makes it all.

There are some powerful videos circulating at the moment around men’s mental health, and the importance of reaching out. I find them hard, because I think they ask the impossible. 

Whether it’s presenting the grieving family left behind, or the close friend that didn’t see the signs, for me they all add up to guilt. Guilt that perhaps people I know have struggled as much as I have in the last six weeks, and I haven’t been there when they sought support. Or guilt about the impact depression has on loved ones, when sometimes it’s the pressure of being so needed that suffocates me. Or just guilt that my family suffer as much as I do but I get lost in my own pain.

But the impossible part is the reaching out. Because RSD is great at perceiving rejection, even if it isn’t there.

So when my messages go unanswered, or my desperation is met with solid advice rather than concern, I take it as rejection. I figure I’m just being annoying. I imagine everyone rolling their eyes at yet another text, I can picture them picking up their phone at the notification, sighing and putting it down again. And so the loneliness intensifies.

Thankfully for me there are at least three voices in my head at all times. So the one telling me I’m invisible, unloved, pointless, is shouted down by the one that recognises the extreme reaction of RSD, and another that reasonably reminds me that people have lives. They have their own struggles. It’s not for them to save me. I save me.

But it is still lonely.

And I worry about the people that don’t have the balancing voices in their brains. I worry about people I care about being in the same place and me not noticing.

Someone once told me they didn’t realise I was drowning because I was still joking about it. Remember Robin Williams? Levity is a coping mechanism as much as drugs or alcohol.

So how can we notice? How can we be sure no one around us is drowning? I don’t know that we can, really. We can only encourage people to talk, ensure they’re able to be vulnerable without judgment. Listen without fixing. Yeah, I am crap at that one most of all.

I want to give everyone a code word that says ‘this silly cat meme is actually me reaching out before I slip under’.

If anyone I know is reading this, the code word is ‘coffee?’ 🥲

It’s ironic that the person who has been there time and again for me with the life belt is my daughter. The one I am meant to be pulling into the lifeboat. The one it’s my job to save.

I guess we’ll rescue each other.