Don't Let These Days Kill You

You dying inside or leaving this life is how the bastards win

Photo by christopher lemercier on Unsplash

(Trigger warning: suicide, self-harm, depression)

"I'm done living."

It was a few days after Christmas a few years ago and I was sitting in a frigid car outside our Central New York hotel, with heavy snow swiftly obscuring the world outside the windows. My tears turned cold as they ran down my cheeks while my labored breath shot white clouds like fireworks in front of me.

After months of a slow and steady slide into a now lingering sadness that would not lift, all my exhausted mind could now process was, "I'm done."

I just felt as though I'd exhausted every possibility that a living person could, to not feel like this: prayer, therapy, meditation, medication, working out, nature, journaling, art, breathing exercises, positive thinking—and it was all presently failing me. I'd simply run out of options and energy and I was through looking.

It didn't matter that all the objective evidence of my life testified that I should be happy, that I was fortunate, that I had so much to be grateful for and want to live for. None of that registered in that moment, none of that tipped the scales toward hope. The dire story I’d written in my head didn't require data. It never does.

That's what people don't understand about those of us who live with the inner monsters of mental illness: intellectually we understand that this makes no sense, which is often part of the problem. We don't just feel terrible, we feel guilty for feeling so terrible. We have chronic pain with no discernible source, and so we hurt and we feel stupid for hurting. Telling us how much we have to live for and how good our lives are sometimes makes us feel worse.

For many people, life can be a daily battle to stay positive.

For people with severe depression, life can be a daily battle simply to stay.

While everyone finds themselves occasionally slipping into moments of expected sadness when trouble or conflict or tragedy visits—we are often standing hopelessly at the precipice of the abyss for no good reason, staring into the black void and wondering why we're here again: dying to leave while trying to live.

Depression and mental illness bring a heavy and hovering despair that requires no measurable cause to exist, and so when tangible difficulties do come'; when actual adverse circumstances and struggles finally arrive—they can become the final straw, they can push us over that edge. This is happening right now in the heads of many people, as this new year begins and as the relational fractures widen and the sobering political realities loom.

I think that's what people without mental illness don't understand about days like these in America when so much cruelty is being cultivated, when leaders are manufacturing such prolific violence, and when decency is in such great demand: they are dangerous, potentially deadly days for us. It is the outside world and the world within our own heads both agreeing that it's hopeless and suffocating the possibility from us.

I’m sharing this because I know how slippery a slope so many of us are on because the times in which we are living are life-threatening.

And I know that whether you’re prone to sad seasons and dark thoughts or not, that right now there’s a shitload of evidence telling you things are beyond repair, that the slide into the black is unavoidable, that exiting now may be the less painful path. In these unthinkable days, you may want to leave.

I’m just praying that you don’t—because that’s how that bastards win.

They aren’t victorious when they terrorize you on every legislative front, or when they injure you with a thousand cuts of cruelty, or when they take a chainsaw to the support systems and safeguards of our nation. They don’t even defeat us when they steal the money from our pockets or the rights that come with being human.

The evil people win when you and I lose the battle within our heads: the one that keeps us fighting, the one that keeps us here, the one that keeps us alive.

I’m not going to try and make the case as to how what has gone so wrong will get better or even that it will, as that’s outside of my capacity presently. I just need you to remember that while you still have breath, there is a possibility that vanishes once you no longer do.

So, I hope that you’ll grieve and cry out and speak every sorrow and explode with fury so that you can get all that is within you, out.

And I hope that you will not leave this life or lose the light within you—because these bastards aren’t worthy of it.

(Note: If you're struggling with depression, desire to self-harm, or suicidal thoughts, talk to someone at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

Help can also be found here and here and here now.

You are worth fighting for.)