Natural Born Suicidal

Surviving Yourself is a Struggle When Even Your Own Existence Feels Wrong

My new depression and anxiety medications arrived in the mail today. I opened them an hour or two before the city’s “Be the Light” Walk, an event intended to “prevent suicide and reduce stigma.” I can’t help but feeling that it shouldn’t be this hard.

The left upper corner of my lip feels like it is curling into a sneer or a snarl. It’s the latest in a history of facial tics related to my mental state. I’m not sure if they are even visible. It’s always hard to know what people can and cannot see from the outside.

Less than a week ago, I was sitting in the psychiatrist’s office, a goal I’d accomplished only after a litany of referrals and intake interviews. Hopelessness turned to anger, turned to frustration, turned back into hopelessness, as I struggled to even explain my struggle to a professional who is trained to hear struggles like mine.

“Our minds are not built to fathom the effects of completely relentless pain a priori.”

My failures to connect with other people in a meaningful manner accumulate, build and erupt into desperate behaviors that cause further disconnection and sap the wills of those close to me to remain that way. Time allows the beast to chew free of its rusty cage, and the disheartened villagers scatter.

I remember playing in the backyard as a child of no more than five or six years old and being aware of this feeling of certainty that I was “not supposed to be here.” It wasn’t that the location was wrong, that my station in life was incorrect, or even that my exterior identity didn’t match who I felt I was inside. It was an overwhelming and persistent belief that my very existence in this world or on this plane was erroneous.

I told the psychiatrist the other day that I was fourteen when the depression started. Through years of therapy, that is the age on which my various counselors and I have eventually landed, as it was the age when external symptoms like insomnia…