When I Attempted Suicide
[Trigger Warning] I have an open way of communicating about death and suicide. Some may feel I take it lightly. Some may find things I say about it troubling. When I talk or write about it, I don’t intend to give a “hot take” for shock value. I’m trying to efficiently navigate a lot of complicated ideas about death toward the parts I still find interesting or insightful. These are complicated and vulnerable feelings. I’m sharing things about myself and my history that few people know. Please stop at any time if any of this makes you uncomfortable.
I took a while to decide how to title this post. I wanted to get across that this is about personal experiences with depression and suicide without worrying anyone. At the same time, I didn’t want to call it something so bland and academic-sounding that people would think this was another standard issue “suicide is bad, call these numbers for help” kind of post.
- Suicide
- Suicidal Thoughts
- My Suicide Notes
- Thoughts About Suicide
- Thoughts of Suicide
- My Suicide Post
All of these titles felt wrong, but I wanted to list them out for a few reasons. I want to illustrate how difficult it is to write about, how much thought I’ve put into it, and to cover all my bases for anyone who is searching for this kind of content. I also wanted to give everyone reading this an idea of what’s to come.
I think about suicide a lot.
My academic and philosophical interests in death, bodily autonomy, and agency stem from my passionate belief that no one has a right to stop me from killing myself if I so choose. It drives me to enjoy media that discusses it openly, like The Order of the Good Death and various philosophical podcasts and YouTube channels.
My music has been filled with artists that understood what I felt throughout my life.
Reznor’s music is filthy, brutish stuff, oozing with aberrant sex, suicidal melancholy and violent misanthropy. But to the depressed, his music, veering away from the heartless core of Industrial, proffers pop’s perpetual message of hope — or therapeutic Schadenfreude: there is worse pain in the world than yours. It is a lesson as old as Robert Johnson’s blues. Reznor wields the muscular power of Industrial rock not with frat-boy swagger but with a brooding, self-deprecating intelligence. “I had no expectations of commercial success,” he says. “But people ‘got it.’ That I didn’t expect.”
TIME’s 25 Most Influential Americans (4/21/97)
My favorite books, movies, and television are rife with escapism, dualism, and cynicism. Even the comedies.
These are the ideas, characters, and worlds that I relate to. And it seems I’m not alone. I see media involving suicide more often every year. 13 Reasons Why released its second season recently and dug right back into the subject. Rick & Morty is a huge hit that talks about suicide, depression, meaninglessness, and death almost constantly.
These pieces of art have been huge influences on me, and so have the people who pour themselves into them. Their voices have resonated with me in ways that I could never have explained until recently — after years of therapy and research.
Robin Williams
What Dreams May Come is my favorite Robin Williams movie. In it, he and Annabella Sciorra give incredible performances that feel like they truly know what I feel when I hit my lows. I cannot recommend this beautiful movie more to anyone who thinks they can handle it.
Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson indirectly reached me through media that’s inspired by him. I’ve only read one of his books, but I’ve seen (and continue to see) his influence in dozens of places that have touched me deeply.
Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Bourdain performed a life on television that I still attempt to emulate when I can. He saw the world of travel and food through a cynical, critical, and appreciative eye that I like to think I share. At a low point in my life, I spent a lot of time at home looking for work. While searching, I’d watch him on TV and he showed me a purpose for our endless grind for money. He was a major driver of my current goal of spending as much time traveling and socializing with the people I love as I can.
( More: https://www.cnn.com/videos/bestoftv/2014/05/02/ac-bourdain.cnn )
Suicide Contagion
When these people killed themselves, I felt it. I “got it”. I didn’t weep or mourn the way I saw others do it because I felt like I understood. As uncomfortable as it is to say it, I knew that their pain had come to an end. I knew that this was a release for them, and — if I’m 100% honest — a part of me envies it.
This is what I believe drives suicide contagion. The media likes to sell us the idea that depressed people look at these prominent people’s suicides and think:
Oh my god. I thought that person was strong. I’m nowhere near that strong. If they can’t do it, how can I?
Many people may feel this way, but that’s not how I experience it. For me, it’s a reminder that I still have that escape hatch if I need it. It’s a comforting thought that if the pain gets too severe, if I feel like the voice* is taking over, or if I cease to see a light at the end of the tunnel, I always have this option.
And with this option, each time I think about it, I evaluate it.
Aside: The Voice*
These days I refer to it as a voice, but I don’t actually hear anything. “The voice” is how I communicate impulses and feelings that I have to examine carefully and determine if it’s what I really think or feel. The voice is the devil on my shoulder that’s wrong about everything.
He’s my imaginary compartment that I extract all of the garbage in my head into. He’s how I remember who the real me is. I understand that persona, and when I hear or feel things that I imagine fit into that persona, I examine it carefully before allowing it to go a step farther into my self-esteem, my personal philosophy, my words, or my deeds.
Stories
I’ve rarely shared my stories about suicide before. This wasn’t because I was hiding from people; at least not after I got out of school. Telling people about these things in school had only served to make my life more difficult in the past. In hindsight, I’m sure I was already on the watch lists, especially after Columbine.
I didn’t share them because I didn’t have any good news about it. I didn’t have any answers or inspiring words to share. Telling anyone how I got through it was impossible because I wasn’t truly through it yet. I’m still not sure I am, but at the very least I can share that I’m happy today. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been and it’s continuously gotten better for roughly the past 5 years.
My first suicide attempt was when I was 12.
My memory of that night is murky. It was long ago, I may have repressed some of it, and not talking about it to anyone for over two decades didn’t help. But I remember sitting on a tree stump in our backyard with a knife. It was long after everyone else was asleep, probably around 3 am.
I don’t want to go into too much detail, for fear of hurting my parents needlessly, but suffice to say I was unhappy about my living and school arrangements after a divorce and re-marriage. I felt miserable, trapped, and powerless to change my course. I held the knife against my sternum. I didn’t understand anatomy yet, but I had imagined stabbing myself in the heart would be an effective method.
I spent hours fidgeting with the knife. Occasionally I stood and walked a lap around the block before returning to the stump. When I saw sunlight begin peeking over the horizon, I remember feeling the cold for the first time and being upset that I waited too long. It would still be an hour or two before my mom woke up, but I panicked and rushed to get the knife back to my chest. I stopped after it penetrated my shirt and went less than a half centimeter into my skin. I dropped the knife and stifled my crying in pain. Feeling how badly it hurt, I gave up and rushed back inside to wash the knife and throw away my shirt at the bottom of the trash so no one would see it.
I pretended that I slept through the night and did my best to follow my daily routine without any sleep. I doubt I retained anything at school or thought about anything else beyond what I had to do now that I knew I was too scared to try that again. I can’t say exactly what came of those feelings, but I’m sure it caused much of my rebelliousness and acting out during that time.
My second suicide attempt was after a break-up.
I sat in my car in the parking garage at my college. It was the middle of the day on a Sunday, so barely anyone was around. I parked in a spot near the base of the ramp that wouldn’t be easy for the security patrols to see. A plastic bag sat on the passenger’s seat with a newly purchased garden hose and a roll of duct tape inside.
I spent the night before in the same car, in a different parking garage less than 20 miles away. It was outside the mall where my girlfriend of a little over two years worked. It was my first significant romantic relationship. She’d canceled our regular Saturday evening plans to meet up at the last minute.
We went to different schools, so we only saw each other once or twice a week. She gave me an excuse for canceling, but I’d been hearing rumors about her hooking up with other guys and had a feeling that her cancellation that night might be an occasion for me to finally see what was going on. She’d denied it for months and insisted that she was happy with us together, but rumors and inconsistencies kept cropping up.
Long story short, I watched her walk into a bar that she and her co-workers often met at after work. I watched her walk up to exactly the male co-worker I had heard rumors about, kiss him slowly and deeply, and sit down on the bar stool next to him to drink the cocktail he had ready for her.
After a few minutes watching them flirt, I stood up from my table at the other side of the bar and walked over. She saw me when I got within a few feet and her eyes widened with panic. I didn’t want to stay and talk. This guy didn’t deserve to see me break apart. I tried to think of something short to say that would both sour their night and make her feel guilty for hurting me. Without making eye contact with either of them, I said:
I knew it, and I didn’t listen to myself. I knew you were a fucking liar.
It was petty. I regret how I handled it, but I don’t know if I had the capacity to do anything else. My entire idea of a future was based on her, and I didn’t realize I’d constructed it that way until the moment it exploded in front of my eyes.
Walking quickly out of the bar, I felt tears coming and struggled to hide them. I walked out to the parking lot and got halfway to my car when I heard her call out my name. She asked me to wait, and I did. We sat in my car for a couple of hours as she tried to explain. I wish she didn’t. She confessed to dozens of instances of sex with other men. She gave details that I surely requested and immediately regretted asking.
The next morning I purchased tools to provide me with the most painless death I could afford based on the research I’d done since my previous failed attempt. As I write about it now, I can’t help but feel the perverse regret that I didn’t keep the receipt.
I thought that the pain was what stopped me the first time. Perhaps if I made it painless, I could go through with it.
I couldn’t even get the hose out of the bag.
The weeks that followed were a blur of failures. Failures at work, failures in my school projects, and failed attempts to hook up with any woman who showed interest in me to wipe my ex out of my head. I even came close to doing something I’d have regretted with my best friend’s girlfriend.
Shortly after that, I decided to move to Arizona and transfer to an Art School. Most people thought it was an act of ambition, but a few that knew me saw it for the escape it was.
My third suicide attempt was a gamble.
I was laid off from my job at a gaming company in Las Vegas without notice. When I say without notice, I mean I was literally walking out the door at 5 pm on Friday to go on my first vacation in the year I’d been working there. My manager called me in as I was pulling my luggage to the door to get into the cab I scheduled to take me straight to the airport after work. He told me that I wouldn’t have a job when I return and that this time off was no longer paid.
My weeklong vacation back home in Jersey with family and friends should’ve been a joyous, carefree, longed-for retreat from the breakneck pace of my work. Instead, it was a practically sleepless week of fretting about the future. I spent the plane ride and first few days throwing my updated resume around and cleaning up my website for potential employers. I spent the rest of the week drinking heavily and considering my purpose on the planet.
When I returned to Vegas, I was considering suicide. This continued for a couple of months sitting at home collecting tiny unemployment checks and filling out repetitive job application forms to no avail. I decided that there was no way I would allow myself to become a burden on anyone else. Not on my girlfriend, who was already paying more than her share of our rent. Not on my parents who had already sacrificed so much for my sake. I would rather die than drag down the people I loved. But my girlfriend already had a close friend that killed himself years earlier, and she took that really hard. Hurting her in that way would place an even bigger burden on her.
Next thing I knew, I was filling out an enlistment form for the Navy. I was just over a year too old for the Air Force, so the Navy was my second choice. I filled out forms and asked questions. Eventually, I negotiated for an officer level engineering assignment on a submarine. That Bachelor’s Degree had to be good for something, right?
Enlistment was the trigger for the Rube Goldberg machine that would eventually lead to my death. I made sure to sign up for life insurance and made verbal arrangements for someone to take care of my dog if I died. Everything was ready to go, but I held out on signing for 48 hours to see if they’d accept my counter-offer. They denied it, but I was planning to go in the next day and sign up anyway.
An hour after I received their “final offer” amount, I got a job offer for a web development job at a local bank. I’d never worked as a full-time developer before, but the pay was good and I remember liking the guy that interviewed me the week before. I thought to myself “What do I have to lose?” and verbally accepted the offer over the phone. After hanging up, I felt like a gun I had pointed at my head just misfired.
I wasn’t going to mention this one. It wasn’t as direct or passionate as the others. It was non-committal. There was no drama in the physical world; the violence was all in my head. My girlfriend may have had an idea that something was up, but I tried to hide it as best I could. I decided to include it because I remember feeling like I was just as close to an eventual but certain death at this time in my life as I was with a knife at my chest.
Why am I telling these stories?
Because I’m still here. As I mentioned before the stories, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I’m happier than I ever could’ve imagined I would be when I was in my dark places.
I shared these stories in deeper detail with someone close to me this week while we were discussing 13 Reasons Why and Kate Spade (the news about Bourdain broke the next morning), and I realized something. It was the angle I never thought of before that kept me from sharing these stories for so many years. In each of these stories, I felt powerless. I felt like there was no possible way for me to get out. The world was shitty and my life had no purpose that I could understand. They also all directly preceded drastic proactive changes that I made in my life.
But the most important feature they had in common was that saying all the things that were going on in my life at those times out loud to another person made them seem so … minor. They were each an instance of the voice in my head gaslighting me into believing lies about myself and the world around me. Each time the devil on my shoulder tried to take over and failed.
(You may need to have seen this full movie to understand the reference)
I’m not saying that everyone feels this way, but I’m saying it’s possible to feel this way because I do.
- It’s possible that the world your demons are showing you isn’t the real one.
- It’s possible that you’ll be happy someday if you just survive one more day.
- You have people behind you that know your deal. They can help snap you out of it once in a while if you let them.
- If you don’t think you have those people, look harder. Share your stories. The people who hear you will show themselves.
- These moments are calls to action, but not the action your devil is telling you.
These three stories aren’t the only ones I have, but their lessons have helped me through the others that have come since.
My Future Plans
I expect my death to be a surprise. I aspire for my death to be at my own hands. I hope to maintain my agency until the end, but I also hope that I leave this world wishing I had more of it. To me, this seems like I can’t lose either way.
I hope you got something out of this post. Hopefully, you were entertained at least. Perhaps you learned that someone else feels similarly to you. Maybe you just learned a little more about me. Regardless, I wish you peace.