There's been a lot of talk about suicide these days. Many people romanticise it. Others condescend it. And there are some others, a very few select group of people who understand what it actually is. And of course here I'm talking about people who struggle with depression and various other mental illnesses/disorders.
Contrary to what many psychologists claim, suicide or an attempt to commit suicide is not a call for help. It is not someone asking to be helped. It is not the person calling out to the society or community or anyone else. It is the end product, the consequence, of a lifetime of struggle. It is a void. A vacuum. A lack of existence of anything. It is the ultimate end of the tunnel where there is nothing but emptiness, darkness, desperation, and despair. It is the end product of a long time of fighting within a person. The tiredness, hopelessness, and sheer exhaustion from the endless war between what you know and what you feel.
There is absolutely nothing romantic about suicide. Nor about bipolar disorder, nor schizophrenia, nor any "mental illness" as psychiatrists like to term it. It is not an illness. It is a state of being that we have no control over. We did not choose to be this way. It is a life many would not choose to lead if they had the choice. It is an uphill battle against yourself and the world, where the mountain never stops climbing and only keeps growing exponentially year by year by year, month by month by month, week by week by week, and day by day by day.
Many say that people who commit suicide are just "taking the easy way out" rather than dealing with their problems. But it takes courage to actually go through with the act of it. When I say "courage", I mean the courage to ignore everyone else's opinions and comments. Suicide is not something we would choose to do, if we had another choice.
It is not the "lack of ability to handle stress", nor something we can "just suck it up". It just is what it is. And you who don't know how it feels, have no right, absolutely no right at all, to even begin to assume that you know what it is like.
Have you ever dropped into a well so deep that the only piece of sky you can see is but the size of a pea? So small that the walls press against you so tightly you can't even straighten your shoulders? So dark that you have no idea if you can ever see again, where the darkness is so heavy that it sticks upon every single cell of your body? Where every sliver of the faintest of light hurts your eyes so badly you wish you could never ever ever see again?
Imagine it. And then imagine having to live there for an infinite amount of time where you never know if you could ever get out again. Then imagine having people throw rocks down at you when they see you in there. Just because you're not out there with them.
"Just suck it up." "Just climb out." "Just get out of it." "Why won't you just get out?" "Just snap out of it." "Hey, he fell into a ditch once and got right back up. Why can't you do the same?" "You're just a loser." "You're such a whiner." "When will you stop whining and just get out?"
How desperate would you be? How hopeless would you become?
Imagine that, and sometimes, what we feel is not even close to that. It is much, much worse.
The world is a cruel place. Where people who do not fit the "norm" are ostracised, laughed at, ridiculed and marginalised. Legally. Where people don't think twice about insulting you just because you're different in the way you think, the way you act, the way you dress, the way you speak, the way you look, the way you were born.
And when you simply cannot take any more, what else would you do?
I cannot count the number of times I laid out all my pills and had alcohol ready at hand while all the time trying to talk myself out of ending everything. The war I fight with myself. My logic and rationality on one hand, and the utter desperation and hopelessness on the other. Giving myself countless excuses and reasons, trying to think of the repercussions of my action on the people around me. Imagine that. Even up till the most desperate of times, we still have to think of others.
Why then, can't others think for us? Why then, can't they try to understand us?
I struggle with it. Daily. Every single day is a struggle. And every morning when I wake up, it is a small victory, before the endless daily struggle begins again.
Don't dismiss our struggles just because you don't experience them. Even if you can't empathise, why would you make us feel worse than we already do?
The struggle of others do not go out of existence simply because we do not experience them.
