One of the more weird and frustrating things about depression to explain to people, especially concerned/worried loved ones, is that you’re not suicidal really it’s just… sometimes you’re so… tired. You’re so apathetic, that… it’s not the active death of yourself that you’re wanting. That requires so much more energy than you have, and it’s too violent an act for what you want. There’s just sometimes this quiet and exhausted desire to just… not be. You don’t want to be dead, dead is still a state of being that according to various religions and beliefs of the world isn’t an end, you just want to not be. You just want it to stop, all of it, you want the quiet. You want to feel, or to stop feeling, you just want to not be. And that’s not the same. There’s no real immediate risk that you’ll commit suicide or self-harm or anything. It’s hard to explain the difference between this feeling and the desire to hurt or kill yourself. They overlap sometimes but they’re very different things. I don’t want to be dead, I won’t want to hurt myself or anyone else… but when my particular brand of depression gets really bad… I want to not be.
i tried explaining this to someone once and basically,
i had this during my very first bout of depression some 15 years ago, and neither myself nor the people around me were equipped to understand what ‘i’m not thinking actual suicide, i just want to not be alive anymore’ means. since then the joke has always been that i’m too chicken shit to kill myself, which is…..not really a joke. i’ve used it to reassure the handful of people i’ve tried to talk to about suicide, and to be honest, i use it to reassure myself sometimes.
the thing is, i still have no idea if ‘it would be nice if i went to bed and never woke up’ really counts as suicidal ideation, or it’s just. a regular depression thing. i asked my therapist about this during the short time last year when i could get therapy, and she was like ‘well, i’m not too worried about you’. okay, but does it count? i still honestly don’t understand.
tora42's nonsensne 