Gonna make it through this year if it kills me, etc. etc. etc.

Hope and hopelessness.

I’ve spent a lot of this year thinking about hope. For obvious reasons but also, you know, as a suicidal person. 

I don’t remember the first time someone asked me, “Are you experiencing feelings of hopelessness?” but I remember many times since then, in various therapy sessions and in my own self-assessment on bad nights. When it comes to our understanding of the risk factors and warning signs of suicide, there is none more ubiquitous than hopelessness. For a long time, my answer was always no, I wasn’t hopeless. It wasn’t that bad. Hopelessness was the rock bottom, the void of possibility, the lack of will to try. Once you’re out of hope, what is there? To me, hopeless felt like a high bar I hadn’t cleared, even as I found myself thinking, “Wouldn’t it just be easier to die?”

This year, my answer was yes. Yes, I feel hopeless. More hopeless than I have ever been, even. I probably don’t need to spell out why. Hope—and the lack of it—has always been social, emotional, practical, political, generational, and more, and the pandemic and the election combined highlighted in no uncertain terms the many ways we’re on a path to a future we could easily feel hopeless about. 

Personally, too, I’ve lost the things that usually keep my hope alive. My flotation devices, to use my own metaphor. Friendships that didn’t survive the social distance. Necessary changes I needed to make for my mental health that became financially impossible. Options and opportunities and bright sides that shriveled up. It’s been a bad fucking year, the chasm between the life I have and the life I feel capable of staying alive for wider than ever. 

Multiple times this year, I’ve found myself thinking, Fuck. This is a kind of hopelessness that sticks.

My hope for 2021 is to not let it stick. 

So on the last day of this impossible year, I want to ask: How are you cultivating hope amid the hopelessness? What new flotation devices have you found? If you’re someone who subscribes to this newsletter because you deal with suicidal ideation, too, what impact has 2020 had on it and how are you dealing? Share in the comments if you can. I think a lot of us need to see each other here in the ocean. 

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If you’re thinking about suicide or just need someone to talk to right now, you can get support from any of the resources below:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
1-800-273-TALK (8255)

Crisis Text Line
Text HOME to 741-741

International suicide hotlines
A comprehensive resource list for people outside the US.

TrevorLifeline, TrevorChat, and TrevorText (LGBTQ+ crisis support)
1-866-488-7386
Text “Trevor” to 1-202-304-1200

Trans Lifeline
US: (877) 565-8860