I’ve been too suicidal to start this newsletter

If this pandemic has taught me anything, though, it's that I can stand to lower my expectations.

I’ve wanted to start something like this ever since I first published my essay about how I’m not very attached to being alive. By “something like this,” I mean a newsletter dedicated to chronic, passive suicidal ideation, where I could connect with others and have a low pressure space to talk about wanting to die. 

But things are never low pressure with me. As soon as I had the idea to start this newsletter, the pressure was on. I told myself I’d meticulously plan everything from my posting cadence to my first dozen newsletters. I’d commission a beautiful icon. I’d have a concrete strategy and a thorough About page and ideas for how to reach the people I wanted to reach. I would, I hoped, create a worthy followup to an essay that means so much to me. 

Months and months passed and I never did it. I’ve been too exhausted, too burnt out, too suicidal for the majority of the last year and a half to do it the way I wanted to. I told myself I’d do it once I felt better—and then I’d convince myself that I’d probably never feel better, and the cycle of planning, freezing, and hurting would continue on and on. 

Honestly, it’s not dissimilar to the rhythm my suicidal ideation fell into after COVID-19 hit the U.S. in earnest and my mental health really went off the rails: I keep trying to tell myself I won’t feel this way forever and then my suicidal ideation laughs and tells me to look around. Look at all the crises that keep piling higher and higher. Look at this country that will never provide affordable housing or accessible healthcare. Look at these politicians who don’t care if you live or die. Look at all the reasons you shouldn’t expect things to get better, ever. And then there’s the personal: There isn’t a plan of mine this pandemic hasn’t stalled or ruined, isn’t a bad situation it hasn’t trapped me in for the foreseeable future, isn’t a dream it hasn’t held hostage, isn’t a coping mechanism it hasn’t sent veering off the tracks, isn’t a spiral it hasn’t sent me down.

With 2020 as kindling, each new bad thing feels like it will be the one that sets me on fire. And I’m not even someone who lost my job, or my home, or my loved ones, or my life. I’m, all things considered, incredibly lucky and I still kind of really want to die sometimes—or, these past few months, most of the time.

After all, cultivating hope for the future has always been how I stay afloat. But for months, it’s felt like I’m watching a vision of a world I’d actually want to stay alive for shrinking above me like the light at the top of a well. And I know I’m not the only one. How are we supposed to hold onto the future amid all this unfathomable and unrelenting fucked-upness?

I’m not sure what the answer is, so I’m going to start with this. I guess in a time when the path forward feels murky and uncertain and impossible, I could stand to practice going bit by bit instead of waiting for the world to magically right itself. That’s always been true for managing my suicidal ideation: you take small steps forward instead of staring down the seemingly insurmountable distance between where you are and where you’re worried you’ll never be. You talk about it instead of letting it fester in isolation. You focus on making it through the next day instead of the next year. You concentrate on treading water instead of finding shore. You start the damn newsletter instead of waiting for the perfect words.

So here we are. I’m still here, still trying, still treading, and I still don’t want to do it alone. I hope you’ll join me. (Hey, I guess I can still manage to scrape up hope for some things. Look at those small victories.)

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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