How Many Times A Day?
How many times a day does a normal person think about wishing they were dead? Last year around this time, it was more than a hundred times daily. It was just a constant message from when I woke up to, well, it happened when I was asleep, too. If I woke briefly, I wished I was dead. Dream-Mette wished she was dead, and her dreams had a lot of reasons for this, as well.
These days, it’s down to an average of only ten times a day. I suspect that for most people, that sounds like a lot, like a dangerous number of times a day to wish you were dead. But compared to last year, this is such a relief that it feels in the ream of healthy. And mostly I don’t think that *I* am the one who wishes I was dead. Mostly I think of this as my brain trying to give me useful information in a not very useful way.
And some days, I don’t hear my brain telling me I wish I was dead ever. Not once during the day. Not often, but there are days where everything is going well, I’m around people that I love all day, and my brain is just busy thinking about other things. This is one of the reasons that I like to be busy. If I have a lot of work to do, and I’m busy doing it, or if I have a race, my brain quiets down. While I’m busy, but also afterward. Sometimes it feels like I’m paying a tax or some kind of offering to the god of suicidal ideation. If I pay enough in pain, the god grants me my prayer of not wishing I was dead that day.
But I can’t be that busy every day. At least not anymore. I’m too old to race that often, too old to exercise to exhaustion every day, too tired to spend every day with family or friends, and I have to work my job most days, which unfortunately leaves me just enough time for my brain to spin in well-worn grooves.
Most days, it’s more like ten to twenty times a day that my brain pops up to whisper, “I wish I was dead.” And then it’s a chance for me to tell my brain that actually, I don’t wish I was dead, that this expression is inaccurate. I tell my brain that actually I’m just tired or discouraged. I’m overstimulated sometimes, with fluorescent lights and too much noise, too many voices or the sense of being a cog in a giant machine. My fight-flight response has been triggered by a customer yelling at me. Or my Achilles tendinitis has flared up again and my whole body feels like it’s on fire.
But my brain is sometimes stupid and repetitive and just sums all of these things up in one phrase, “I wish I was dead.”
It doesn’t go on incessantly. That’s good. I don’t always try to use logic on my SI brain. It doesn’t always listen to logic. It thinks what it thinks and that is all. Mostly I just say, “OK, I hear you and I’m going to deal with whatever that means in the morning.”
I admit, sometimes I wonder if what I think of as my stupid brain is actually smarter than the rest of me, or maybe even the rest of humanity. Studies seem to show clearly that people we label as “pessimistic” actually tend to have more accurate views of humanity generally and of themselves individually. Optimists are wildly off-base when it comes to predicting their own futures.
On days when my brain spins with suicidal ideation, I wonder if it’s really true that the good times make the bad times worth it. How can one possibly weight one against the other? The reality is that when you’re stuck in a bad time, past good times rarely make any difference to your state of mind in the present. And it’s impossible to weigh a really great vacation last year or my Ironman experience in Hawaii to the daily grind.
Does a lousy week outweigh a great weekend? That’s five days versus two. Most weeks, it feels like the weekend is just me getting enough sleep to survive the week, and calling errands that allow me to eat and wear clothes the rest of the week “self-care” doesn’t make them less necessary. It often feels like I’m running on a hamster wheel, working to earn money so I can stay alive—for what? Why do people want to stay alive so much? So they can eat and sleep and what now?
I try to tell my spinning brain that at some point, things will get better again. Maybe for years. Maybe I won’t ever experience suicidal ideation again (see how the ridiculous optimist still tries to have her say?). In ten years, I might well look back on last year as the low point in my entire life. Studies also seem to suggest that age 50 is a universal low point for people for various reasons (Too high expectations? Too low control over the universe?). Maybe my sense of disgust for myself is actually perfectly normal and has nothing to do with anything personal in my makeup, and maybe I don’t even need to do anything to make it go away. Maybe it will just—fade?
I became suicidal when I was 12. Even with a good anti-depressant and forty years of therapy, I still have days.... A very good therapist once helped me verbalize that my three "parents"-- mother, father, and grandmother -- all gave me "drop dead" messages. And when I didn't conform to my church's ideas, I was warned again of eternal Death and Damnation. I wanted to be a Beloved Good Girl, and the way to be Beloved Good Girl was to be physically or emotionally dead. Understanding that has not totally healed me, but it sure has helped to make me feel less crazy. There are reasons for what we do.
Your description of SI sounds a lot like what I experience. I don't mean to imply that what has happened to me will happen to you, just want to share my experience. As the years have passed, mine has gone from a daily constant stream slowly down to I usually don't have it unless I'm having a particularly hard day. But if I'm having a hard or emotional day that's the first thing that pops up in my brain. It's a well worn groove. I'm glad I'm still here, but I'm also not sure how much of that is because I provide financially and emotionally for 3 other people who would be very poorly off without me. I hope your si continues to decrease.