Silent Screaming

Suicide Trigger Warning

I never tell anyone when I'm suicidal. I know that I should, I just can't bring myself to do it. When I'm suicidal alone, I feel like that's an honest emotion. But when I tell people I'm suicidal, I feel silly like a child asking for attention, and I'm afraid that's how they see it. So I don't tell anyone. I can't. I keep it bottled in and try to self medicate with cannabis and alcohol or prescription painkillers, and I pretend that everything is okay. Or withdraw from people. Because "fake it till you make it" or "hide so they don't see" are what I was taught growing up. That to express your emotions was self absorbed because you'd ruin everyone else's good time.

It's hard to get out of that mindset that was drilled into you during your formative years. The famous saying goes, "Give me a boy until the age of twelve, and I will give you a man." That's because from the time your born until the time you're twelve (your formative years), you're learning things that will become the foundation of who you are. These years have the most impact on your life out of any. And what happened to me up until I was twelve? Let's just say I learned that the most valuable thing I could do in life is what I was told to do. Sit down, shut up, hide your emotions and bottle your feelings, don't have an ounce of extra body weight, obey what you're told, don't ask questions, grow up and graduate college to take care of everyone else, get married and have lots of children, and be a perfect ray of sunshine all the time.

Have I done that? Well. I got married. I've been a disappointment everywhere else. And normally, given that list, you'd think that was a good thing. But not when everyone around me says otherwise. I know I'm a failure. You don't have to say it. But they do. All the time. "Why aren't you in college? When are you going to have children? You need to get realistic about your life because you need to make real money and take care of me when I get old. You're getting fat, you need to diet. Stop with the tattoos, that's trashy and you look like trash." Etc.

And lately it's not just that. So many things are changing. My husband is away longer, my best friend is moving to the exact opposite side of the world, my other friends are still in the "single life, get drunk every weekend" phase. My nana is being condescending to me because I choose not to write my letters in cursive, even though my handwriting is super neat and professional looking. My uncle won't talk to me because my depression caught the best of me and I never cashed his wedding check before the six month cut off (to be fair though, my husband didn't know where he put it for the last four of those months). And even though I try to explain, I get no response. My dad keeps spending time with my brother and asking about me, trying to get back in my life. My mum's health is getting worse and her spine is pulling away from the muscle, so she's putting on so much pressure to move in with me - which I don't want to happen under any circumstance. My husband doesn't want it either but he offers me no alternative solution. It's just "I don't want her here, but I'm too nice to say it and will deny it if asked. She's your mother. You disappoint her." Which is fair to say that she's my mother and I should handle it, but he has to help me, right? As my husband, shouldn't he help me find a solution that I can present to her as an alternative other than leaving me with no other reason than "no way in hell"?

I'm just not happy anymore. I hate how I look, I hate how I'm going to look when I change my appearance the way my husband told me to. I hate my brain and everything else... I'm just not happy.

And I've stopped seeing my therapist. I ended it. I just can't go anymore because every time that I do, I keep hearing my ex friend saying "you have a therapist, I don't." And the more irrational (and unfortunately, the loudest) part of me says, "you don't deserve this; if you were suffering on your own, people would like you better." Every time I had a session, I kept hearing that over and over and all I could think was "I shouldn't be here. I don't deserve to be here." So I cut off the sessions and I stopped going to my support group. I told them I was done. I keep lying to my husband and friends and mum about it so that they think everything is just great, but instead I stay at home and cry and look at myself in the mirror while naming all the things I don't like about myself.

More than once, I've craved cutting myself again. I've craved the ease of physical pain. That I can deal with. That I can understand and fix. Honestly, I just wish that I can close my eyes and stop existing. But I'm afraid of what comes after that. Not the dying, but... the unknown. Is it blackness? Nothingness? A lot of people who've died for several minutes at a time say so. And I'm so terrified that there's nothing next, that I'm wrong about an afterlife. I've gotten a self help book on existential death anxiety, but it's only making it worse. I don't sleep anymore and my panic attacks have increased. I'm at my wit's end.

If I wasn't afraid of the nothingness after death, I would die.