5 Horrible Things You Learn From Surviving a Suicide Attempt

I was on my way home from work one day and feeling like frozen, thawed, and then partially reheated shit when I walked out in front of a speeding bus.

The driver fortunately had good enough reflexes not to hit my ass, so I’m still alive and unharmed and able to write this article for your entertainment. The way we talk about suicide as a society -- everything from the Saw franchise to the speculation regarding Robin Williams’ death last August -- makes it seem as though killing yourself is like becoming a Jedi. Do, or do not. There is no ‘try.’

That...is really the furthest thing from the truth. There are plenty of tries, with varying degrees of seriousness. And as long as you’re still alive and you still feel like parboiled shit, you’re at risk for trying again and eventually getting it right. Because even though suicide has been around as long as we have as a species, we still have a very poor understanding of what it takes for self-preservation, the strongest force in biology, to fail. Mostly because suicide is one of those things where people who succeed can’t exactly come back and tell us what the fuck happened.

But for people who fail at it? Well, read on.

1. Suicide Is Rarely Planned (At Least Not in Great Detail)

One of the reasons suicide shocks people is because we like to think that a decision as huge as ending your life isn’t the kind of thing people do on a whim. You think ahead, you plan what you want done with your body, who gets your collection of Star Trek memorabilia, etc. All the stuff that we think about when we’re planning our deaths. But most people who are thinking that far ahead are rational enough to not consider suicide (unless they know they’re dying anyway due to an illness or injury, and that’s a whole other kettle of fish).

The reality is that for a lot of people, the decision to kill themselves gets made in the same way college students decide to get a tattoo (including copious amounts of alcohol). The whole “this is fucking permanent” thing doesn’t really register, except in the final moments before the noose tightens/you hit the water/the car crashes/the last pill goes down your throat/the gun goes off.

In my case? I just didn’t give a shit what happened anymore as long as I wasn’t going to be around to deal with it. I hadn’t been planning to walk in front of that bus until I actually did it. My thought process literally went something like this: There’s a bus coming. If I don’t stop walking it’ll kill me. Oh well.

It was only afterward, when everyone in a 10-foot radius was freaking the fuck out because holy shit some girl we ride with every day almost got clipped by a bus, that I realized what had even happened. And I went along with the assumption that I hadn’t been paying attention because it’s easier to admit you’re a fucking idiot than admit to being depressed. But that’s a rant for another day. Point is, I didn’t plan months in advance that I was going to walk in front of a city bus and end it all. I made that decision quite literally on the fifteen-minute bus ride over there. It was a spur-of-the-moment choice when I was at rock bottom, still digging, didn’t think I had anyone around to stop me, and I was past caring.

2. People Will Doubt You’re Suicidal If You Don’t Seem Depressed Enough

The other reason suicide deaths come as such a shock to many people is because due to pervasive stereotypes about mental illness, we have these horribly inaccurate preconceived notions about what a depressed or suicidal person looks and acts like. We imagine the Myspace teen holed up in his room blogging about bartending in the dark while A Simple Plan blares in the background.

We never consider that our brother who manages to drag his ass out of bed every day to get to work may be thinking of ending it all because he hates his job but it’s the only place that would hire him, and he’s buried under a mountain of student loan debt that his children will be paying off when he’s 90. We never consider that our sister who is bubbly and funny and sweet and dorky just wants to make the world forget about her because she can’t see that her company is appreciated, and feels as though the world would be a much better place if she was no longer in it.

People with depression learn to be very good at hiding their pain. Often because when we do bring it up, we invite all of the stigma associated with it. We’re lazy. We complain too much. We’re too negative. We need to just get the fuck over it and make ourselves useful. So we learn quickly that it’s easier to put up and shut up.

When the bus missed me, everyone on the street -- people I rode with regularly -- just assumed I hadn’t been paying attention. I got told how lucky I was. How “God gave you another chance today.” I got asked what the hell I was doing. And all the while I wanted to just scream at them “IT WAS DELIBERATE, YOU STUPID FUCKS, STOP RUBBING MY FACE IN IT!”

But I didn’t, because I didn’t want to get hauled off in a squad car down to a psych ward for treatment I can’t afford. And also because telling well-meaning people who are happy you’re not a stain on the pavement to stop being glad you’re alive is kind of a dick move.

But the point is that I didn’t look like the classic preconceived image of a depressed person. I didn’t look or act like someone who was fed up enough with her life to walk in front of a three-ton speeding death bullet on purpose and give absolutely zero fucks. So the thought that “hey, this girl might’ve been trying to get herself killed” never crossed their minds. And there’s no reason it really should, either. Because in the world of people who aren’t depressed, who the fuck even does that? It’s easier and less painful to just assume I’m some dipshit who didn’t see the bus coming. And from my point of view, it was easier and less painful for me not to correct them.

3. You Will Hate Yourself For Failing

After I had assured everyone at the scene with blatant lies that I was okay, I waited for them to catch their buses and leave, then spent about twenty minutes sitting on a bench and crying. Not from the shock of holy fuck I almost died. I was crying because I felt even more worthless because shit, killing yourself is easy and I’m such a complete fuck-up I couldn’t even do that right.

I was mad at myself for not succeeding. And I couldn’t simply do it again right that second because now people were on alert, and I’d have less of a chance than I did before with the element of surprise.

Life is not like the Saw films, where the title character survives a suicidal car wreck to come out with a new outlook on life and a drive to make people mutilate themselves in order to prove how much they don’t want to die. I survived a suicide attempt to turn around and hate myself and life even more than I did before. I felt like a coward, for choosing a passive method and not being brave enough to just do it.

And that’s all part of depression. Of finding every stupid thing you’ve done and/or failed at and believing those deeds to be all you’re capable of. Like the Dementors from the Harry Potter series (which Rowling totally intended as a metaphor for her own battle with the disorder). A depressed person could literally find the cure for AIDS and win a Nobel Prize and they would still feel stupid and worthless and hopeless because of the one time they tried to make an omelette and burned it so badly they had to throw out pan and all.

“But that’s irrational!”, you would say. And you’d be correct. Of course it’s irrational. That’s why it’s a mental illness.

4. You Will Hate Other People For Wanting to Help You

Besides myself, I also hated the driver for not hitting me. And the people who were asking if I was okay. Nevermind that these people were genuinely far more concerned for my life than I was at that moment and really did just want to help. I hated them for not letting me die like I wanted. For making me fail.

That’s another part of why seeking help for depression is so fucking difficult. I’ve often likened it to that kid who used to poke you in the back of the neck with a pencil in math class. Only now he’s using an icepick. It’s a little inner head-voice that is constantly telling you what a worthless piece of shit you are. And eventually you develop a kind of Stockholm Syndrome towards it by agreeing with it just to shut it up for a while. And every time someone tries to do something to make you feel better, even as small as giving you a compliment, up pops that voice again. Feeding you a line about their true motives, and that they couldn’t possibly legit care about you because who the fuck does that? And once again, you start agreeing to make it shut up. And you begin to resent the very people trying to help you because you think they’re wasting their time on a lost cause like you. You don’t want help. You just want to die.

It’s a little like having an abusive spouse. Only that spouse lives in your head and you have to stand by and defend them because you have nobody else. And again, that’s another function of depression. It isolates you. It makes you feel detached from the world at large, like you don’t belong with other people. And you start to hate anyone who tries to get past the barbed wire, electrified fencing, ten-foot-thick steel walls, gun turrets, and lasers that your abusive head-spouse has set up to keep everyone out so they can have you all to themselves.

Because how dare these people talk bad about your beau. Even when he’s metaphorically (and sometimes literally) beating the shit out of you.

5. Getting Help Is the Hardest Thing You Will Ever Do (But It's Worth It)

The thing about life is that we’re all living on borrowed time. When you’re suicidal, you feel like you will never make enough to pay back the loan, so fuck it, you may as well just declare bankruptcy and call it a day. And because Depression Logic is working on your brain like an infomercial works on your grandmother at two in the morning, that certainly seems like a good idea at the time.

And like the infomercial, the product is a total ripoff and you can’t return it.

Getting help is hard. Because literally everything in you is going to fight against getting better. That abusive head-spouse has been a part of you for so long that you feel like you won’t even know who you are anymore if you get rid of it. But that’s the thing: you really can’t get rid of it, not completely. And any healthcare professional who claims to be able to ‘fix’ your depression needs to be reported to the state board to get their license revoked. No amount of medication or talk therapy is going to rewire your brain chemistry to make you not depressed anymore. The goal of mental healthcare is management, not a cure.

And what you have to learn to do when managing depression is to ignore the voice or make it shut up without capitulating to it. It’s giving the abusive head-spouse his own room with the door walled shut and ignoring his screaming about what a bitch you are for keeping him cooped up like that (alternating with crocodile tears and blatantly false promises to not call you a bitch anymore if you let him out). And sometimes, even with help, that voice is still going to be hard to ignore.

If you want a new lease on life, you have to make a down payment. And by the time you get around to taking out that loan, your credit is shot. So your down payment and fees for the first few months (maybe years) are going to be through the goddamn roof. But unlike that piece of junk on the infomercial, a new life is worth every last red cent. And it does eventually get easier to make the payments each month. Though some months will be more difficult than others. Even with treatment, there will be relapses (which is what happened to me).

The hardest part is filling out that initial application because it means admitting just how shitty you feel. When I first started receiving treatment, my general physician had to wheedle it out of me. All the signs were there; but until I admitted to what was happening and stopped blaming my razor scars on my cat, his hands were tied.

I had to want to get better. I had to say I wasn’t going to take my abusive head-spouse back anymore. I had to make that decision entirely on my own. And it was the single hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life because it meant standing up for myself, against myself.

That’s really what depression is in the end. You are literally battling your own mind. Every day. From the minute you wake up to the minute you go back to sleep. The part of you that wants to live is fighting the part of you that wants to die. Occasionally, that second part gets the upper hand.

Surviving a suicide attempt isn’t the failure it feels like at first. What it really means is that you still have some fight left in you. There is still a part of you that isn’t quite ready to give up yet. A part of you that hasn’t lost all hope. That self-preservation instinct is still there.

That’s the exact opposite of failure; it’s the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.