Trigger Warnings: Suicide, sensitive content relating to depression
How am I supposed to see myself going forward?
For eleven years I’ve had suicidal thoughts, and for the past three, I’ve seen myself as a permanent sadboi. A prop to make other people feel OK by comparison at cocktail parties.
In contexts where people were expected to brag about themselves, I felt a sick satisfaction in telling someone I failed a class because I couldn’t get out of bed or that I hadn’t talked to my parents in six months.* When people asked me how my Whiff year was going, I smiled through the line, “It’s been the best year of my life, but that’s a low bar.”
I had tons of misery cards to summon like Yu-Gi-Oh monsters. When I joked casually about hating myself or told someone to give me a high five for having not killed myself yet, I’d enjoy people’s discomfort (I’m very proud of once getting a “yikes”).
But it also felt so good to be *interesting*. I was an exotic commodity, this weird creature who was broken and didn’t feel bad about saying it. I was someone who had experienced something most of my victims hadn’t. Like Wiress in the Hunger Games and all the raving lunatics before her, I was the magical basket case who knew something fundamental about life that my listener never could.
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But now, I’m actually feeling fine. I’m enjoying life. As I write, I’m sipping a cup of chamomile tea and I can feel its warmth going down my esophagus and I can think, “That’s nice.” I started lamotrigene 10 months ago and started talking to my parents again shortly after in December when we began family therapy. I’ve been in therapy myself consistently for 2½ years. In March I decided, after a decade of mulling it over, to promise not to kill myself. I started lithium a month ago and haven’t had a suicidal thought in three weeks, for the first time in years!
And I’m uneasy. This feels so foreign. Is the old me gone? Will I never feel that heavy again? How many incredible diary entries, Layer articles, song lyrics have I lost because I couldn’t be bothered to write when I was feeling that *deep* feeling?
Partly, I yearn for that pain again because of the philosophically poor idea that sadness and, more specifically, depression is profound. I know that during my depressive episodes, there wasn’t some tragic truth about life that I could share. Instead, I just had no motivation. No reason to get out of bed. No reason to live. And despite my attempts to seek them, the things I used to enjoy made me feel nothing and I hated myself and I didn’t really know why. There was no interesting thought going on. I saw life as just waiting until old age did suicide for me. But the thought remains: wouldn’t I be able to describe depression more tragically if I were still there? Even if I know that stress and pain are not inherently interesting, second round society interviews were only bestowed upon me in the interviews where I pivoted every question towards my failing mental health. So would I be a great writer if I allowed readers to consume my sadness like New Yorkers became voyeurs at P.T. Barnum’s Freak Show?
The same lack of philosophical interest is true for my hypomania. I just stayed up dancing in the mirror and grinning and blaming myself for not sleeping the next day, when I inevitably was miserable from depression and the fatigue that made it worse. That being said, most people (myself included) didn’t know what hypomania even was so it didn’t ever get a chance to be romanticized.
And still, I yearn for these pains because they’re familiar. It’s hard not to make self-deprecating jokes even now that I don’t want to. It’s hard to talk about my day and realize it’s like everyone else’s: boring. It’s strange to think joyfully about the possibility of a rewarding career, especially when I so recently didn’t think I could make it another week.
So, what do I do with my self-image?
What do I do with my future?
What do I do with hope?**
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*It’s not even true that I failed a class. I was given an F because a professor vaguely lied to me after I asked for a temporary incomplete due to my mental health circumstance, but the Committee on Honors and Academic Standing later removed it (granted after a miserable summer and fall semester long appeal process).
**Since I wrote this article, my suicidal thoughts have returned, but I still don’t want them to be my identity.
By Mohit Sani.
