No SI, No HI: The Experience of Ideation
Life can be a struggle, death can appear to be a release
When I was little, every time my family crossed a bridge, I imagined swerving off to the side and plunging into the water. The experience did not stop with time. For a long time, it only increased. That was the first thing I told a group of strangers in a mental health program. Many of the people could relate. Almost all had some form of Suicidal Ideation (SI).
The group consisted of people in various levels of intensity of the program, some of whom were fully hospitalized. I was in partial hospitalization, which means I spent a full workday there five days a week. It was my job. I was there because I decided to take my life. It was not the first time, though I hope it will be the last.
My life had spiraled out of control and I was incapable of handling it. Every time I looked into the eyes of my wife or children, I saw pain. I believed that I made everything I touched worse, and that everyone would be better off if I didn’t exist.
I had a plan. I was going to disappear one day and get as far away from everyone I knew and loved and end it all. I knew this would rob my family of any closure, but I hoped it would spare them the pain of finding my body. I wanted neither that image nor that experience to live with them for the rest of their lives. So, disappearing seemed like the best of a terrible set of options.
At one point, I began writing a novel about this, but it eventually became too painful to continue.
I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, and I couldn’t think straight. Everything from that period of my life is a blur. My wife was scared. She knew something was really off and feared the worst. So, she staged an intervention. I agreed to seek treatment, and started the program very soon thereafter.
Every day, you had to check in and tell the counselors if you had any SI or Homicidal Ideation (HI). As you went along in the program, your answers typically moved in the right direction and you could say:
“No SI, no HI.”
I had plenty of SI; we pretty much all did when starting the program. The thought of driving off the bridge and plunging into the water was a common one for me, and is generally common. So were other variations of this, like driving into oncoming traffic. It’s typically an abrupt situation without a chance to reconsider or get out of harm’s way.
During challenging times, I’d think about the concept of not existing. Ah, yes, an existential crisis. It comforted me. Not only was it a release from anguish, without the baggage death often carries. If I simply ceased to exist, I’d be wiped from memory. Nobody would mourn my loss. I wouldn’t be considered selfish, and I wouldn’t have let anyone down.
This, mind you, is different from the idea of never being born at all, an expression that seems to be more associated with a child’s tantrum. That concept seems spiteful, as if you were intentionally depriving someone of your existence. Or at least, that’s how I’ve always seen it. Ceasing to exist has no negative emotion attached to it, simply relief.
But why? Why would anyone in their right mind want to take their life or not exist? Well, the answer to that is pretty obvious: we who think that are not in our right minds. I did not need to ask or answer that question, though. You already knew.
Mental health is a struggle; medication helps. It cures nothing, but it keeps the symptoms at bay. It helps you get out of bed and function like you perceive normal human beings to function. A cocktail of meds always requires tweaking over time, leading to highs and lows along the way, but the highs are lower and the lows are higher. You are much closer to a baseline.
Still, things can get bad.
I sit here writing this a handful of days before I will likely return to the same facility, though for very different reasons. Thankfully, those reasons are not as severe, and my life is not in play. I just can’t function like the aforementioned normal human being.
I’m worried that, because I’m not in as bad of a situation as last time that I might be taking up a spot that someone else needs. I worry I may not feel comfortable speaking up because the person sitting next to me who has not stopped crying for three straight days and is not sure she can make it through the night will deserve more time to speak.
This is a big disruption to my life, which also scares me. I don’t want to be back in a place that could bring old painful memories back to the surface. I’m afraid that I may come out of it feeling worse than I did going into it. I’m not sure how to cope ahead for that.
I haven’t experienced SI since I left the program, but what if I start to feel it again once I’m there? Maybe that is part of the journey, though. Perhaps I need to be jolted into an uncomfortable situation to relearn how to handle it. I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out soon enough—and maybe that’s okay. I’m still here, though. And that has to mean something.