The Journey of a Survivor

Sometimes, I wonder if I am going crazy because of the nature of my intrusive thoughts. I constantly have an internal voice telling me to kill myself and an active dialogue on how I should do it. I know the voice is mine and I know it is just some sort of internal dialogue my brain is making up…but, do “normal” people do this? I can sit for hours and just think these thoughts—let them take over. I very rarely play music because I already have a constant source of stimuli going on in my head. Music just seems to confuse things—I don’t know what I should be listening to, the music or the internal dialogue. Generally, the dialogue wins out, so I no longer bother to play the stereo.

I try to ignore the voice in my head by concentrating on a topic and trying to focus on researching it. Like, if I try real hard, I can override the dialogue by hyper-focusing on something else. But, it only works for short periods and I often find that I have been sitting at my computer for an hour or more just entertaining the intrusive suicidal thoughts. So, this voice that tells me to kill myself is almost constantly with me. Pretty much day in and day out—every minute of every single day—it never really goes away. It is rather maddening to have to put up with it.

My abilify seems to quiet it down some. If I can manage to stay on my abilify for an extended period of time the intrusive thoughts slow down and sometimes even go away for brief moments. But, staying on the abilify seems to be a struggle for me. I think part of my illness is the irrational thoughts I have concerning whether or not I should take my meds.

Recently, I have given into the thoughts and have been obsessing about suicide. I have been researching it and preparing my goodbyes to the people I am going to hurt by killing myself. Instead of writing notes to everybody, I have been making short videos trying to explain my thoughts and my actions. It is really hard to actually say goodbye to your mom and dad and other loved ones in your life. It seems like I am having a tough time justifying the pain I would cause them by killing myself. I just can’t bring myself to tell my mom goodbye and until I can do that, I can’t kill myself. I have to say goodbye.

So, here I am with all these obsessive thoughts about suicide and the dilemma of not being able to do it because of my loved ones. I feel stuck, trapped…trapped in a life that I am not sure I really want to be living. At this point, I am just going on for the sake of others. That is not how I want to spend my life.