Pain Killer

Warning, the following writing is about suicide.

For resources about Suicide, visit: https://www.suicideinfo.ca/

If you are in crisis, please visit: https://talksuicide.ca/

If you, or if you suspect someone, is contemplating suicide please contact the suicide hotline.

If you find the topic of suicide upsetting or triggering, I urge you not to read this work; although it comes from a personal place detailing my own experiences with lifelong depression I recognize that not everyone experiences this illness in the same way.

This writing is in no way a resource for your own mental health. I urge, that if you suspect you are depressed to get diagnosed by a medical professional.

Once again; If you, or if you suspect someone, is contemplating suicide please contact the suicide hotline. It can and will get better, I promise you, it is curable or at least manageable.

I've been thinking of killing myself again...

Not in any immediate sense, more a general fantasy that creeps in with the malaise of the day. Not that I ever really stopped either, the frequency ebbs and grows: it's just been particularly loud lately.

However, there are critical differences between the now and the then. For one it's just me in this here noggin. I recognize that these thoughts are intrusive and that there is no 'negative me.' It has, and will, always be just: Griffen.

Another one is the planning; I have this romantic notion of shooting myself in the mouth; blowing the ol' gray matter on the unfortunate whomsoever behind me. Of course, that's completely impossible; I neither own a firearm nor have the desire to purchase anything smaller than a rifle in any conceivable future.

When I was younger, oh man when I was younger; I was extremely, brutally practical with my suicide plans. Ironically, it would bring me comfort knowing I would have an easy, reliable and painless method of achieving THE big sleep within 10 minutes of my location at any time.

Jumping off buildings was an easy one; there was always a car park somewhere, my preference was city plaza; dive quickly head down. Of course, fear made it less than desirable, but still lent itself to the painless and reliable methods.

Jumping in front of a car? Of course, it ticks all the boxes but I always felt bad imagining the poor driver; having to deal with needless guilt. Or worse yet, a fantastic driver who merely injures me for life.

It was always the bottle plan for me; acetaminophen. A common enough pain medication that proves fatal in high enough doses. This wasn’t without its risks; too little would leave me with slow painful and fatal liver failure. However, that's why it's the bottle plan and not the pill plan. Downing an entire bottle of extra-strength acetaminophen would kill me quickly and with an apparent euphoric high. Laying in bed each night, I was always acutely aware of one such bottle, not one meter across the hall. The irony of a painkiller being the instrument of my demise is not lost on me. It feels poetic in a sense, what is the cause of human suffering? Being alive?

The resurgence of suicidal thoughts has me almost, nostalgic? I’m not sure; see the difference now is that I genuinely do want to keep living now. I have a concrete emotionally sound view of the world and my place in it and I want to see how it’ll play out by the end of my life; when I was younger I was holding out on the illusion of purpose, as if there was some key aspect of life that I was just missing out on; a personal achievement that would unlock satisfaction in my life, motivation towards happiness. But there wasn’t... there isn’t, it's just my goo brain floating around inside of a skeleton cage, always has been, always will be.

The comfort I felt having concrete, realistic, plans for ending my own life, has been replaced by a simple truth; one that we all struggle with in one way or another. We will die, this will be over one day, and this could be all we have; it's worth it to at least try and see what we can make of the brief time we’re given before petering out into the infinite presence of nothing. I can sit with my pain for a while still.