Choice?

I've been depressed since six years of age.  Not just a little sad or moody, full on clinically, deeply, sometimes-I-struggle-to-breathe depressed.  I've been suicidal so many times, I've lost count.  I'm still living because of a promise.  I'm not always happy about that, but my word is sacred to me and I won't be forsworn.

Despite the depression, life is beautiful.  Perhaps more beautiful because of the endless sorrow that dogs me.

Every time I hear of or know a person who takes the final step, I am so deeply saddened.  I wish they'd had the one thing that would have helped them hang on one more time.  I wish I could have sat with them in that timeless moment and shown them...I don't know...whatever they needed to see that they were needed, valued, wanted, here.

I am sometimes envious - they're not here, not dealing with it any more.  They are free in a way I cannot be while on this side of the veil.

I've said it before and I'll say it again and again - suicide isn't about wanting to die.  It's about NOT wanting to continue living this way, and NOT seeing any way out.  It is about escaping a life that seems untenable, irreparable, undesirable. It's about being so steeped in misery that it'll never wash away, we'll never be clean, we'll never shine again.

Want another perspective?  Go read this.

Anyone who goes on about how it's selfish and the person doing it wasn't ill but rather made a choice has (I would argue) NEVER actually been in that moment, inches away from the door and so damned ready to step through they would leap.  Because they'd know it isn't about who's left behind...indeed, the one doing the leaving KNOWS they'll hurt the ones left behind, but they often believe, deeply, to the bone, that the people they're abandoning will be better off without them.  I have always thought so.  Even my kids.  Especially my kids.  They'd miss Mommy for a minute, but then?  They'd have a much better life without me being the albatross around their necks.

If depression is a choice, so is cancer.  They do the same thing, don't they?  Eat away at you until there's nothing left?  Eat away at you until cessation of life seems preferable?  Eventually, they can both be beaten, or at least held in abeyance...and eventually, they can both kill you.

It's okay if you don't understand...I hope you never do...