At 27, I’ve settled into a comfortable coexistence with my suicidality. We’ve made peace, or at least a temporary accord negotiated by therapy and medication. It’s still hard sometimes, but not as hard as you might think. What makes it harder is being unable to talk about it freely: the weightiness of the confession, the impossibility of explaining that it both is and isn’t as serious as it sounds. I don’t always want to be alive. Yes, I mean it. No, you shouldn’t be afraid for me. No, I’m not in danger of killing myself right now. Yes, I really mean it.
How do you explain that?
For me it’s not helpful to be clinical about suicide, to treat it as a pathology to be treated or cured. It’s an existential question. Not thinking about dying, not killing oneself, is just as much of an action as thinking about suicide or committing it. As a society, we have normalized the former and stigmatized the latter. Objectively, though, we decide to not kill ourselves every time we wake up and go about our day. I’m just someone who accepts and engages with this choice.
I decide to be alive because I usually have hope for the future. Sometimes I don’t, and I consider the alternatives. This is impossible to create a product for because my feelings are tied to the health of the planet. The biggest things contributing to my “suicidal ideation” are the extinction rate, the rising CO2 level in the atmosphere, and the retreat of the alpine glaciers.