Suicidal ideation.

The words are new to me, but the concept I'm quite familiar with. Wikipedia defines it as such:

"...a common medical term for thoughts about suicide, which may be as detailed as a formulated plan, without the suicidal act itself..."

That's me starting roughly age 14.

Frequent, recurring bouts continue to present day.

It ranges from quick flashing thought to long drawn out contemplation. A lot of the time it's less focused on committing suicide and more focused on "I don't really want to be alive anymore." The first four years it was largely just that thought while lying in bed at night. Around year six it became more expansive.

It ebbs and flows. In intensity. In frequency.

Occasionally I'll get a break from it for a few weeks.

At it's worst it becomes a near-constant thought process. Quietly spinning in the background while I go about my day and interact, moving loudly into the foreground whenever I'm left to my thoughts.

After a month or two of this I start cracking. So far I always pull out of it. Sometimes it takes some (or a lot) of outside help.

I don't own a gun. This is because I don't say any real need to have one.

And because I don't trust myself.

A couple seconds and a few pounds of pressure and that is a decision that is not unmade.

I got pretty close winter before last. Real close. There'd been a couple other times over the years, but this was worse. One-foot-in-the-grave bad. Coming back from that took about six months. And I'm still not completely back.

I know that this isn't healthy.

It's a mental defect.

There is probably a pill for it.


None of those things really mean anything to me.

I don't know if I really want to die. But I certainly think about it a lot. And it's wearing. Very wearing.

It's not something I talk about a lot. Or at least not directly. Can't say I said anything about it at all for the first 5 years. It's not something people react well to. And it's not something most people will/can understand.

I read this earlier tonight:

Suicide is neither wrong nor right; it is not a defect of character; it is morally neutral. It is simply an imbalance of pain versus coping resources.

This is not how most people approach the concept. It's unfortunate. Just makes it harder for all parties involved.

Now don't get me wrong. None of this should be considered cause for concern. I'm not planning on killing myself any time soon. I just thought I should say something.


The greatest achievement in my life so far is that I'm still here.

There's only a half dozen or so people in this world who know how much of an achievement that is.

Follow-up to that last part.

I'm thinking that in the near(...ish) future, I'll be exporting most of these posts to a separate blog, and turning this one into what it was supposed to be in the first place. I'm not really sure what exactly that was, but not this.

It's the name. The name doesn't fit this.

There's a shadow that keeps following me around.

Too many days of being tired. Body and mind. Enough days that they've have piled up into years.

I get a break from it from time to time. But when it comes back, it feels like it's never left.


Double vision's been kicking in worse than usual. Doesn't matter how much or how little sleep I get it almost always feels the same when I wake up. It's rare I actually feel rested.

Stomach seems to be getting worse, might be actually be time to go see a doctor.

Every time it seems like things are on the upswing it's not long before they swing back down.

A lot of my jokes keep falling flat (or worse). The inflection keeps coming out wrong.


But none of this is new. It's all really, really familiar.




Someday I'll turn this blog into something that's less than a journal, but it won't be today.