Your bag is empty.
Content warning: this essay discusses suicidal ideation, attempted suicide, and depression. If you’re struggling with suicidal ideation, call the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline to speak to a trained counselor. More resources are available here.
I was 22 when I tried to end my life. I’d endured months of severe depression, and though I had reached out for help, any small improvements were overshadowed by new lows.
The night before my attempt, I convinced myself to sleep on things one more time. When I woke up the next morning, I felt worse. Suicide had started as a fantasy, but my thoughts had gotten so twisted that it felt inevitable. Not going through with it felt like punishing myself further.
As horrific and still kind of surreal as it sounds, that day, I did attempt suicide.
Instead of dying, I regained consciousness, initially feeling doomed to still be alive. At this point, adrenaline and the survival instincts I had pushed away before my attempt took over. I fought to save myself.
I was incredibly lucky to survive, though the physical toll was severe. I was deeply injured and left with several hairline fractures in my vertebrae, multiple broken ribs, a punctured lung, and several mild brain contusions.
But somehow, the next day in the hospital, the weight of depression briefly lifted. I felt happy to see my family again. It was the first time I had felt like myself in months and it was the spark I needed to restart my recovery. Though those feelings were fleeting, they proved to me I was still capable of getting better. I was capable of feeling okay. I was capable of feeling like myself again. I just needed to figure out how to get there.
Slowly, over the next few days and weeks, the idea that suicide was inevitable shifted to thinking that my recovery was. It still took many months, even years, before I got back to a place where I could feel like I had fully recovered.
One of the most powerful moments in my recovery came a week after my attempt, while I was still in the hospital. It was the first time I got up to use the bathroom. As I opened my gown, I saw myself in the mirror, and that the entire left side of my body was covered in the deepest, largest bruise I’d ever seen.
I remember thinking, what have I done to myself? I’m a pretty calm and kind person. But something in me had broken so completely that I’d hurt myself in a way I wouldn’t have thought to hurt anyone else. Seeing that bruise helped me to understand that something clearly wasn’t right inside me. It wasn’t that I really was hopeless or wanting to die, something was shifting the way I felt and thought. It wasn’t true that my recovery was hopeless, it was just how my recovery felt to me. That distinction helped me later, as I learned to identify and separate negative thoughts warped by depression.
As I picked up the pieces and began my recovery from my mental and physical injuries, I had a renewed sense of optimism that all my efforts would pay off. I would get better.
I tackled depression on as many fronts as I could, which for me included therapy, medication, learning mindfulness, and basic healthy habits (sleep, diet, exercise, social life, etc). I also stopped holding back in therapy. Before my attempt, I was too ashamed and afraid to admit what I’d really been thinking and feeling, including being incredibly lonely and feeling like my life lacked meaning and purpose.
Over the years, I did get better and eventually started working for HeadsUpGuys, a mental health resource for men. I began to look at my mental health through the frame of masculinity, realizing that a lot of the reasons I didn’t reach out or why I did judge myself so harshly were because of expectations about trying to “be a man.” Taking a step back and beginning to question these obstacles more clearly helped me overcome them.
A few years ago, just before COVID, I went through a difficult time that lasted several months. It was the hardest stretch I’d faced since my attempt. One of the scariest things I learned during recovery is that the greatest risk factor for suicide is a previous attempt. When I went through this period I began to fear getting as depressed as I had. This fear alone caused me a ton of anxiety and pulled me back down into a darker place.
I had to lean on my therapist and friends to help me see that I was a different person now, with more tools and more support in place, including a genuinely supportive environment at work. Everyone wanted to see me better and I wasn’t facing things alone this time. Though I also knew what had worked for me, I had to double down and do all the work.
I scheduled more frequent therapy sessions, simplified my life, leaned on healthy habits, and told the people close to me what was actually going on. It took longer than I hoped but I was able to pull myself out of things before getting to a place like I was in 2010.
I’m 39 now, and getting closer to the point where my suicide attempt marks the halfway point of my life. Depression altered the course of my life and pointed me in a new direction. My work through HeadsUpGuys and sharing my story to help others provides me with part of the meaning and purpose I was lacking.
But since working for HeadsUpGuys I’ve also come to expand how I see myself, from someone who survived a suicide attempt to someone who is much more than one act at the lowest point of my life. It’s a part of my story, but it’s not the whole of it.
I enjoy my life and it’s so completely different now to what I would have imagined back in 2010 or what I was fearing a few years ago.
I can’t say 100% you will get better too. But I can say that I firmly, 100% believed I would never get better. Now, 16 years later, I’m continuing to share my story so others can start to poke holes in their thoughts, to question whether or not they really are doomed or that things are as hopeless as they feel, and to share the spark that fuels me.