That Strange Sadness: The Morning After a Suicide Attempt

By: an anonymous Guest Blogger

TW: This article contains explicit reference to a suicide attempt, please be wary before reading. 

Image by: Priscilla Du Preez via Unsplash

I woke with a terrible migraine and the irony wasn’t  lost on me. 

From this sudden tumble into consciousness, I noticed that the thud thud thud of pain clattering into my head was  perfectly timed with the buzz buzz buzz of my phone. I gingerly looked at the screen and saw nothing but a blurry swirl of white marks, which I assumed must be numbers. I led back and closed my eyes, trying to centre myself in a world that seemed to be convulsing. 

The phone stopped  ringing but the pain in my head didn’t  blink and carried on pounding. Buzz buzz buzz. It immediately started again, the same number driving spikes of pure vibration deep into my skull. I could barely conceive of anything else except me in this bed let alone conversing with another actual human being. I ignore it. 

I scrunched myself into a ball, the duvet contorting itself to fit my new shape. I thought  about last night, that feeling of fire in every fibre of my body. I could see an empty pint glass on my desk and what looked like patches of fallen moon dust. These are remnants of a step too far. Or, I think, as my phone begins buzzing again, one not taken far enough. 

***

I have attempted suicide. 

While the keyboard clacks as I write this sentence, my bones throb with anxiety. Very few people in the world know this about me. I’m actually not sure who those people are; it's like I’m repressing not just the act itself but any external knowledge of its existence. 

I’m not ashamed or embarrassed or even particularly regretful of my suicide attempt. However, to speak about this publicly, even anonymously, is very difficult, like swimming to a safe shoreline through a sea of sticky tar.  A study from 2018 found that 18 million people in the UK are uncomfortable talking about death, with 33% of that figure refusing to talk about their own death to a loved one. So if such a large proportion of the population are reluctant to talk about death in any circumstance, to talk about it when you are an active, clinical participant inevitably adds another layer of tension. 

The statistics on attempted suicides is not as conclusive as actual deaths by suicide but a metatextual study conducted by the NHS in the UK found that 1 in 15 people attempted suicide during their lifetime. This equates to roughly 6% of the population.  While that figure is obviously too high, (in an ideal world it would be 0%), it does thankfully represent a fairly small percentage of the population. 

Captured by Sasha Freemind via Unsplash

Waking up from a suicide attempt is a peculiar feeling and is one that ultimately only 6% of people will ever experience. My attempt was not a cry for help. I don’t believe that such things exist. A person who attempts might regret the decision instantly but in the second that they actually make it, they mean it.

When I went through the process that led up to the attempt and me passing out almost instantly, waking up a few minutes later and vomiting, then passing out again, I was done. I truly wanted out. 

When I woke, some ten hours later, it was to a churn of emotions so intense my body could barely contain them. It’s confusion and pain and a bleary eyed exhaustion. At its core it's a molten meld of sadness and relief, two dissonant emotions forming a harmonious balance, whether you want them to or not. The feelings have a primordial severity, they’re torn from the deep dark centre of your marrow. 

The relief is instinctual, that clichéd evolutionary desire to sustain your wretched genes. The sadness is more complex, best described as a seething  mix of anxiety, embarrassment and despair. I felt like I had failed again, that being alive now was the ultimate symbol of my fundamental failure as a person. 

I was happy to be alive and sad that I wasn’t dead. I felt so small in a colossal world. The worse your depression gets, the smaller your personal reality becomes; you slowly contract inwards, like your very form is splintering awaying until it comes apart. Attempting suicide is the final snap and I thought this snap would be a clean break in two. But as consciousness returned I realised those splinters were still clinging together. 

***

Timothy Morton, the environmental philosopher, conceived of the idea of a Hyperobject in his book Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology at the End of the World. Simply put, a hyperobject is a phenomena so huge that the human mind struggles to process its existence.  We struggle to process the enormity of climate change because it exists everywhere at all times. You can see some evidence of it- a mudslide or hurricane maybe - but the vastness and strangeness makes it impossible to truly comprehend the totality of their existence. 

My suicide attempt feels to me like a hyperobject now. I know when it happened, how it happened and for the most part, why it happened. But I still struggle to understand it at a fundamental level. To think I actually could be dead, and that there is an element of luck that I am not, is a concept so big my brain almost self-implodes trying to process it.

Image by Shine__Photos via Unsplash

The idea I could be dead causes a shiver to rattle down my spine. Had I succeeded, all of the things I have achieved since then would obviously never have happened but by equal measure none of the pain would exist either. 

I think that is why the sadness of that morning still lingers but so does the relief. All I’ve ever wanted is to be paid to write and I have been lucky to make that happen. But in the years since that evening I have gone through countless episodes of depression, had months and months of not being able to work and I have effectively been on suicide watch with mental health services.

Would I swap everything that has happened in the last eight years for eternal nothingness? I don’t think I would. But the fact I wanted out and was close to being so, will always add a certain strangeness to my life. The sadness of that morning may always linger like a very faint, wispy fog over my life.

I am ultimately glad I did not commit suicide but there’s an elemental melancholy I might always feel at having to live life.

If you are in the UK and are suffering from suicidal thoughts you can contact the Samaritans for free 24/7 on 116 123. More information can can be found on their website below.

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