Will to live, or not? Or lost in between?
- varunkrshnn
- Feb 14, 2022
- 6 min read
Updated: Feb 20, 2022
TRIGGER WARNING - This is not for the faint of heart or if you are not in the right mental state. If so, please step back now. Come back once you're in a better headspace.
It's 2022 and we have come a long way when speaking about recognition of mental health. Sure, there is a lot more that needs to be done when it comes to treatments, diagnosis and raising awareness, but it'd be unfair to not recognize the strides that already have been made. The very fact that there is a spot on the table for mental health, is saying a lot. The same could not have been said growing up, when in 8th grade if you broke down, you'd be told off by your parents for being "spoilt, adamant" and to just "suck it up". Friends would tease you to no end calling you "a girl" (which was somehow normalized and seen as a slur, which in itself is another big fucking problem when it comes to masculine toxicity). We've come a long way from calling psychiatry "quackery" to people being able to approach these "quacks" for help. Part of my spiel is to point out a very important yet not nearly well enough recognized mental issue and that is to do with taking one's own life. Sure, we've heard quite a bit about suicide, what it entails, how do you help people, etc. But what I'm pointing at is a little more niche. What if you don't want to live, have zero desire and have even thought about it, but don't follow through with it? Or what if you have had musings, maybe even flirted with the plan of action but for whatever reasons, never followed through with it? Are you crying wolf, or is this yet another cry for help which is not recognized and at times misconstrued as being attention seeking?
While trying to present stats for any mental condition is hard, suicide is relatively speaking easier (Yes, that's morbid). That's because law and society recognize the binary nature of things very well. Black or white, right or wrong, left or right, alive or dead. For suicide, it's easier in the sense you have a victim, a cause of death and a murderer all leading back to the same person. So, you have the stat - suicide committed. But where it becomes incredibly tricky is where there is just ideation and not necessarily the follow through (at least for the time being). I speak out of experience (like I have done in my other articles), it is a very, very dicey situation. It is not quite wanting to do yourself in, but rather a loss of interest in life whatsoever but not being able to pluck up the courage due to a myriad of reasons. PS - Yes, I said taking your own life takes courage. Unlike what people might paint it like that it's the coward's option out (which at times could be the case), more often than not it takes great resilience of mind and a total sense of hopelessness to decide "Fuck it, I've had enough. I want out. I don't want this pain". Try doing something borderline dangerous or self-inflicting pain and ask yourself if that was easy. Multiply that feeling, by a thousand.
Back to my thought, suicide ideation. Medically it's classified as passive and active suicide ideation. Active ideation is what's called by the general layman as suicide with the following being some of the symptoms [1]:
Talking about suicide, making conclusionary statements like "I wish I were dead".
Social withdrawal and wanting to cut any ties with everybody.
Speaking to people with a sense of finality.
Showing aggressive mood swings.
Substance abuse.
Living life dangerously and recklessly.
What if I told you that suicide ideation is almost all of that, but still not quite it? Suicide in itself is a spectrum, as far as I've experienced it. It can range from having casual thoughts about it, to walking down your terrace and looking down to gauge the height of the fall. It could be just imagining the world without you, to making a *normal* call to your friends as a final goodbye, to maybe breaking down talking to them and voicing your thoughts for death.
There were times where I enjoyed times with my friends, did decently at my job, yet there was this fleeting thought about a sense of meaninglessness to life and whether it was worth living. On bad days it went a little further than just that, as far as actively wanting myself dead. It's a very slippery slope hence making it incredibly hard to diagnose as it's this gray area that makes it troubled.
It is estimated that between 22% and 38% of adolescents have thought about suicide at some point in their lives, with between 12% and 26% reporting having had such thoughts in the previous year [2].
For people with mental health disorders, the rate is significantly higher. The exact numbers are unclear, but since suicidal ideation is a symptom of mental health disorders like major depression and bipolar disorder, the problem exists at a far greater percentage in these populations. [3]
These stats are incredibly lowballed, and all stats quoted are by those who decided to approach for help, who had the right support system and most importantly, those who had the courage of a warrior to answer the question "Hey, how are you doing?" with a resounding "Horrible. I feel like shit, I want to die. Fuck, I'm in pain", instead of the mind numbing and distant "Fine". Not to forget, all of this is only possible, if you are made aware that what you are thinking is not normal. It's not normal to be disinterested in life. It's not normal to feel dead inside, every waking day of your life. It's not normal to not want to live. I had the incredible luck to have a rock in my mother and a couple friends who were God sent (ironic coming from an atheist) and I was finally able to get the help I had been needing for close to a decade.
But how many are lucky enough for all these things to fall in place? It's the age of social media, so I'll ask each and every one of you to use that tool (it was always meant to be a tool, which is now being misused). Go to reddit, twitter, discord and add yourself to the subreddits, twitter pages and discord groups surrounding self-harm or suicide and you'll get to see through a peephole what hell looks like for these people. You'll have a number of people who've tried killing themselves but falling short, several others who're right at the doorstep but asking for help, several others who are bidding a final adieu. It's horrifying.
To round off this rather troubling issue, is the fact that currently clinicians end up grading passive suicidal ideation as "low risk" because of a lack of plan which in itself is incredibly faulty. All it can take is a bad week, a bad day, a singular moment, a trigger to quickly change that from passive to active. Suicide ideation is a high-risk scenario, period. Once ideation sits in, your mind starts playing rather horrid tricks with you. Thoughts of loneliness, of feeling misunderstood, of not being loved, heard all exaggerate themselves in your head and before you realize, you're there, seeing the beautiful skyline of your city, feeling the wind blow across your face while staring into the night sky one last time before bidding your final adieu.
This is one of those topics that has no conclusion because, well there is no conclusion to this thought. I've managed to pack all my thoughts in this article, and I've barely scratched the surface of what's an incredibly deep issue. All I can do is give my parting thoughts in hopes that this reaches the eyes of those who need the acknowledgement, or those who are very new to this world and truly want to learn. To those of you who are new to all of this and are not quite sure how to tackle this problem with a loved one, do your reading. You'll find a plethora of articles in medical journals explaining at a high level what suicide is. You needn't understand the nuances at first, just get an idea. And please, please, DO NOT use phrases like "sab sahi ho jayega" (Hindi for it'll all be well eventually), "yaar mujhe laga tu normal hain" (Hindi for man I thought you were normal).
To those of you who've been down this road or are down this dark path, hang in there bud. I may not know you, and you might not know me, but know that your pain deserves to be heard and acknowledged. There is time and there is a way out. May it be passive or active ideation, do not take that step. As much as it hurts, please help yourself. Find a doctor, a friend, a loved one or even a stranger and spill your guts out. More so than for anybody, do this for yourself. You deserve to live. You deserve to laugh, cry, hope and die as an old person.
Here are some useful resources concerning the topic.
International Suicide & Emergency Hotlines (opencounseling.com) --> This is the link for the suicide hotline number for many countries.
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