On Depression and Suicidal Thoughts.

30th August, 2009

Today I awoke in anger, and I lay there wondering how I was going to face another day in this miserable state. I knew I couldn’t, but more to the point and perhaps most importantly, I knew I didn’t want to.
In an instant my mind was bombarded with images of myself holding a gun to my head. They were images that would not abate. I was overwhelmed with despair and lay there in bed, numb to everything but what was playing out in my mind. With curtains drawn, I just lay there staring at the bedroom ceiling, a multitude of thoughts running through my mind all reinforcing my pain along with the belief that I didn’t want this life for myself anymore.
I do not know what it was that compelled me to sit up and open the curtains, as I had made up my mind to avoid this day altogether as I had so often done in the past, and sleep through it as if it never happened. But as I sat there on the hilltop, looking out the window at the grey, overcast, miserable day which seemed to only reflect my inner state, I started to cry. No thought, no feeling, just a lot of tears.
I do not know how long I cried for, nor how many times this happened, but I do recall the building intensity with each episode along with the mounting feelings of despair. Despair at the fact that I thought I had come so far and could control my thoughts enough for this not to recur, but here I was at the mercy of the depression once again.
Suddenly, as I searched in my mind desperately for answers, for a way out, I was shown a way. I suddenly understood that these suicidal images were not intended to hurt me, they were intended to help, to show me what needed to be done. Just as in the tarot where the death card represents change, transformation, a letting go, or “dying off” of that which no longer serves you in order to make way for that which does, these suicide images were serving the same purpose, they were telling me it is time for change.
Suicidal thoughts only ever invade your thinking when you have reached a point in life, in a situation, where you are in so much pain and can see no other way out. They do not occur until that point is reached. Our desperate silent pleas for help do not go unanswered, and the answer always comes from within. Suicide, death!
Defeated and numb, trapped within the murky depths of the abyss, thoughts of suicide can only be interpreted literally. For what on earth else could possibly release you from this dark place?
But today, in my unwillingness to accept that death in the literal sense was the only option available to me; I was shown a different way of perceiving the situation, which ultimately led to an understanding. All I needed to do was choose a different way. Changing your choices is not a difficult thing to do when you become aware that the old familiar choices only ever result in more pain, it’s never different. Of course we always hope it will be, otherwise why would we continuously make the same choice over and over?
In realizing this, I also “saw” that depression is not the enemy, it is merely the mind’s attempt to heal itself. Pain is the body’s language. It is how it communicates to us. If it were not for pain we would not be aware that healing is needed. Hence depression, and the pain that it brings, is the mind’s call for help.
That realization in and of itself was a monumental step forward. To see depression as a friend and not a foe has enabled light to dispel darkness and hope to dispel the despair. A liberation of sorts has transpired as I no longer feel like the hapless victim. Rather than being disempowering, depression has taken on a new significance in my life. It is no longer a prison door that keeps me trapped in my pain, it now represents a doorway to change, a way out of the darkness.
And for now, that is enough.