Article written by Anonymous
Illustration by Chloe Davison
Content Warning: Depression, suicide, suicide ideation.
This piece was originally published in ‘Memento Mori’, Bossy’s 2021 print edition.
I have suffered from depression from such a young age that it feels more like a character trait than a mental illness. My mother died when I was a child and my dad, although he tried hard, was unable to meet my emotional needs. The depression runs deep in me; I feel it in my chest and in my hands before I feel the mental effects. It’s monotonous, annoying, frustrating, and tiresome.
Being suicidal is weird. It just is. It’s hard to convey. It’s feeling like you don’t exist and that you’re the biggest burden in the world simultaneously. It’s scary and heavy. I have experienced suicidal ideation twice in my life, in 2016 and in 2019. I remember watching the unfolding shit storm in America in 2016 and thinking that at least I wouldn’t be alive to see Trump get elected, which shows how odd it is to place a limit on your own life. I thought at that time that I had a prognosis of weeks, it felt so certain and real. And then it didn’t.
The thing that tethered me to life was the concern of being a burden on my family. I didn’t want to live anymore, but I also felt so guilty imagining my dad having to find out about my death, imagining my sister having to mourn instead of celebrate on my birthday.
After a death, mementos of life take on a different meaning. I have a box of my mother’s earrings in my room; if she were alive, they would be meaningless to me, but now they represent a tangible connection to her. I keep my bike in a shed on campus. If I died, it would stay there. It would rust. Someone would steal the wheels and the seat. The broken aluminium body would remain chained to the rack. Nobody would know that it was the bike of a dead girl. It wouldn’t matter to anyone.
Being suicidal is weird. I was concerned about my family having to come to Canberra to pack up my things after I died. I thought that would be a huge bother for them. After a death, the last thing you want to do is get on a plane to a place where you have no support
system to pack up your dead kid’s stuff. I imagined how painful it would be for my sister to take down the photos of us that surrounded my mirror. My dad would have to strip my bed – would they throw away my sheets? It would be weird to keep them, weird to donate them, weird to trash them. So I thoughtfully packed up my room,
took the photos down, and packed my books and DVDs into labelled
boxes.
I hoped they would see that my most worn clothes were active wear, that they would be able to tell I had been trying to keep the demons at bay with exercise. That they would note the absence of alcohol in my room and know I was sober. I made my bed. Then I
remembered my dildo, neatly packed in its nice case, hygienically cleaned with batteries in a separate bag, under my bed. I imagined my dad finding it. Would that change his opinion of me? Would he be disgusted? I pictured my sister picking it up. Would she laugh? Would it be a moment of levity in a hard day, or just make her realise how far we had drifted? No, the dildo would have to go before I did. I decided to throw it out. But if I threw it out that night, and then I didn’t kill myself, then I would have wasted my dildo. I spent $75 on that little guy. So I couldn’t bin it before I was certain. But wait, if
I wasn’t certain, why was I packing up my stuff? That left me holding a hot pink dildo on my floor in tears. Maybe I didn’t want to die. Maybe I wanted to live?
I wasn’t better overnight. I wasn’t better for weeks, maybe months. But that dildo saved my life. It told me I still wanted to plan for the future. As bleak as everything felt to me, as much as the walls felt like they were caving in, that life was completely meaningless, a part of me was holding out for the day I was going to be horny and regret losing my dildo. And that part of me was what convinced me to live. If there was the potential of physical pleasure in the future then there was potential for happiness, for energy, for life.
People say about mental illness that you can’t just choose to be happy and then be happy. And that’s somewhat true. I didn’t simply choose to stop being suicidal. But I did make a choice to ring Lifeline (13 11 14). I made the decision to see my friend the next day. Eventually I was able to unpack my stuff, pin the photos back up, start making plans again. The mementos of my life resumed their meaning as everyday items, including that life-saving dildo.
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