Why My Suicidal Thoughts Haven’t Gone Away
By: Lark Morrigan
Tags: Suicide, Mental Health, Self, Depression, Life

Trigger warning: The following article talks about suicide.

I’m not exactly private about my tendency to have suicidal thoughts. I’ve briefly mentioned it at least once or twice in written pieces before. I’ve talked about it with friends I’ve never met in real life.

Suicidal thoughts are nothing new to me. When I was just eight years old, I burst into tears in front of my aunt, uncle, and grandparents, screaming “I wish I could die” at least a hundred times.

At the tender age of eight, I already felt useless, not smart enough, not gifted enough, and even not imaginative enough. I felt like the majority of people in the world were cruel and “out to pick apart every flaw and use it against me.” Maybe I have a severe case of paranoia, which then has festered over time every time I’m let down and disappointed by somebody or an instance where I am proven right — that nobody really gives a shit about me because I’m very awkward, ordinary, and so different from some flawless “it girl” that society adores and favors and wants to shower with praise, prestige, wealth, and fame.

Now to clarify, I don’t want to be put on a pedestal like famous people nor am I insinuating that I aim to be like that in order not to get rid of feelings of worthlessness.

The root of it is feeling like I can’t ever be appreciated as I am, if I am not that kind of productive, smart, beautiful, flawless, and charming “it girl” that exceeds every (albeit, superficial) unspoken standard set by society.

But at the same time, I don’t want to force myself to be someone I’m not just to be well-liked, but many times in my life, I’ve felt sidelined for two basic reasons:

Outwardly, most people just don’t vibe well with me. I often think it’s because I don’t have the right personality, I’m socially awkward, and I’m not stereotypically hot or drop dead gorgeous like people on TV. I don’t have the “right mannerisms” or the ability to persuade people. I stumble over my words when I’m speaking and struggle with basic social skills. I have the charisma of a rock and I hate that about myself. Inwardly, I also think I have deficiencies that prevent me from getting better significantly in things I do care about. These traits specifically are laziness, procrastination, my tendency to be in mentally frozen in place, perpetual self-loathing, and lack of motivation. I don’t think I’m inherently creative enough or able to process more complex thoughts and it’s a struggle for me to do what I love consistently and creative blocks prevent me from keeping the momentum going at high rates.

I may be externalizing my worth and letting what other people think of me control the way I feel about myself and what confuses me the most is that I understand that their opinions of me, especially negative ones that form without the intent to make me better but just beat me down, don’t hold weight and I should just be as I am and continue to improve in ways that I actually do care about, while letting go of my self-destructive perfectionism and people-pleasing tendencies, in order to move on, heal, and change who I am from the inside in order to feel like my worth is how I define it, not how anyone else does.

But no matter what I think or how much I try to think positively or how much I reassure myself that even if I don’t meet everyone’s standards on how I ought to be in order to make my own life worthwhile, it’s insanely difficult. I beat myself up almost every day and I’m extremely sensitive to reminders of how I’m not enough and how I can’t ever amount to anything great in life because of both the aforementioned outward and inward deficiencies that I perceive as unfixable, which leads me to a downward spiral of thinking that I don’t deserve to live and that I will never be enough.