There are no trumpeting heralds when a long and heavy fog of suicidal ideation lifts. There’s the quiet, unexpected realization that at some point, when you didn’t even notice, a subtle relief snuck into your brain. Relief that you failed. Relief that you’re still here somehow.
Not entirely sure when this new bedfellow slipped into the room, I just kind of looked up & noticed they were there.
But the truth is, acknowledging this quiet relief is real brought another wave of feeling with it.
This one far more exigent & demanding.
Because it turns out realizing you DO in fact want to live comes at a uniquely inopportune time when you’re an immunocompromised woman in 2023.
So allowing yourself to quietly accept, let alone wholly embrace, the realization you DO in fact want to stay? You DO in fact want to keep on living?
It brings a bone chilling fear behind it.
Because wanting to live right NOW, for someone in a body like yours?
Well that’s going to require an out and war, every single day, with very few allies - even amongst those who love you.
Even amongst those that begged you to stay.
So it’s tempting to close your eyes and deny that quiet relief. It would be so much easier to crawl under the covers, and under the strangely protective shield that your ideation itself had apparently become.
Because if you aren’t committed to stay, it takes the teeth out of daily threats to your survival.
If you don’t want to live, watching friends who claim to love you demonstrate your life is less valuable than dinner at Olive Garden, isn’t a betrayal at all. It’s merely agreement
But if you turn to acknowledge the relief? If you seize on to it with both hands and clench for dear life - because in fact, your life IS dear to you once again?
You will be forced the feel the FULL reality of just how endangered that life really is, & just how many of your beloveds have chosen to use your body, & the bodies of so many like you, to construct a human barricade they can comfortably make camp behind - because, as they tell it, they are just too weary to think about the war anymore
The relief that you’re still here might have come like a whisper in the night, but truly choosing to commit to it, truly choosing to stay NOW? That will be anything but quiet - and won’t actually feel like “relief” at all.
Because it means letting go of the twisted sort of security blanket your ideation had unknowingly become, climbing out from under those covers, and facing the harsh light of this pandemic day with both eyes wide open.
I’m relieved I’m still here somehow, and I WANT to live again.
Something many of you hoped for, prayed for, even begged me to fight for.
And yet, the fact I truly WANT to live is the very reason some of you will likely lose me now.
Because you asked me to see my value. You asked me to believe I’m not only allowed to exist, but WORTHY of life - that I’m an important piece of this interconnected network of humanity, with unique gifts and roles to play.
And the problem for you, is that I listened.
But believing I’m worthy and valuable and important to this world is *entirely incompatible* with believing my very existence is worth less than the chance to eat inside an Applebees.
Believing I’m worthy means believing “love” that denies my inherent worth isn’t love at all.
So once again, it is tempting to ignore the arrival of this quiet relief, knowing that letting go of ideation will ultimately force me to let go of some of the people who call me beloved - the very people who have begged me to find this sort of healing and choose to stay.
In the end, healing isn’t going to look what they had hoped or expected. And for that I am sorry.
Because it turns out, I WANT to live.
Even if it means fighting every damn day against the never ending onslaught of messages saying it would be better if ppl like me were gone.
But I can no longer afford to let these messages come from those claiming to love and value me.
I’m not willing to risk my recovery like that anymore.
It’s too valuable.
*I’m* too valuable.
The irony of knowing that most folks want healing for me to look like assimilation to their behaviors, their “new normal.”
When in reality the most powerful healing comes in remembering my life IS too valuable to be treated as expendable - and I’m worth love that *protects* me.
So I’m relieved Im still here somehow.
I want to stay.
I want to live.
I want to continue the hard work of healing until I believe it deep in my bones that I am WORTHY.
And sadly, for some of you, that means accepting that I can’t afford to jeopardize that healing anymore.
Stephanie Tait ♿️
Char