That Thing We Can’t Say On Socials

Let’s talk about suicide and bodily autonomy. Yes. I’m going there.

And I think it won’t be what you might expect.

First of all. If you’re here because you currently or in the past have felt suicidal or have had suicidal ideation. You’re in good company. Me too. A lot.

I’ve felt the agony of sleepless nights wishing I could will my heart to stop. I’ve felt the desire to veery my car off of the road into a tree. I’ve contemplated what the easiest, most painless, cleanest (for those left after) method might be if I were to actually cross that threshold.

I’ve felt various pains that made me want to leave, but mostly I’ve just felt like I don’t belong. Like this place is beautiful and all, but what the heck am I even doing here?

My life has been a parade of traumas which resulted in a disabling, painful, and exhausting dis-ease of fibromyalgia. All while I have to work to keep my family supported despite the pain, exhaustion, burn out, and, yes, resentment that I have to do this.

Why couldn’t we just have a society that could support someone like me through the healing process and the time and space I need away from the world to heal? That’s another post I suppose.

I’ve wondered why the heck I was staying if my life was so terrible.
Don’t get me wrong, there have been a lot of really amazing things in my life, but is it really worth it in the balance?

Before I go any further, I do want to note here that if you are currently in a moment of crisis, this is not usually a time that the sorts of contemplations I’m about to explore are best pondered. Feel free to keep reading but crisis times are not the times to make a decision. I’ll explore more on that in a second.
For now, if you’re in crisis, please soothe yourself. Avail yourself of what resources there are like the US National Suicide Crisis line (just call 988).

I’m about to plunge into some deep, icy waters here. This exploration is not for everyone in every moment, and you know best where you are currently at.
As my view around suicide has evolved, I have also come to understand that moments of crisis are not the moments to be making decisions like this that have more or less permanent results. In these moments of crisis it’s almost impossible to truly decide. It’s almost impossible to cogently consider options. Pay attention to what the crisis is bringing, and when the crisis has settled, come back to ponder what it brought to your attention.

I used to have horribly agonized feelings around suicide, like Shakespeare’s Hamlet. “O that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d his canon ’gainst self-slaughter!” I was a fundamentalist Christian, and suicide was going to end this torture only to commence a new, eternal torture. Yikes.

So I was suicidal, but could never really face it, never really grapple with it. There was no option, so why bother?

Then I left Christianity and converted to Scandinavian Heathenry. No such law against suicide there, only that you face your death valiantly. In fact, there is evidence from Sagas of Norse mythology that suicide was an acceptable option and would still net you the reward of, in the case I’m thinking of, Sessrumir, the afterlife abode of Freyja and her chosen ones.

Now I was in a tricky bind… I couldn’t kill myself, right? Not possible. No longer not allowed, but I just can’t think about it. I can’t go there or I might make a permanent decision.
So, for a few years I avoided the subject. I soothed myself down from moments of crisis, then buried myself in work the rest of the time. Always something new to heal, either in me or in my patients. Always some new external crisis to manage to keep me distracted from this ultimate question.

Then as my fibro progressed in the first year of my second marriage and by far the most healed, most blissful romantic relationship I’d ever had, I was forced to really look at it. This was three years ago now, for perspective.

As I agonized over how I’d started planning three years prior, then stopped, then brought this new love into my life who I was now pondering leaving in a very permanent way, I had a heartfelt discussion with my partner, and he gave me the best gift I’d ever been given.

“If you need to go, I’ll support you in that, and I’ll hold your hand through it.” I was floored. I wept. I was simultaneously blown away by the vistas of possibility that had opened up and terrified.

I was terrified. Now, now I really had to look my suicidal urges in the eye. I could no longer just pretend that it wasn’t possible and repress the urge anymore.

I was no stranger to this, this is how I practice shadow work and trauma healing, but looking the monsters in the eye, asking them to come to tea, and making friends with them. I thought I had done this with my suicidal urges, but it became suddenly, terrifyingly, abundantly clear that I had not. Not really.

I really had to face it. And I did. And I do. It isn’t gone for a number of reasons, but let me tell you what the gift of looking it in the face was.

As I pondered over the weeks following the offering this gift of unconditional love and support from my partner, even through the very gates of death, I realized that when I fully gave myself permission to consider suicide fully, to enact it, I didn’t want to. When it was really an option and I really considered it as an equally valid option to continuing to live, I wanted to live!

It remains a struggle for me because I want to live, but not like this. In the three years that have passed since then, I’ve been working with triple the usual fervor to change my life, to improve it, to move away from the things that are making it miserable and move towards the parts that I don’t want to leave. Towards the things that when I really seriously think about suicide I am stricken with grief over leaving behind.

As I’ve continued to ponder this, I’ve pondered deeply physician assisted suicide, which is a service that is offered here in my home state of Oregon.

To be eligible for the program, typically you must have a terminal diagnosis. You must go through a waiting period of a couple to a few months, and psychiatric evaluation. The purpose of this is to determine that you are not in a moment of crisis. Remember I noted that you can’t really decide in that crisis moment, you can only react.

Then, if you pass all those criteria, you are allowed to go forward with the procedure of assisted suicide, surrounded by those you love. This is a huge point.

We allow people with a physically terminal illness to escape the prospect of wasting away to a painful death. We offer them the mercy of death with dignity, death on their own terms. I love that for us as a veterinarian who has offered this gift to my patients and their families for 12+ years. I really do. And I wonder why it’s only those with physical diagnoses who get this mercy.

Those of us with mental diagnoses, or painful debilitating, disabling physical diagnoses that are not terminal are often not included in these programs. I think we should be. I know from my own experience that mental illness can equally cause you to painfully waste away until you die, often at your own hand in a moment of severe crisis, hidden from those you love both because of the stigma of what you’re doing, and in an attempt to shield them from any legal culpability for your acts. Why would we not offer all people access to a dignified death on their own terms? Who are they hurting? Moreover, offering it this way would help to ensure that those who were simply in a moment of temporary crisis that did not need a permanent solution could get the help they needed by being able to be completely honest about where they found themselves. (Don’t get me started on how the modern psychotherapeutic community handles suicidal folks.)

That’s just some food for thought there. But let me close with the things I consider when I’m in those moments of thinking about and planning for an end:

Something needs to die. Your being deeply knows this, but is it you? Is it a part of you? Is it a part of your life or circumstance?
A desire for death does not necessarily mean you really desire your own physical death. That’s not how being an oracle works.
Obviously I have yet to decide that an actual physical death of this body is what is needed or you wouldn’t be reading this because I wouldn’t have written it.

Perhaps you’re actually ready for initiation. If you’ve found your way here I suspect you are ready for an initiation. In shamanic traditions, initiations involve a death-rebirth ritual. It’s very intense and something that the modern spiritual community often bypasses or treats as metaphor. Sure, it is that, but when you’re in it, you’re dying. Really. I’ve done this before and it was intense.

If you’re contemplating suicide, I encourage you to consider that perhaps this version of you needs to spiritually die in order to allow the new version of you to live, much like the pheonix.

Our culture has lost the art of initiation, but it is there in every one of our roots. Ancient cultures (and modern indigenous cultures) still have this wisdom. We still know the path through the darkness.

If you are ready for initiation, ready to be burned alive so that the parts of you that are no longer viable are immolated and the new you can step forward, let’s talk. Or maybe you are deeply suicidal and have not been able to find help. My spiritual coaching is for those who know that gaslighting themselves into staying is not the answer.

Let’s talk. Get in touch and we can talk about how my coaching works and how we can walk together through these initiations and face these monsters of yours. Let’s turn these monsters into the dragons you ride into battle.

All you need to do is take the first step and get in touch.