Content Warning: This post contains references to death/dying, passive suicidal ideation, and active suicidal ideation.

Everything is perfect. Perfect partner, perfect job, perfect house, bright future, lots of smiles and happiness. What’s wrong with you? Why do you want to die?

This was my thought process over and over again everyday, multiple times per day, for a month. I had fallen in love, gotten engaged, left an incredibly toxic job and moved from a city where I had no ties to a place my fiancé and I had vacationed and loved, landed my dream job, lived in an apartment with a view of water, and was making more money than I ever had before. Literally, everything was perfect. And yet, over and over again my brain told me “you want to die”.

I’ve dealt with passive suicidal ideation my entire life. In some stages of my life, it was a minor inconvenience that I always managed to turn into a joke. Seriously, I had a “I joked about my mortality” jar and when I would make a joke out of my passive suicidal ideation, my fiancé would just shake his head and say “Jar”. The jokes were seemingly harmless.

“What are you going to do in the event of the apocalypse?” Die. Who wants to live without running water? No shower, no deal.

“Why would you go skydiving? What if your parachute doesn’t open and you plummet to your death?” Well, then, I guess it’ll only be a problem for approximately 20 seconds.

“What do you think happens after death?” Nothing better happen after death because if I die and still have to have some sort of consciousness in the hellscape of reality, I’m gonna be pissed.

“Happy birthday! How old are you now?” Honestly about five years older than I ever thought I would be and I’m not very happy about that.

I was never actively suicidal. I never self-harmed or thought of self-harming. I just know from a very young age, I took a look around at the world, my circumstances, and the possibilities of my future and thought; nah, no thanks. Don’t want.

So now that everything was perfect, why was my passive suicidal ideation deciding to become such a thorn in my side? Perhaps I’ll never truly know, unless there is an afterlife and I get the chance to ask some omnipotent creator to shed some light on the B.S. in my brain. But I have some theories.

1. Everything was NOT perfect. Yes, I had everything I could have ever imagined I wanted. But everyday on the news was a story of suffering. Mass shootings, wildfires, political corruption. Human beings doing horrible things to other human beings. So even though my circumstances had changed, the things outside of my control had not and those things still affected my emotions.
2. I had gotten everything I had ever wanted. Now what? Now what do I need to do? Where do I go from here? Is this it? Is it going to be Leave-It-To-Beaver-Groundhog-Day everyday for the rest of my life? If my life was a checklist, I was nearing the end and that is literally terrifying. If there’s no “what’s next” my brain says “that’s it, we’re all done”. Once you get absolutely everything you want, you can either set new goals or be done. And I was tired of fighting.
3. I hadn’t processed enough of what had happened while I was in survival mode, and now I didn’t want to deal with it. Let’s be real, my brain is an a-hole, but it kinda knows what it’s doing. My filing cabinet of trauma that I had let get stuffed full and compartmentalized while I worked on other things (like surviving and achieving my goals) was now the only thing left in my brain-house. And my brain was desperately trying to keep it hidden. Large caution signs and tape all around it as the demons shook and scratched and threatened to burst forward. And it was the last thing we wanted to let out.
4. I hadn’t changed. That’s obviously not completely true, everyone changes to some degree. And with all the changes I had just made, of course I changed to some extent. But I couldn’t change the things that happened to me. I couldn’t change my past. I could run away to ten different countries and five different states, but none of that was going to heal me. And since I had finally made it to my forever home with my forever person and my forever job, it was time to acknowledge those things. It was time to stop running and start living, but in order to get busy living I had to deal with the things that were holding me back and keeping me down.

The passive suicidal ideation got so bad that I started getting really scared. My fiancé was getting scared. I was very clearly struggling but I couldn’t even bring myself to verbalize what was going through my head. I made a deal with myself: you can’t check out until you do all the things you’ve never tried. The hope was that somewhere in trying all of these silly little hobbies, I would find a coping skill or two, or that these pervasive thoughts would go away. But I couldn’t just try something once, I had to try it until I felt I had mastered it. At first I thought it was silly and I would find myself trying to talk myself out of these things. But I knew my life was on the line, and I owed it to myself to try anything.

A few things I would like to mention first: If you are actively suicidal, please reach out for help. I want you here and the world wants you here. If this post does not help you in any way, do not give up; you owe it to yourself to read every blog, article, book, and anything that could even remotely have the help that you are looking for. This is not going to be a cure for what you are going through; as far as I know there is no cure. But when our lives are on the line, we deserve to try everything. This can include therapy in conjunction with medication. There is nothing wrong with taking medication to survive (diabetics do it all the time) and while it is not on my Top 5, it is somewhere on my list. I just haven’t gotten there yet.

1. Journaling. There were plenty of times in my life that I had picked up a notebook, written down my feelings, and then put it away for months or sometimes years. This time, I picked up a notebook, dated the pages, and wrote out prompts I gathered from various different lists on Pinterest. I wrote in it everyday for a whole month, every single morning. Simply answering the prompts. This forced me to acknowledge a few things I did not want to, and learn a bit about myself that I had previously ignored in favor of survival. Overall this helped me a lot. Some prompts I chose, I already knew the answers to and others were meant to challenge me, to make me write down the things I didn’t want to say out loud.
2. Hiking. I hated hiking. I had done enough ruck marches in the Army to know that hiking was not the hobby for me. I also felt like I didn’t have the energy to spend it on silly little walks in the woods. Still, research shows that exercise, nature, and sunlight are supposedly good for you. So I had to try it and with support from a wonderful fiancé, we had some really fun hikes. We bonded over finding beautiful places. We bonded over looking at the weird little mushrooms that grow in random spots. And part of me wanted to hate it but the other part of me kept reminding myself that I wanted to do this, because I needed to do this, because my life was on the line.
3. Running. I used to love running, but I now have a broken body that prevents me from being the runner I once was. Still, endorphins plus pushing myself helped. If I was setting running goals, that meant I had something to look forward to and something to add to my life checklist. Can’t check out before the checklist is complete.
4. Yoga. I had gone to a yoga class early in the morning years before this and halfway through it realized my pants were on inside out. I did not go back. Still, I have this yoga mat collecting dust and in the comfort of my own home, does it really matter if I do all the moves *perfectly*. No, no it doesn’t. Yoga made me feel beautiful; it gave me something to set goals for, celebrate, and it grounded and calmed me. Even if you don’t think it’s for you, how do you know if you don’t give it a shot?
5. Self-care. How often can I give myself a manicure? Several times a week, actually. How often can I do a chlorophyll face mask that smells like plant guts but makes my face all glow-y? As often as I want, I’m the captain of this ship. Pedicure? Sure. I have time. The only things I’m doing is avoiding thinking about dying and thinking about dying, I can distract myself with taking a bath. Pros: I looked better and felt prettier than ever before. Cons: spending my energy on myself was uncomfortable at first.

This list is ongoing. There are still things I haven’t tried. But it was at this point of doing all these things simultaneously throughout the span of a couple of months that I realized the voice was quieter. Not fully gone, but quiet enough that I could function. I could appreciate what I had again. I could make goals and set plans for the future because I would be here. This list may not be for you; in fact, I would be surprised if this exact combination works for a lot of people. This isn’t a magic pill or recipe to be copied or some sort of cure. The point is for you to make your own list, and add things to it as you experience new things. Who knows if taking daily walks will lead you to running The Boston Marathon or climbing Mt. Everest? Who knows if journaling daily will turn you into a New York Times Best Selling Author? Who knows if yoga will unlock the secret to the universe? We should find out, together.

P.S. Other things on my list include

6. Reading all the books on my “To Be Read” list. Should take about 25 years.

7. Watching every movie ever made. Can you imagine?

8. Running a marathon. With my limitations this should take me years to train for.

9. Becoming a millionaire. I’m currently in debt so like, this is gonna take the rest of my life.

10. Surfing. Who doesn’t want to be Point Break? Or Into the Blue? Come on. You know you wanna.

11. Visiting the Seven Wonders. There’s still seven right? Or is there eight now? I’m gonna see them all. Could take a while.

12. Publishing a book. What’s it going to be about? Don’t know. What is it going to be called? Don’t know. What genre? No idea. I’ve got some work to do.

13. Celebrate my 50th anniversary with my husband. I wanna do something really fun but I’ll be like 79 so we’ll see what I’m up for then.

14. Getting a pug. Have always wanted one but we currently have three pets so it’s going to be a while.

15. Telling everyone who has ever been mean to me to shove it up their ass. And honestly, people get added to this list more and more as time goes on so will I ever be truly finished? Unclear but it’s a fun goal.