I don t want to be here anymore

You might be feeling tired more often, be feeling emotional, and you might not want to do the things that you usually enjoy right now.

Struggling to cope with everyday life doesn’t look or feel the same in everyone. We can’t generalise about how it'll make you feel or act.

Samaritans are here to listen. You can call us on 116 123, email us at [email protected] or write us a letter.

You don’t have to feel suicidal to get in touch. Only 1 person in 5 who calls Samaritans says that they feel suicidal.

Thank you for your kind words. But i really am at the end [moderated] and i really don't see no way out of my predicament. I feel that life has passed me by. Whilst everyone else my age has girlfriends, getting married, have children and are going places with they're lives and it absolutely kills me inside when i see all these things in life i could be doing but because of my financial and mental situation i am just wasting away. I think if anything good were to happen to me it would have happened by now. I'd really just rather not be here. I'm not meant for this world, no one likes me and wants anything to do with me. I try to make friends etc but as soon as i open my mouth and people hear my accent and can see that i am not english they want nothing to do with me and it makes me very upset. Think i should just accept that no one wants anything to do with an ugly poor loser like myself. Everyone should have some form of motivation, some sort of goal that makes them get out of bed in the morning, but everything i had was taken away from me so there seems no point anymore. I just wish i was dead

Lostgal I am so so sorry that you are having such a crap time. I suffer from severe intermittent depression, and so I know the horror of his illness. You do sound like you have given up on everything, meds and "talking" therapy. Do you have any idea of the root of your depression. Did it start with PND by any chance. What were you like befor having children and your life changing so much. Sorry to ask so many questions.

I spent 3 months on a psych ward in 2010 after a 2nd major depressive episode and I was suprised to see that patients were having ECT. I thought it was something that was buried in the past, and remember the awful clips we saw of patients violently shaking. I talked to a Dr on the ward about this and he said ECT was nothing like that now, patients were sedated and had no memory of anything happening. I certainly saw them come back to the ward and maybe be a bit sleepy for an hour or so but that's all.

This Dr told me that ECT was a very effective treatment for drug resistant depression and had no adverse effects in the long term. He said that he would not hesitate to have this treatment if he suffered mental illness that was drug resistant. He told me his father (also a DR) had a psychiatric history but controlled by drugs, so he might well inherit the illness, so he was talking about a probability rather than a possibility.

I have not fully recovered from my 2nd episode and can have several days in a row where I am useless, cry most of the time and generally want to die, and no one can understand how it feels unless they have experienced it.

Not sure what I am saying really and I hope you aren't distressed at the thought of my mentioning ECT. I notice you mention lost dreams and disappointment and jealousy - do you know what has given rise to these feelings - is it a feeling of being "trapped" in a cramped flat with 2 small children. Some of your emotions sound like anxiety to be honest, which of course means fear, fear of the future, and you are talking of being poor in old age, which is a long long way ahead. I'm sure you know that these negative automatic thoughts can lead you into a downward spiral and of course make everything worse.

Do you have any RL support?

Sending warm wishes and hope you can hold on to the fact that there will be brighter times ahead......

I typed this into Google a year ago, my hands shaking as I questioned what I meant. I didn’t want to be alive or exist anymore. But at the same time, I didn’t quite want to die.

I felt selfish as I typed it, thinking about all of the people who had been suicidal, worrying that I was being disrespectful to those who had actually lost their lives that way. I also wondered whether I was just being dramatic.

But I pressed enter anyway, desperate to find an answer for what I was feeling. To my surprise, I was met with search after search of the exact same question.

“I don’t want to die, I just don’t want to exist,” read one.

“I’m suicidal but I don’t want to die,” read another.

And then I realized: I’m not being silly. I’m not being stupid or melodramatic or attention-seeking. There were so many other people feeling the exact same way. And for the first time, I didn’t feel quite so alone.

Help is out there

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, help is out there. Reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988. If someone is at immediate risk of self-harm, call a trusted family member or friend or try 911 or your local emergency number. Stay with the person until help arrives.

But I still felt what I felt. I felt distant from the world and from myself; my life felt almost as though it were on autopilot.

I was aware of my existence, but I wasn’t really experiencing it. It felt like I had become separate from my own self, as though a part of me was just watching my body go through the motions. Daily routines like getting up, making the bed, and working the day away felt almost mechanical. I was in a toxic relationship and heavily depressed.

My life had become repetitive and, in many ways, unbearable.

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And I questioned what the point in that was, exactly. Why continue living if I didn’t actually feel like I was alive?

I started to imagine what people’s lives would be like without me in it. I wondered what would happen after I died. I was bombarded with intrusive thoughts, suicidal feelings, urges to hurt myself, and feelings of despair.

But there was one thing contradicting that: I was scared to die.

So many questions would run through my head when I thought about actually ending my life.

What if I attempted to kill myself and it went wrong? What if it went right, but in the last few moments of my life I realized I had made a mistake and regretted it? What exactly happens after I die? What happens to the people around me? Could I do that to my family? Would people miss me?

And these questions would eventually lead me to the question, do I really want to die?

The answer, deep down, was no. And so I held on to that to keep me going, that little glimmer of uncertainty every time I thought about ending my life. If that tiny bit of unease was still there, there was a chance I’d be making the wrong decision.

There was a chance that a part of me thought that things could get better.

But it wasn’t going to be easy. Things had been going downhill for a long time. I had been suffering with severe anxiety caused by PTSD for several months, which had escalated to daily panic attacks. I experienced a constant feeling of dread in my stomach, tension headaches, body tremors, and nausea.

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This had been taking over my life for so long until, all of a sudden, I snapped.

That’s when everything went numb. It was a huge turning point, going from feeling everything at once to feeling nothing at all.

And, in all honesty, I think the nothingness was worse. The nothingness, combined with the same daily routine and toxic relationship, made my life feel utterly worthless. At the end of my rope, I turned to Google. No one ever really explained how to cope with suicidal ideation, particularly when you don’t really want to die.

Scrolling through post after post, I realized that actually, a lot of people understood. A lot of people knew what it was like to not want to be here anymore but not want to die.

We had all typed in the question with one expectation: answers. And answers meant we wanted to know what to do with our feelings instead of ending our lives.

Realizing this gave me hope. It told me that if these people, like me, were still here — despite feeling all the same feelings — I could stay, too.

And maybe, I hoped, that meant that deep down, we all wanted to hold on to see if things could get better. And that we could.

My mind had been clouded by the anxiety, despair, monotony, and a relationship that was slowly destroying me. And because I had felt so low, so numb and empty, I hadn’t actually taken a step aside to really and truly look at this. To look at how things could get better if I attempted to make changes.

The reason I thought I was just existing was because I really was. I was miserable and I was stuck. But I hadn’t picked apart my life to realize why.

With time, I felt like I was living again, and most importantly, that I had and have a life worth living.

I can’t say that in one day everything changed, because it didn’t. But I did start to make changes. I started to see a therapist, who helped me gain some perspective. My toxic relationship ended. I was devastated about it, but things improved so quickly as I started to exercise my independence.

Yes, I still got up every morning and made the bed, but the rest of the day would be at my hands, and slowly but surely, that started to excite me. I think a huge part of feeling as though I was just some form of existence was because my life was so predictable. Now that that had been taken away, everything seemed new and exciting.

With time, I felt like I was living again, and most importantly, that I had and have a life worth living.

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I still suffer with mental illness. There are still bad days, and I know there always will be.

But knowing that I got through this truly difficult time in my life gives me the motivation to get through any other bad moments again. It’s given me the strength and determination to carry on.

And despite the way I was feeling at the time, I’m so glad I Googled that question. I’m so glad I realized I wasn’t alone. And I’m so glad I trusted that unease when it came to the idea of taking my own life. Because that unease led me to living a life I’m actually happy to be living.

What I want you to know — especially if, like me, you found yourself here through a Google search or a headline that caught your attention at the right time — is this: No matter how lonely or awful you feel, please know that you’re not alone.

I’m not going to tell you it isn’t a horrible, scary feeling. I know that better than most. But I promise you things can and often do get better. You just have to hold on to that doubt, however small it might be. That doubt is there for a reason: There’s an important part of you that knows your life isn’t over yet.

And speaking from experience, I can assure you that small, nagging feeling is telling you the truth. There’s a future you who will be so glad you listened.

Article originally appeared on June 17, 2019 on Bezzy’s sister site, Healthline. Last updated on June 18, 2019.