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The first time I had a suicidal thought I was in 4th grade. That means I would have been 9 or 10. The following blog entry doesn’t have all that much to do with pedophilia directly, but rather with having suicidal thoughts and feelings vs being actually suicidal, which I contend aren’t always necessarily the same thing. I haven’t touched this blog in quite a while but this is something I’ve been thinking about lately and I thought this might be a good place to bounce some of my thoughts off other people and see what others think.
So, the first time I had a suicidal thought I was in 4th grade. That means I would have been 9 or 10. I don’t think I was suicidal in an over-all sense at the time but I was definitely miserable and for the first time in my life it occurred to me that perhaps death may be the only way to escape my misery. Most of my misery at that point had to do with school, where I was constantly bullied and more or less had no friends. Also I just hated school in general, hated church, didn’t like most other kids and was tremendously bored by most everything. There was also some CSA taking place at the hands of older kids in my neighborhood but I don’t think that factored in to my early suicide ideation much, oddly enough.
Sixth grade was the first time I was what I would think of as genuinely suicidal, mostly for the same reasons. At that point I truly did not want to go on living most of the time and fantasized about suicide a lot. After Sixth grade I moved to a different school and things got a little better for a time. Then, in the later part of my eighth grade year, the attraction to younger boys started to develop, and the suicidal downward spiral that sent me into would last into my early 20’s. Not sure how the fuck I survived it sometimes to be honest.
Now I’m 44 and in the last two decades I’ve been suicidal on and off. As an adult the suicidal periods I’ve gone through haven’t had quite as much to do with my pedophilic issues but they always at least play a part. Sometimes I think being an exclusive pedophile and having to deal with everything that comes with it just makes everything else harder, but I digress.
My last suicidal period ended only about a year ago. That was a pretty bad one and had gone on for several years. In fact, I had promised myself that if things didn’t get better I was definitely not going to live to turn 50 because I was going to end it before then. I’d just have to find the right time and the right method. It couldn’t be anything messy or anything that put anyone else in danger. Also, I was determined that if and when I did end it, it would have to be in such a way that guaranteed it would not be my parents or anyone else who cared about me that would find my body. I had given it a lot of careful thought.
The good news is, I’m in a better place now. I still have my rough days and I still have times when my head goes to dark places where thoughts of self harm and suicide barge in, but in an over-all sense I’m doing pretty well, for me.
That brings me to what I’m really here to post about. I was having this discussion with a friend of mine who I’m out to recently and I told him that I’m not suicidal anymore but that I do still have suicidal thoughts frequently. He contended that having suicidal thoughts meant I was still suicidal. I argued that being suicidal means you truly do not want to go on living and really do want to kill yourself. The suicidal thoughts I have now I likened to the temporary urge one might get to punch a wall when they’re angry. The urge pops up out of anger, then the person having the urge has to tell themselves not to punch the wall because they’ll only hurt their hand. Then they push the thought of punching the wall away from their mind and move on. They don’t live in a constant or nearly constant state of wanting to punch walls.
In that regard, I still have suicidal thoughts every single day, multiple times a day, but that’s all they are. Temporary flashes of anger and frustration with myself and with my life that my brain deals with by having a suicidal thought. However, when I have those suicidal thoughts in a non suicidal period, I calm myself, push the thought away, and move on with my day. I do not want to end my life to escape misery in an over-all sense.
At this point in my life, I think I’ve been genuinely suicidal enough that having a suicidal thought is just my brain’s default way of dealing with things that make me angry, frustrated or unhappy and I don’t think I’ll ever not have suicidal thoughts because they just come too easily to me. However, if I’m doing ok in an over-all sense and momentary suicidal thoughts are all I’m having without being actually suicidal, I think I’m doing pretty well. Again, for me. Oh, and these days those suicidal thoughts aren’t usually centered around my pedophilia. Sometimes, but not usually.
Anyway, perhaps someone else out there has some insight and can speak to this. Am I right that having even frequent suicidal thoughts doesn’t necessarily make one suicidal if they aren’t seriously contemplating suicide? Or, am I just so goddamn fucked up that I have suicidal thoughts all the time and think things are just cool? I’m asking because when I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone else say “I have suicidal thoughts but I’m not suicidal” before. Is this unique to me or are there others out there? Maybe with this entry I’ll find out. | |
