Passive Ideation: A Musing on Death
We all hold back saying things because we are afraid of how people might react. And that holding back is not healthy. Because of that things are allowed to fester and grow in the dark, becoming literal and metaphorical cancers in our bodies and societies. There are so many things that would be better in our world if we were able to talk about them more openly, and death is one of them. Death is a topic that I have done a lot of thinking about, and a lot of writing around, but I’ve held most of that stuff back, mostly out of a fear of scaring the people closest to me. It’s one of many things that I have written about and then shoved somewhere no one can read, not daring to think about whatever soul might end up going through my belongings after my death.
I once heard what I believe is a Buddhist proverb about contemplating death every day, and I don’t do it every day, but I do it quite a lot. It’s been about fifteen years since I came across that proverb, and in all that time one thing I rarely think about is who I will leave behind. My thoughts do not extend to what might happen to them when my life ends. Often I am thinking of the idea of death in general, as an abstract concept that comes for all of us eventually. But when contemplating that it isn’t too far a leap to the end of one’s own life. I tend to think of my own death at mundane times, many of which happen while I’m driving. I used to take a route frequently that included part of a road that went up a steep incline. I would often think about how easy it would be to simply not turn the wheel to match the curve of the road and fly off of the cliff. I think similar things sometimes when driving on other roads, how easy it would be to just drift into the oncoming traffic. That particular thought is usually not only followed by an odd shame that is perhaps rooted in the Puritanism that shaped so much of this country, and that view that suicide is a sin against nature, but also an overwhelming guilt at the mere thought of putting another human being in danger.
This does lead to a very charged word that is most likely to elicit alarm if certain family or friends read this. As someone who deals with depression I have thought about suicide a lot. Language is important here. Contemplating suicide has a much different connotation than thinking about suicide does. The former is clinical, with the flashing lights of a red flag and the threats of institutionalization. The latter has a more academic sheen to it. For many years I have thought that simply having the option is one thing that keeps me from doing it. Knowing that I could end my life at any time, that the option is always there, helps me to keep going even in the darkest times. Then there is the gray area between contemplating and thinking. That is where I tended to wander in the darker moments of my depression dips as I called them, never straying too far from the shore of thinking into the open waters of contemplation. The idea was always there, even at the times when I pulled myself back and wandered onto completely dry land again. That worked for years, until I finally got swept out to sea.
I looked up the term “passive suicidal ideation,” just to get a definition, because with hindsight that is where I ended up after the undertow that lurked in my DNA finally caught me and dragged me further into the depths than I had ever been before. Most of the results on Google say something to the effect of “a wish to die, but with no plan on how.” The plan part gave me pause, because I have had a plan in place for years now. And I know in the context of the definition it’s more like a plan as in “set a date” and not in “know the preferential methodology,” but it still made me question just how passive it was at the time. My unplanned plan was pretty simple. No cutting of things; I can barely handle a needle for a vaccine, let alone a knife doing any damage to me. Gunshot was never on the list either, although as a closeted gay teen who grew up in a house with plenty of guns, the locations of which were not hidden from me, statistics were not on my side there. Drowning was out, as I had too much pride around being a good swimmer for that. As for jumping, I never had access to any building tall enough to ensure more than serious injury, and can’t imagine the fall anyway. The idea of the space between the jump and the ground disturbed me, the way one could realize a mistake had been made, but be unable to change the outcome… that idea is too much. Hanging was clearly out for the same reason. No, my method has always been carbon monoxide poisoning.
In the absence of a garage I always thought a garden hose in the exhaust pipe with some duct tape would be the way to go. That was the unplanned plan, which I believe came from an episode of CSI, so maybe parents yelling about violence in television have a point. It honestly sounded nice from what I have heard of such things; put on some of my favorite music and basically drift off to sleep. Less mess than some methods, and without the consciousness of some of the others, it always seemed ideal to me. The part that I find funny? I now drive a hybrid, which I’m sure would still be doable, but not nearly as easy as it used to be.
Further complicating my relationship with the definition is the “wish to die” part. For me that lowest point was never really a desire to die, it was more like a lack of motivation to continue. Life and death were not really a conscious part of the equation; I rarely thought of it in terms of living. Perhaps that was because of the complete fog of depression that was I was in at the time. It is a difficult place to capture in words. It’s a feeling that will be familiar to some people and incomprehensible to others. I just did not want to continue living. As I described it to my therapist later “I wouldn’t shoot myself, but I don’t know how hard I would try to stop someone else shooting me.”
That sentence definitely falls into the “not wanting to scare loved ones” category. I suspect phone calls and “are you alive” texts from my mother will increase if she reads this. I am a long way from that darkest of days. I remember parts of it so clearly though. I went for a walk, just meandering along, my mind a buzz of the drone of exhaustion that seemed to permeate my bones in those days. I walked around the neighborhood for a while, and then came back to my stack of notebooks and did some writing. I could easily find what I wrote that day, flip through the pages of notebooks from that month, looking for the green ink I know I wrote in that day, though I don’t remember why, but I am honestly scared to read it back.
The funny thing is, later that day I had to go teach music lessons. I had to get in the car, drive a few miles, and sit in a room with young children, on the same day that I came closest to the point where not wanting to live would make the subtly monumental shift to “wish to die.” I honestly have laughed about that fact at various times. Who knows, maybe the “see you next week” I gave to my students at the end of their lessons is one thing that kept me here.
I’ve heard people say that those who commit suicide are selfish, and I don’t think that is fair. I know what it is like to not want to live, and I wouldn’t wish it upon anybody. When that criticism is leveled it is often in reference to the people left behind. I’m not saying that they aren’t hurt too. Death, as ubiquitous as it is, is a damaging force. It is easy for most people to say that the only victims of suicide are those who are left behind, attempting to pick up the pieces and live with the void that is now in their lives in the wake of their loved one’s death. Like so many things it is the unknown that can be the most powerful thing about this; not knowing if there was something you could have done or said to make the person who committed suicide change their mind. Saying there isn’t anything that could have been done surely doesn’t always help those people, however true it may be. Given that and our culture’s multitude of other attitudes about suicide, it is often hard to see that those who die by suicide, while being the perpetrator, are also victims themselves.
Other people sometimes say that people who commit suicide were weak, that they couldn’t handle the trials and tribulations that life throws at all of us. Unfortunately these critics are sometimes people like me, who have been to the depths and come back, as though labeling those people who did not make it back like we did as weak is necessary to proclaim our own strength for surviving. I find this criticism even less fair than the selfish one. Strength has nothing to do with it. The strongest people in this world get tired. Every strong body will eventually break down in some way, shape, or form. To have sympathy for those who fall victim to a physical illness like cancer or heart attack or stroke, but show none, or worse, contempt, for those who succumb to mental illness is only to perpetuate the problematic stigma of mental health in our society. Honestly, a need to dismiss or place blame on those who die by suicide is arguably selfish itself.
Like a lot of complicated concepts in life, there is no correct answer. Honestly, I don’t think there are even good questions around suicide. “Why?” is far too open and complicated a lot of the time. The very concept of death itself is already so much to even think about beginning to contemplate. Adding the complicating factor of the multilayered aspects of suicide is often too much for people to handle. Which makes sense; there are strong emotions raised around topics like this, and fear is one of the biggest. Being confronted by anyone’s mortality is difficult, because it forces us to confront our own. Which is why I see the wisdom in that idea of thinking about death every day. Familiarity with anything helps to tone down the fear of it.
In order to hopefully not completely scare my own loved ones I’ll end with this; I am here, living life fully at the moment, with no plans to even have plans to put my preferred methodology into action. I still have days on occasion when depression will weigh me down a bit, but it rarely goes beyond a lack of motivation to continue the tasks of that day. I try to approach myself with more grace than I used to, which I find helpful.
I don’t know what the future will bring. I could very well slip into that passive ideation again someday. All I know is that in this moment I am here, and want to continue being here, thinking about death, along with a multitude of other things, for many days to come.