How to NOT Kill Yourself

Depression and Intrusive Suicidal Thoughts

Trigger warning. 

Sometimes I stare at things for too long. My wrists… The big, sharp knife in the kitchen drawer. The bottle of Sniper in the corner. Sometimes the idea of me being sprawled across the floor in a lake of my blood is tempting. Sometimes, when I’m drained, I want to time it just right and walk into an oncoming car… a bus… a truck…

Sometimes jumping off a balcony is intriguing. It seems ideal.

Sometimes… I want to die.

And maybe in a warped way, that’s okay?

Just hear me out.

Photo by Alexandre Boucey on Unsplash

When I was younger, there were no voices in my head.

Now, I think I’m in an unending race to get back there. The problem is I do not think I will ever win the race. At some point, I would have to accept that it’s possible the voices in my head are here to stay. And I shall never get the privilege of a calm brain again.

Regardless of the chaos in my mind, born out of the craziness of the things that I’ve had to deal with in life, I’m a strong believer that happiness is a choice.

I have every reason to be a depressed and bitter person, but why choose that?

So even though I am clinically depressed, I still wake up every morning and choose to be happy. Because if I do not, I fear how much my mind would derail.

Suicidal Thoughts

Sometime in 2020, I scared my parents.

I woke up that morning and wrote down what I wanted to tell them. Or well, how I wanted to tell them. I do this a lot. Write down things I need to say when it’s an overwhelming situation.

I aimed to scare them into choicelessness. I called them and told them my then-husband and I were going to have to get a divorce because if we didn’t, one of these two things would happen - either I kill him, or he kills me.

I was going for shock value. I needed my parents to be so terrified that they had no compulsion to try to convince me to stay.

But there were also some truths to it. I was having thoughts of killing myself. I knew if I stayed longer in that marriage, it would inevitably happen.

So, me leaving was me running for my life.

My parents cut the call immediately, telling me they would call me back.

Shock value achieved.

My mother called me back, her voice heavily laced with fear and concern, asking if I was fine.

“Doyin, shey you will come home?”

“Are you sure you’re safe in that place?”

I refused to go home. I told her I was waiting out my iddah period and it was just a few weeks left. I should have listened to her. I should have gone home. I should have left.

But maybe it was better that I didn’t. Because my then-husband eventually hit me. And if the call to my parents did not envelop them with enough fear, his hitting me certainly did.

There was no way I was going back after being hit.

There was no coming back from that.

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The first time the thought of killing myself crossed my mind, it startled me. Thoughts like that were strangers to my mind. It felt intrusive.

I had sat in the house and let it ruminate through my mind, wondering why.

After two weeks of constantly wondering how the Sniper at the corner of the living room would taste, how much it would surely hurt my stomach, and how fast it would take for me to die, I decided I needed to tell someone.

The suicidal thoughts were scaring me.

I told my then-husband that I was depressed and that I had eyed the bottle of Sniper a bit too long.

He laughed.

Days later, I was in a family meeting with his mother and her friend, explaining why I thought killing myself was the solution to whatever it was I was dealing with. Being reminded not to “kill myself in his house.”

And somehow the conversation turned into one about making babies and seeing an infertility doctor.

That was the last time before now that I told people about my suicidal thoughts.

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It’s been a good number of years since that first thought of killing myself crossed my mind. But it still comes to me constantly. Unexpectedly. Intrusively.

I’d be putting away dishes and then I would pick out a knife and press it lightly along my wrist. With enough pressure to feel the blade almost drive into my skin. But not enough pressure that I bleed out.

Sometimes when I feel overwhelmed, I would stab myself with a blunt object. Not stab. Stabbing connotes force. Less of a violent sharp thrust and more of consistent pressure at the same spot. Usually with a pen. Pressing deep enough that I feel the pain but not deep enough that it breaks my skin.

It makes me focus on the physical pain. And it would help - momentarily. It would jolt me out of my emotional pain.

I have now learned that this is a coping mechanism. Self-harm or the idealization of it. Somewhere in my head, I would be so overwhelmed that I needed to distract myself from the gravity of my feelings and harming myself became a better solution than dealing with the heaviness.

But self-harm is bad. And it can get addictive. It’s a result of me not being able to process my negative emotions in a healthy way.

There are other things I do to get me out of suicidal thoughts or overwhelming feelings. But they are reactive and very involuntary. So, I shall not be talking about them here because even I avoid thinking about them after an episode.

Lord knows I really, really need to force myself back to therapy this year.

Happy People

The first person that I knew personally who spoke about his suicide attempt publicly was Yinka. I stumbled on Yinka’s photo one random day when I was scrolling through Instagram. The photo was captivating and I thought he was a model. He had the most stunning grey eyes which I later realized were brown. He was wearing contact lenses in that picture.

Later on, I would scroll up Yinka’s well-curated, aesthetically appealing page and I would see him write about the times he almost killed himself:

“All the times I tried to kill myself, I tried to drown.

At 8 it was a bathtub. At 16 it was a swimming pool.

On the morning of the day I turned 22, I walked the length of Akpehe road in Makurdi and ended up on the bridge over River Benue with tears spilling from my eyelids. As the sun yawned over the horizon, I made the decision to jump.”

He went on to say he had created a petition for the decriminalization of attempted suicide in Nigeria.

Comical. Nigeria is a funny place.

“Sorry o, but if you fail to kill yourself, you will sleep in prison.”

I was proud of him in a way you are proud of a stranger on the internet who knows nothing of your existence. I was proud of him for not killing himself and for putting out a petition to protect people who survived their suicide attempt.

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Many months later, it turned out Yinka knew of my existence. I met him at a friend’s house party and he recognized me as The Lagos Tourist.

I remember staring at him throughout the party and struggling to place this Yinka with the one I saw on Instagram. He was the life of the party. He made the craziest jokes, coordinating us as we played games. He danced a lot.

I could not put the highly energetic, life-of-the-party Yinka, side by side with the Yinka who almost killed himself.

This is ironic because the most asked question I get is, “How are you so happy?”

And I always respond with, “Because I choose to be. It doesn’t mean I don’t get sad or anxious or depressed.”

So, I knew happy people could be sad. I was a representation of that.

But in my mind, I had made an assumption that because Yinka was happy, it was strange that he had considered killing himself.

Or worse, he could not be truly happy. That his happiness must be a facade.

I did not give him the chance for a middle ground.

Which makes absolutely no sense because case in point - Here I am, a happy girl, writing about my suicidal thoughts.

But you should know this;

• Consistent happiness is a myth.

• Nobody is happy round the clock.

We often forget that happiness is a choice.

Happy people want to kill themselves too.

Suicide

Last year, someone who I had the beginnings of a friendship with killed himself. He was a happy person too and I did not know how to feel. I cried. But I did not feel like I cried enough. I was sad. But I did not think I was sad enough.

We weren’t at a point in friendship where his passing would have shattered the depth of my soul. And that made me feel guilty.

I felt like life just kept on happening. He had died and I had gone back home early from work. I was sad and couldn’t be productive.

The next day I took the day off. I played with Legos, I watched a movie and at some point, it hit me that I had momentarily forgotten my friend had passed.

I decided to take a walk down Ogudu road, all the way to Ojota. And Ojota had the effrontery to be boisterous as usual. My friend had died and the market was not still.

Buses were still calling for people to go to Ikorodu, to Yaba, to Maryland and Anthony. The market was still filled. Life continued.

I went back home and watched a movie. I began to move on too.

Days later I was overwhelmed by my guilt.

There was a feeling of inadequacy in my mourning.

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But it wasn’t just that. I felt a harsh realization that life goes on regardless of individual suffering.

When my friend passed, I found myself thinking more about my own suicidal thoughts. The idea that everyone would move on without much disturbance was unsettling. The buses at Ojota would still load, market women would continue selling their wares, and heaven would not fall because of my absence.

Life would carry on.

This meant that my suffering, while immense to me, was a small part of the larger human experience. It didn’t exactly invalidate my pain but placed it within a broader context, reminding me that just as the world moves on, I too could find ways to move forward.

The memory of my friend and my own contemplation of mortality made me determined to seek happiness, even in the face of overwhelming despair.

If you find yourself feeling similarly, remember that your feelings are valid and that reaching out for help is a sign of strength. There are people and resources out there that can offer support and understanding.

You're not alone in this, even if the world seems indifferent.

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If you were meant to meet with a friend for a work project and they never showed up, and then you called and called and called for two days straight and they did not pick up, at what point would you begin to panic?

I was supposed to meet up with him that day. We were new friends, and he was teaching me how to use Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects. It was a super crash course. I’ve always learned faster by doing, so we started out meeting at Shodex Garden twice a week, with him giving me designs to recreate.

It eventually progressed into a good friendship.

I knew things about his personal life—the things he struggled with, his awkward relationship with his dad, how he needed to fight to leave home. I knew he was struggling mentally, but I did not realize the enormity of it until the day he did not show up for our meeting.

I panicked. Then I told myself I was being paranoid, that I was probably overreacting. But my intuition told me I wasn’t.

So, I left him a bunch of messages telling him to let me know he was okay. I was worried. I did not know his house at this point, so I couldn’t just show up to see if he was fine. I called mutual friends—friends that linked us up when I told them I wanted someone to teach me art direction. They also hadn’t heard from him.

When he eventually replied to me, it was almost too late.

He had tried to kill himself.

I begged for his house address, and when I got there, I was scared. His voice sounded weak, like someone in the thick of sickness.

There was a smell in the room. It was vomit. The floor and the bed were stained with it. There were empty bottles of vodka at the door, and there were pills I couldn’t recognize scattered across the room.

He was on the bed, ragged out.

I sat at the base of his bed, opened my laptop, and started illustrating something. We didn’t talk. I offered him the cheap rice and chicken I had picked up from Chicken Republic. He ate a little and lay back down.

I sat there all day in fear, putting all my focus on the illustration on my laptop, just drawing, refusing to make him talk about the awkwardness in the room. The awkwardness of almost killing yourself.

When it started getting dark, I was scared to leave him.

I showed up at his door with food again the next morning, and his room was still a mess, so I cleaned it. We watched an animation and talked about what he was dealing with. We talked and talked and talked, and I realized he was extremely burnt out. He needed a break.

So, we wrote an email to his HR together, requesting extended time off.

I did not tell him I sometimes thought about killing myself.

I joked, "Who would teach me design if you killed yourself?" He laughed. This time, when it was dark and I was ready to leave, I wasn’t as scared as the previous day. The darkest was over.

Choosing Life

I’ve now realized I do not want to kill myself. In fact, I do not want to die. I romanticize dying in some moments because it seems like a solution to my problem at that moment. But if the underlying problem I’m dealing with is solved, dying is no longer appealing.

So, I do not want to die. I just want the hurting, the voices, and the panic attacks to stop. That’s the foundation of my suicidal thoughts. If they stop, I would stop wanting to kill myself.

That’s how I haven’t killed myself. That’s why I won’t kill myself.

I remind myself that I do not want to die. I just want to stop feeling like absolute crap.

And so I stop.

When I start to have intense suicidal thoughts, I pause and count.

• Five things I can see: my softbox, the fan in the corner, my box on the floor, a book I have yet to finish, my body spray on the bed from when I got dressed for work this morning.

• Five things I can hear: my sister in the kitchen downstairs, the clacking of my fingers on my keyboard as I type this, a low hum from the heating system, my brother-in-law talking, are those crickets outside my window? I’m not sure. The sound of the beads in my hair as I shake my head lightly from left to right.

It’s something I learned in therapy. It’s called the 54321 method, and it is a grounding exercise designed to manage acute stress and reduce anxiety. You are supposed to do 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste.

I always forget and do 5 of each. I also forget the order. Is it seeing that comes before hearing? Or touching comes first? That doesn’t matter because even though I don’t do it the “right” way, it always works. Before I know it, my brain veers from thoughts of killing myself.

I also do other things.

I force happiness into my mind by increasing my dopamine levels. I take long walks and make myself stay present in the moment. I stare at flowers and search for the birds. I observe people.

I listen to Afrobeats and Fuji music and I dance. I watch a happy movie. I draw. I call a friend, and we talk on the phone for hours.

I do things that make me realize my life is worth living and my life is honestly not that bad.

I might carry my trauma around like an extra limb, but I’m way more than the things I’ve been through.

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But it’s easier said than done.

In moments when I’m feeling an overwhelming urge to end it all, it’s hard to think straight. My hands do this involuntary movement where they clench tightly, and sometimes all I can focus on is unclenching them while tears flow down my face.

Every now and then, I go and sit in the darkness of my wardrobe because I feel safe in an enclosure when I’m struggling in my mind. I sit there, rock myself, and cry. When I had a cat, it would come sit with me, purring, tapping me as if asking, “Are you fine, mama?”

I cannot say that I have the answers. What I can say, though, is that every time I stare too long at a knife or get the urge to jump in front of a bus, I pause. I force myself to pause and take a deep breath. I remind myself I do not want to die. I do not want to kill myself. I’m just extremely exhausted and could use a good break from life.

I write. I do the things I love, and I surround myself with goodness until it balances out the darkness.

I feel like I’m leaving you with nothing. I’m obviously not licensed to give any form of mental health advice. When I chose to write today’s story, I thought I would be writing something profound, something people would relate to and see a solution in.

But as I reach the end, I realize I do not have the answers.

Even I am just reacting to the state of my current mind. I can only try.

If you google “How to not kill yourself,” odds are that the first thing on the page says, “Help is available,” and a suicide crisis helpline is staring back at you.

“Help is available.” “Get help.”

That’s what everyone says. Go to therapy. Talk to someone.

But what do you do in the interim before you get “help”?

Especially when “help” is not cheap?

You wake up every day, and you choose to be happy no matter how hard it is.

You surround yourself with things and people that make you happy, and you milk it.

You refuse to choose to die.

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My mother believes that there are things that shouldn’t be shared on the internet. I believe it too. But we have different thresholds. She has a strong fear of how people can use the information they have about you against you, and I don’t.

Funny enough, I don’t think my mother is being paranoid about this. I’m a content creator. I’ve seen how baring myself to the public can be harmful. The difference between my mother and me is that I do not care how people perceive me. What people think about me is their business.

I only care about how a few people see me - my family, my close friends, my lover. If a stranger on the internet uses my vulnerability against me, the sun will still rise the next day. It’s inconsequential. And so, I can write about things that are socially deemed oversharing.

Like the fact that I sometimes think to unalive myself.

“Unalive”… Why do we use that word?

It feels like softening the gravity of the word “suicide”.

I believe in writing about things firstly because I need to let it out. I need to reflect. I write for myself, and it helps me understand who I am better.

But I also enjoy writing because I love the idea that there is somewhere out there who can relate. Who has a similar story to mine and would feel some sense of comfort when they read from me. That is why I wrote this today.

My mother thinks instead of a newsletter, I should write a book. To her a newsletter feels like oversharing, a book doesn’t. I don’t see the difference except a book brings the pressure of sales. A newsletter is just me writing because I want to. It’s me writing because I care.

My mother also feels things too much. Just like myself. And so if she reads this, it would break her. I have momentarily taken her out of my subscriber list. I would remove her from viewing my stories on the day I post. I’m doing everything within my power so she doesn’t read this.

If you are reading this and you are somehow affiliated with my family, do not message my mother or my siblings. Do not go “Oh, your sister is so strong for talking about this.”

In other news, kindly respect my boundaries.

Nobody wants to read about their loved one romanticizing suicide.

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If you are in Canada, I might be able to get you some help. I started working as a Communications Coordinator for an organization that offers free mental health support for young people ages 11-25. You should check them out here - their website, or here - their Instagram page.

If you don’t need mental health support, but knows someone who does, then do me a favour and share those links with them. You never know. You just might be saving someone.

Also, if you just finished reading this and you have suicidal thoughts, and you need a stranger on the internet to just listen to you, send me a DM. Or an email. I would be happy to talk.

And once again, thank you so much for reading.

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