That's a question I've been asking myself quite a bit over the last few months, actually. I haven't been able to come up with a good answer until really just now. I have managed to keep myself out of a mental hospital since April, which honestly, is pretty good for me. That's just about exactly 6 months. That's the longest I've been unhospitalized since I started being hospitalized last January, given that between last January (2014) and April (2015) I was hospitalized 15 times. That doesn't count the two different crisis centers I visited several times last spring, either. My point is, that by that one objective measure, I'm really doing quite well.
The problem, of course, is that I'm not. I did better for a bit after I jumped off that bridge. But almost as soon as I came home from my parents' house I started to crash. Or a bit before that, to be honest. In some ways, I came home so that I could crash. And I did. Hard. I made suicide plans and was not very far at all from implementing them. I only held off because I was persuaded to try therapy again. So I did. And it's not that it was useless, it's just that it didn't help. To be more accurate, I met with the new therapist three times, then he went on vacation for three weeks and by the time he came back, the government had fucked up my insurance again and he's no longer covered. I could fix it, of course. The problem is I don't care.
Which brings me back to the title of this post. Exactly why am I still alive? Because I don't care enough not to be. I was reading a book tonight, with a suicidal main character. Partway through I paused to consider that maybe that might not be the best reading material, but then I shrugged. Maybe the book would trigger something within me, maybe it would push me over the edge and back into that freefall that led to fifteen hospitalizations in sixteen months. Maybe it wouldn't, but the point is that I didn't particularly care either way. I still don't, so if it pushed me, it was just enough to realize why nothing else has pushed me over the brink yet. You see, the suicidal character in my book had will. He had determination. He had a large chunk of guilt he was trying desperately to relieve by paying the ultimate price. He had a reason to die. He was utterly and completely convinced that his death would be the best thing not only for him but for everyone else, as well.
I don't have those things. In the past, perhaps. It certainly took an iron will to step over the railing of that bridge. And then to wade out of the river once I realized it hadn't worked, instead of just staying there forever, which was my first choice. I definitely had the determination to stop feeling like I was feeling, even if it meant (and I was convinced it meant, had to mean) my death. And I was utterly and completely convinced that death would be the best thing for me. Only one of those things is true now. I still know that death is the only thing for me. There is nothing else, no hope, despite what I may have written on Tumblr. But I have no will, no determination. Certainly no guilt that would be alleviated by dying. I have nothing at all, and that is the problem.
You see, I know I'm not getting better, will never get better. I've accepted that, as difficult as it is. The problem is that I'm not getting worse at the moment, either. Why is that a problem? Because while I'm in this stagnant mindset, I do nothing. I dislike doing nothing. I was going to say I hate doing nothing, but then I stopped and realized I don't feel strongly enough about anything to justify a word like hate. I am too depressed to make me able to do anything, and that includes killing myself. So I haven't tried, not in six months. It's only been about three months since I stopped caring, and sometimes I muster up enough energy to wonder why that is, before deciding it doesn't matter anyway.
Exactly why am I still alive? Eh. Who cares.
