How to survive not wanting to survive: World Suicide Prevention Day

Written By leanne Maskell

WARNING: this post goes into detail about suicide and I strongly recommend you ensure you are feeling in a strong place mentally to read this, or having the right support around you. For people who know me personally, you may want to skip this one. Though it does have a happy ending - I'm still here!

'It's safe to feel your feelings', my therapist told me last week, after I'd figured out the Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria I experience links to repressing 99% of them.

Usually, I would have nodded politely and promised to get right on it. However, my ADHD got there first.

'Actually, what if it's not safe to feel my feelings, because what if I kill myself?'

'Have you ever felt suicidal before?'

This is the point where I'd usually say, 'ohhh kind of slightly once ish but NOT NOW! Now I'm FINE!' But my ADHD brain was on fire. Here's my story of surviving not wanting to survive, LinkedIn, in what may be the most un-work-related-LinkedIn-post-ever. Though as Aishwarya Venkatachalam seems to have taken her own life in the EY offices last week, maybe not.

There seems to be specific language around suicide. 'Are you feeling suicidal right now?' 'Have you made a plan?' The narrative seems to suggest it's a one-off experience, like deciding to go on holiday. The fear and shame it immediately invokes in us all is silencing. It can stop us from answering honestly or seeking help. It can feel impossible to talk about, because it's so stigmatizing.

Even writing this, I'm worried about the 'suicide contagion' policy where the media doesn't go into details when reporting suicide so people don't imitate it. I know how ferociously I searched for this information, but I also know how not seeing any conversations about lived experiences (literally) made me feel so alone. If we don't have the conversations openly, people will still find what they want to find - just in the darkest corners of the internet.

After I graduated from university, my life fell apart. I couldn't stop making impulsive decisions, like moving out of my house, breaking up with my boyfriend of 5 years, starting and stopping jobs, and booking flights to move to the other side of the world (repeatedly, as I constantly changed my mind. A VERY expensive habit.)

Within a year, I was sitting by the front door crying, thinking about how to end my life. This was a scary thought to have, which obviously made me even more scared - and is how I think people end their life. The thoughts get scarier and scarier, as you convince yourself there's something seriously wrong with you, but you can't tell anyone about it otherwise they will freak the hell out and you're not like, actually going to kill yourself. You just want to. So you turn to Google, which gives you an exciting menu of disorders and conditions to choose from.

I believed I'd hit 'rock bottom' (ahh. How wrong I was). So I did the ultimate most embarrassing thing I could think of, and went to see... a THERAPIST. She refused to confirm my multiple self-diagnoses, because apparently they can only 'listen'. I couldn't figure out what the point was: I could pay £75 to speak to a wall. Besides, by that point I'd felt relatively better, so I decided to forget it and move to Australia, where I could reinvent myself as a non-crazy person.

The taxi-driver from the airport pointed out a beauty spot where people kill themselves, which tattooed itself into my brain for safe-keeping, but I thought my life would be perfect now. Sydney is achingly beautiful, and I was immediately shooting for top brands on Bondi Beach, which meant I could afford the $30 avocado and feta toast. People were friendly, like the girl on the beach who invited me to a party on her boyfriend's super-yacht which had just won the Sydney to Hobart race. It was literally like living in an Instagram filter.

So when I suddenly developed a rash all over my body one day, I freaked out. The doctor said it was stress, even though I didn't feel stressed at all. I was living my dream life! Then I realised that actually maybe I wasn't as happy as I thought I was. When I wasn't drunk, I had a nagging anxiety about what the hell I was going to do when my visa ran out. How was I ever going to get a real job? I could never return to the mess I'd left behind me, so what would I do next?

I can't remember exactly how it happened, but suddenly my default daily narrative went from 'what the hell am I going to do with my life?' to 'how the hell can I end my life?'

Maybe it's ADHD, but this was like having a radio stuck on full blast for short periods of time. Like every single day. If I got rejected from a job, I'd be googling methods of killing myself. If a date didn't go well, I'd be googling. If it was raining, I'd be googling. If I woke up in the night, I'd be praying for someone to pop in and murder me, before googling again. There was no rhyme or reason to it except this feeling like I simply didn't fit into the world, and there was something seriously wrong with me. (Google agreed).

Here are some of the thoughts that went through my head around the same time the above photo was taken:

I am so selfish. How can I do this to the few people who care about me? I should at least wait for certain relatives to die before they have to deal with my death, as they will feel guilty. But maybe they won't find out, seeing as I'm in Australia. What difference does it really make? But also if I get it wrong, which is 99.9% likely to happen, then my life will be much worse. Everyone will know and I'll be sectioned. I won't be able to work. Everyone will hate me more than they already do. It's also just so selfish, because I'm only 23 years old. I'm so young still. I could donate my life to some kind of cause instead, like volunteering. But I get so overwhelmed with looking for opportunities that I can't do it. I just need to find the exact 100% certain method and it will be over. But maybe I should spend all of my savings first. The lifeguard who saved my life, who became my friend, will be so angry. It's so disrespectful to her. But also I literally cannot live. And I didn't ask to be born. Or saved. I wish she didn't save me. Drowning whilst mermaid swimming would have been so much easier. But that's so ungrateful. It's good she saves everyone else, but she could have just left me. I am such a bad person. I can't believe I am thinking this. This world and everyone would be much happier if I didn't exist. Actually, no one would care. They'd get on with their lives. And I wouldn't have to find a 'real' job that would hire me, because literally none will. But it's genuinely such a waste. I've just graduated and my life is so perfect from the outside. There are people who have it much worse off than me. I am so selfish. I can't understand what is happening or why I can't just be normal. I want to die but I know I will mess it up. Also it's so selfish to my flatmate. She'll have to continue living here knowing I killed myself. I'd have to pack up first. I need to figre out the perfect way. Let's google the place again.

This would all happen in seconds. I searched the location of the beauty spot every day, sometimes spending entire days in bed refreshing the page to collect evidence of whether it might work or not. I didn't dare go there, because I knew if I did, I would do it. Googling and planning helped me to stop thinking these thoughts, because I was 'doing' something, even if it wasn't an especially enjoyable activity. I'd self-harmed as a teenager (largely unsuccessfully), but I'd graduated to a mental, invisible kind of self-harm.

The internet supported me, showing me targeted advertisements, and more of what I wanted to see. 'Legal but harmful' content, as the Online Safety Bill might refer to it - but to anyone else, it'd look like I was just researching what to do on the weekend.

The scariest and most annoying part was that I'd usually wake up feeling completely fine. I'd write off those embarrassing thoughts and stuff them in a deep mental closet, calling myself dramatic. I'd rip up the letters I'd written into tiny pieces so my flatmate wouldn't see. I'd try to ignore the feeling that I was an alien walking around in a human's body. Who wrote a suicide letter to their friends one night, then popped out for brunch with them the next morning chatting about where to go on holiday?

I didn't tell anyone. I made vague indications to it when I saw doctors, who declared me perfectly fine because I had a law degree. A therapist said I had an AMAZING life and was just experiencing 'emotional challenges'. If anyone mentioned the S word, I would hear the accusatory tone in their voice, and deny it all. I was terrified of being kicked out, being told off, being put into hospital, or having them worry about me. I was FINE, as they said. The fear and stigma pushed me further down this hole.

I made many 'vague attempts' at suicide, ones I'm not sure even count now. There's no black and white: there's all the shades of gray in between. The doing something stupid in the hope that maybe you won't survive.

A few months later, I went skydiving. The only thoughts that rushed through my head as I fell through the sky at hundreds of miles an hour was praying that the parachute didn't open. I wished for it more than anything in the world (because also, what a cool way to go, that could definitely be passed off as NOT my fault). When we landed safely and I was almost crying with disappointment, I realised there was something seriously wrong. I left the holiday I was on with the poor guy who'd unwittingly asked me out on a date a few months before and returned to Sydney.

I made a private psychiatrist appointment at $350, but also went to A&E to get the hormonal implant removed, as maybe this was causing it all. The A&E doctor inquired further and I told him my skydiving story, defeated. I was ready to be handcuffed and taken to hospital. Instead, he told me to cancel the $350 appointment and gave me some mood stabiliser tablets, advising me to return a week later and say I had a wound that needed stitching. I definitely don't think he was supposed to do this.

But when I read the instructions, which had a RISK OF SUICIDE attached, I took it as a sign. This was great news. He'd given me the literal perfect excuse: it was the medication's fault! I made a plan to jump off the beauty spot a week later, because I was a true people pleaser until the end. I needed to finish my modelling jobs and pack up my room and maybe rewrite and not throw away the multiple goodbye letters I'd been waking up to all year.

But that week, I lived however I wanted. I ate multiple chocolate and almond croissants for breakfast every day, because who cared if I got fat? I made the effort to see all of my friends, because I wouldn't see them again. I called my family. I went for a 3 hour walk along the beach with no phone, because I thought I should give myself one last opportunity to take it all in. I did my photoshoots, ridiculously incredible ones on a little shell-filled island with the kindest people I'd ever met. I went to the mental health circle I volunteered at (mainly to find out what was wrong with me), and I heard someone share their story:

'I recently became suicidal and wanted to end my life. Things became so bad that I quit my job in America and broke up with my girlfriend of 7 years to come here. Last week, I found out my girlfriend had been murdered.'

WHAT THE HELL.

This was enough to shake me out of it. I realised any of us could die at literally any second, and here I was trying to plan ahead like it was a dentist appointment. It hit me how lucky I was to have everyone I knew in good health and relatively okay. I was overwhelmed with realisations of how happy I'd been that week, the seconds where life actually felt great, the amazing food I'd eaten and people I'd seen and experiences I'd had. I realised that I could just live my life like that: doing exactly what I wanted. I understood I didn't want to end my life completely, I just wanted to end the WAY I was living.

So I decided to live.

I returned to the UK to see a private psychiatrist, who said I had ADHD. I laughed and said it wasn't a 'real' problem, having finally spilled out the truth of how messed up my brain was. ADHD had never come up on my frantic Google searches of what was wrong with me. He said I had 'really really bad ADHD', and was right, because I didn't return to finish the diagnosis a few weeks later as promised. Instead, I went on a 3 week holiday to Bali the next day and didn't return for a year.

During that year, I lived however I wanted to live. I still experienced suicidal ideation, but I at least knew I could get through it. I questioned my thoughts and realised I was attaching meaning to believing I was 'insane' for having these thoughts, which made me think them more - and I could choose which thoughts to believe. I became addicted to changing everything: deleting my entire Instagram account, moving to Byron Bay, living with someone I'd met on the beach and doing a partner visa with him (bad idea), changing jobs, not drinking alcohol, becoming vegan, getting into yoga, doing kiseonology and therapy and reading every single self-help book I could get my hands on. I'm seriously like a walking library of self-help books now (as my clients will confirm).

I started writing a blog which became my own book, the Model Manifesto. I didn't care if I couldn't do modelling anymore: I could be dead! What was the worst that was going to happen? Obviously the foundations of my new 'all or nothing' life fell apart within months, and I was back in the psychiatrist's office to find out. This time I had a new determination: to finish writing the Model Manifesto. Writing this book had been very cathartic for me, making me realise that maybe I'd been through things that weren't my fault.

I gave myself my own 9-5 job, realising I was already 'doing' something with my life: writing. Living. Experiencing. Modelling. Travelling. I'd found something to think about that wasn't dying. I'd given myself something to do every day, and discovered my hyper-focus. The more I wrote of this book, the more I spoke to model agency owners and people who'd been forced to lose weight or abused or harassed or put into mountains of debt, and I was determined to finish it. This became my new reason to live. Every time I felt suicidal, I told myself to just finish this book first. But I couldn't, because of my still half-diagnosed ADHD.

Once I was diagnosed, I was put on Elvanse medication costing £300 a month. It was a deeply unfair price to pay for not killing myself, but the medication did and does stop me from feeling suicidal all the time. This is why I take it (now on the NHS). I assume it helps with the other bits, seeing as I've managed to stay living in England for almost 5 years now, and have a job I'm happy in. I can now count on one hand the number of times I've felt suicidal since taking this medication.

As emotional symptoms not being recognised in ADHD diagnostic criteria, I'd always questioned my diagnosis. Learning about Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria was a lightbulb moment for me, enabling me to accept ADHD and take the medication without overthinking it. It was life-changing to hear my experience be described so accurately: the short, angry bursts of being suicidal, then feeling fine again. I knew that I was not alone and there was a way of living with this (ironic).

Yesterday, someone asked me what my 'why' is in an interview. I told them that it's because I feel like I got given extra life, and I'm determined to help others avoid having the same experiences. I was also asked what my favourite part of ADHD is, and it relates to the same thing: anything is possible. When we don't take our life for granted, we realise we might as well do the things we're scared to do. Like sharing this post!

When someone told me RSD wasn't 'academically verified' enough to be presented as fact in my book 'ADHD: an A to Z', I took the power of these emotions and decided to figure out how to change that. Within days, I was writing to Directors at the World Health Organisation. Within weeks, a meeting has been arranged. Next month, I'm running a Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria course. We take the 'no' and we question it: we say 'then how'? Anything is possible.

If you have the feelings I've described, know that you are not alone. Things get better.

It passes. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. There is nothing deeply broken inside of you. You just need help. I know how scary it is to open up to someone, and I know how much you don't want everybody to worry about you, but they can take it. You're not being attention seeking by asking for help. Doctors, therapists, friends, family members, they won't gasp in horror and shut the door on you. If they do, find someone else. If you wondering whether to pay the money to see a private psychiatrist, do it. There is no amount of money you can place on your life.

Create a support plan (Stay Alive App). Write down the positive moments you've had, and do more of what makes you feel joy (not numb!). Find a reason to live. Volunteer. Help someone with their problems. Delete your social media accounts. Get into the real world and remember what it is to be alive. You deserve to be here. There is a reason you are here, and the world needs you. You can only connect the dots looking backwards.

I promise it is possible to live without feeling this way. If I'd ended my life when I wanted to, you wouldn't be reading this now. I never would have written the Model Manifesto, and the Government wouldn't be establishing a working group tackling exploitation across all creative industries. I wouldn't have fallen in love with someone again, remembering how easy and wonderful it can be. I wouldn't have mended my broken relationships and developed a community of people who truly cared about me. I never would have known that I have ADHD, let alone write a book about it or become an ADHD coach. I never would have worked in law, advising on Coronavirus laws, living through a global pandemic. I never would have discovered the things I love so much now. I wouldn't have met my best friends. I wouldn't have ever truly found out how loved I was.

Above all, I wouldn't have accepted myself. Knowing that there are bad days and good days, ups and downs, that life isn't a mountain to climb but a series of hills to somehow get over, before starting again, all of these things: I just would have died hating myself.

However ridiculously bad things are, they can be just as ridiculously good - and they will be. You deserve all of this and more. You deserve a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside. You deserve a life where you can receive the kindness and love you give to other people. You deserve to be happy. Don't throw away that opportunity: grab it with both hands and hold on.

If you know someone going through this, know that all you can do for them is be there, unconditionally.

Ask them questions about how they're feeling. Validate how they're feeling. Tell them you're sorry they're feeling that way and it's okay. Reassure them that you could never be scared away, and that they can talk to you about anything. Help them to make a support plan (like this Stay Alive App).

Try to avoid giving unsolicited advice, and help them to reach their conclusions by themselves. Ask them what's good in their life. Ask them to remember a time when they didn't feel like this. A second even - like a good meal they had recently, or a movie they watched. Ask them for help with something, because helping others reminds us that we have value in this world. Remind them that things get better, they are loved, and life is worth living. Seek out support for yourself too, because we all need it.

Remember that feeling this way is nobody's fault. It's out of our control, and all we can do is be there for each other. There isn't a magic solution or fix. We can't control what other people do or how they feel, but we can support them, and be supported in return.

The thing I learned from desperately searching for the point to my life is that there is no point. At least not how I saw it, like a calling or purpose or job. The only point to life is to enjoy it. To enjoy the here and now, the sunshine, the ups, the downs, the learnings we get to have along the way. To figure out what makes us feel alive, and go for it whilst we still can. The chances of you existing are so infinitely minuscule, and the time we have here is so limited. Don't worry about what you 'should' be doing and start doing whatever you want to do today, even if that's just eating croissants.

Please make the most of the time you have. You might as well - we're all going to die anyway.

Approximately 25 people have taken their life whilst you read this article.

Resources

leanne Maskell
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