Depression and Flash Flood Suicidality

Depression is a bitch, suicidality, more so. Just reading the official symptoms of depression can tell you that. It’s living with depression that really turns up the volume on that reality. And one thing I’ve encountered recently is the flash flood suicidality associated with depression. I’ve characterized severe mood shifts as causing “mood whiplash” but this is a little different. Whiplash sucks, to be sure, soft tissue damage is hard to heal, but a flash flood decimates everything in front of it. The flash flood suicidality in depression is a bitch, squared.

Trigger warning: frank discussions of suicidality, depression, self-harm and other triggering things follow. (Oh, and so do naughty words.)

Depressed But Not Yet Suicidal

Today I was having a regularly-depressed day. My doctor is working on getting a new medication up to a suitable dose so right now I’m left with little protection against insanity. I know this. It has made living my life very close to impossible.

But. I slept. I woke up. I ate chia pudding. I slept some more. And then when the post office opened, I put on sparkles and I went to pick up a package. I also took out some recycling, got the mail and took something down to storage that had been sitting in my apartment for about two months.

At that point, it was a victorious day.

And then I opened the fucking mail.

It was, in fact, like being hit with a letter bomb. Something I had thought was innocuous decidedly wasn’t. The envelope contents were horrible; they held negative effects for me both professionally and personally.

I threw the mail to my left in rage. This is something I never do. I never feel rage and I never throw things; but today, I did.

My Flash Flood Suicidality in Depression

And then I instantly felt suicidal. I bent in half, head in my hands, and knew what was happening. It was a flash flood of suicidality. I had been “just” depressed before. I had been in a nasty, horrible, life-altering depression, but it was, on some level, manageable. And then this flash flood hit — a suicide tsunami.

I looked to my right, to the red glass I was drinking soda water out of, and knew what I had to do. I had to smash it and slit my wrists. This is one of my suicide fantasies. This is one of the things my brain urges me to do. This is one of the things that my brain tries to force me to do. This is one of the things that happened when I did, in fact, attempt suicide. And today? With a red glass to match the blood? All the more perfect.

And that’s what suicidality is like. I can be the girl picking up mail at the local post office one minute and then a tragic creature sobbing and begging for death the next. You can’t predict a flash flood. It just happens. It just wipes out what is in its path. It just destroys.

Do Others Experience Suicidality Flash Floods?

A study found that one in four people reported that they considered suicide for only five minutes before attempting it. Another study found that almost half of all attempters considered suicide for less than 10 minutes before committing an act. The shocking, flash flood numbers go on. (You can read more about it at the Harvard School of Public Health.)

And this jives with my experience exactly. Something happened — maybe not a bone-crushing thing, but a nasty thing — and then I was suicidal in the blink of an eye thanks to consistent severe depression. To be clear, I didn’t go from nothing to suicidal, I went from very depressed to suicidal, but still, it was a massive, possibly lethal change in a split second. And because I’ve already thought about methods and implications, there are very few barriers to acting on that suicidality.

Beating Back Flash Flood Suicidality

For me, I have sandbags in place, though. The suicidality generally wants me to slit my wrists with glass. That’s just the picture I have of my death. That’s just what my brain is obsessed with. So I know I can’t do that. My mind is smart enough to see that picture and know it’s a sick one. It recognizes it as the emergency it is. It does things like call friends and take PRN pills and do pretty much anything to avoid making the picture real.

So while I recognize that suicidality can happen at the hint of a raindrop, even that unpredictably can also be fought against. And if you get to this place, know two things:

1. You are not alone. Others experience sudden suicidal feelings. You are not crazy. You are sick.
2. You need to get help. Your help might come from a loved one, a medication, a helpline or a professional, but you need it and you need it now.

And remember, if this does happen to you and you feel like you can’t win the fight, there is no shame in going to a hospital. No shame. I’ve been there. Others have been there. It’s practically a bipolar right.

Flash flood suicidality happens, but we survive it. We survive the rains. We survive the floods with water above our heads. We survive. I did. You can too.

I have help sources listed here. If you’re suicidal, use one.

Banner image by Flickr user Cheltenham Borough Council.