Reasons To Stay Alive. Reasons To Live.

A Reason To Live - written one year ago today

Someone asked if people can think of a reason to live. My without thinking answer is below. If you could copy it and then post it back to me on the days when I'm posting that I want to give up and not live this life any more that might be a good thing. There are too many days when I feel that. But the reasons still exist. None of them have wandered off when I can't see them - and I truly can't. Mostly rational thoughts are beyond me in the worst times.

In worst times I am utterly incapable of seeing that beyond the mental health crap and all the things I can't do, I have kind of an awesome life. Limited in many ways by my health but kind of awesome too. Some days there's an incredible struggle to find a reason to live even though there are many.

My without thinking about it much answer:

A question I ask myself frequently having had thoughts of suicide every day since at least the start of last year and at times back through most of my life.

Sometimes it's stubbornness. Sometimes it's hopefulness. Sometimes it's holding to not wanting to hurt people who would be hurt if I left. Sometimes it's that there are good days among the bad, days of sitting on rocks being alone with the sea. Sometimes it's the chance to hear one more decent song. Sometimes it's the cat who visits me. Sometimes it's the knowledge that where there are pens or paper or art supplies there is the chance to create something from nothing. Sometimes it's looking at all the photos I've posted and remembering.

Sometimes it's straining to hold on to - and sometimes this seems almost impossible - that while my 18th psychiatric diagnosis of DID looks both correct and more of a challenge than the previous 17 and while help is still a long way off there's still a lot of good to be found, a ton of good people, singing, walking, listening to birdsong, drinking hot chocolate, finding something cool in a charity shop, eating sometimes at Magic Hat, free things, the existence of places like Chilli Studios, the way the drift floats on the Tyne, the sun through the Plessey Wood trees. Plenty more. And plenty more to be found even when it doesn't look like there are.

Sometimes I look at how surprising life is. How this permanently depressed, totally scruffy, homophobic, resolutely straight, obsessive traditional Catholic who could pray 6 hours a day and still feel bad for not being religious enough, determinedly neurotypical man who moved to Newcastle couldn't have foreseen pretty much anything about how life is eight years on. Anything is possible. Even the impossible. More surprises can follow.

Some days I would not be able to begin that list. Some days I can only see the dark, hopelessness wins, and sometimes it might only be guilt that carries me through. Nevertheless the reasons are still there even if covered up by dark places. Some days I'm telling the world I don't want to be here and it is bloody hard to still be here. Some days I only survive because I don't want people to hurt.

They're all reasons to live. But in the end we need to find our own reasons because we're all utterly weird in different ways. And the reasons are there. I can promise there are reasons.

Reasons to Live - Written Today

Staying alive was worth it.  I wrote that I had thoughts of suicide every day.  That's no longer true.  Sometimes a thought arises from old habits, old thought patterns.  It's just a thought, not a reality.  There are still limitations but everyone has limitations.  That's okay.  There are less limitations though than a year ago.  Not because the world has changed or because I am a different person but because I have grown in confidence and in self acceptance.

Surviving the worst that mental health distress threw at me or which I built up myself through ways of thinking was hard.  Afterwards, in this time of relative peace that may or may not be lifelong, I am fabulously glad that I didn't give up.  There are things in my life now that I couldn't have contemplated during those months and years of wanting to die.

I've heard people argue for assisted suicide to be available for people with mental health distress.  I'm strongly against this view because I know that I would have taken that option had it been available.  I know friends who would have taken it too and are now very glad to be alive.

Stay alive.  Please.  Read Matt Haig's book if you're up to reading.  It's in short sections so that makes it easier.  Read this post.  And on your days with less distress write your own reasons to stay alive.  My reasons aren't necessarily yours.  Matt Haig's reasons aren't necessarily yours.  Your reasons are yours and I'd encourage you to find them whenever you're best able to find them.

Nobody posted this back to me last July when I came, again, so close to dying.  I couldn't see it either, hidden somewhere in the months old haze of Facebook.  I post it back to myself now, and to you too.

I promise you that you have reasons to live no matter how hard mental health distress may be for you right now, no matter what's gone wrong in your life recently or in the distant past, and no matter what new austerity or punitive benefit the government announces this year.

Stay alive.  Please.  Not for me.  I won't know who has read this post.  Stay alive for yourself because I promise you deserve that much.