People don't talk about (or even know about) being passiveley suicidal.
You don't have a plan/date/methord etc, but you are 100% convinced that you'll die eventually by x amount of time. I was convinced I'd be dead by now, that eventually I'd just snap one day and do it. But I'm 23 and still alive with no job, no extra education, I'm only just getting diagnoses for the physical health issues I have now. I made no plans or efforts to prepare for the future as a teenager because I was so sure I'd be dead by 18. I'm so far behind my younger sister and couins, by one friend that's my age that also has health issues has at least managed to get a job and drivers licence (which is great, she's overcome a lot) but I haven't even passed the road rules test. My mum is nagging the shit out of me to get my life together, but I simply don't know how, and have to find loopholes to do so with health issues. All because I decided at around 10 years old that I didn't care if I died. That dying was better than living in this fuckass world. When I'd walk home from school I'd watch the cars go past and think "I could just throw myself onto the road right now, but people are watching so they'd try and save me" or walk over the overpass on the train tracks and think "I could just fling myself off right now". When I got sick, I'd not bother with medicine hoping the sickness would just kill me until a parent would make me take some. I'd not bother with proper meals and skip breakfast and lunch because I didn't care if I died from being underweight or malnutrition etc.
I never had a date, a plan, methords etc. But I wanted to die, didn't care if I died. So I made no future plans, let myself get sicker and underweight, didn't keep any friends, esentially I backed myself into a corner because I was so so so sure that I'd do it eventually. Then, my frontal lobe started to devlop more and at the same time two kids in my year group killed themselves a year apart from each other. I didn't know the first guy but he was very popular, and I did know the second girl through someone else. And watching the schools rection to it kind of make something click in me.
The first guy had unchecked impultiveity issues and impulsivley did it after and argument with his patrents. Obviusly, a major tradgedy. And 90% of the school was empty in the weeks afterwards with people staying home mourning. I don't want to shame mourning parents, but from what came out later, they absolutely did not help him. They were aware he had issues with impulsive behaviours and was prone to intense mood swings and did nothing. And then turned around and blamed bullying. He was not bullied. He was one of those kids that was popular because he was fun, got along with everyone, helped his friends etc. I obviously don't know all the fine details, so yes maybe there was some fights and rivalries with a few people. But he wasn't bullied, he was very loved. The parents didn't do anything to ensure their child with impulsivity issues was safe and blamed other people when the worst happened. The whole school found out eventually, and all the way until graduation, his friends never let that go. Their friend may still be here today if his parents did their jobs as parents.
But then the second girl, who I did know... no one cared. No one but her few close friends. Because she wasn't very popular, people didn't care about her. And that just pissed me off so much. It came out that she'd made multiple attempts before too, her friends and family tried over and over to help her but she was so badly suicidal and eventually succeded. She was so kind, quiet but so sweet. I ran into her at an anime con once and she gave me half her lunch when she saw I didn't have any (I don't remember what it was, but it was so damn good I still think about it). She was good at drawing and drew anything her friends asked her to. This was around when Yuri on Ice came out, and she was obsessed with it. We talk about new episodes a few times and other shows like it to watch.
The whole situation around those two botherd me for years, and I never really knew why. Until I grew up some more, and matured more. That could have been me. I could have had my death turned into something it wasn't. I could have been some kid who didn't even like me's excuse to skip school for a few days. I could have been another tradgedy that got forgotten in mere days or turned into someones performitive activism. And I hate that. I hate it so much. If anything, I'm living out of spite now. I won't kill myself because I don't want to turn into a statisic, an excuse, have my story warped and twisted in death. It took a while to fully shake off the passive suicidal mindset of "I don't care if I die". And to an extent, I don't care. But only in the context of having lived a full life. I don't care if I die when I'm 80. But I do care now at 23.
But I'm still picking up the peices of having not planned for my future and having let myself get so sick. I'll likley be picking them up for years. Being passivley suicidal is still damaging. You may not have attempted, been hosptialised, hurt yourself in a drastic way. But you get left behind and have to catch up yourself. It will take time, it will be hard, but at least you didn't loose the fight with yourself. And theres a good 80 years ahead of you still, you have the time to catch up. It won't be easy, but you can do it. So to all those still lagging behind and having a hard time being an adult because you made no plans, so convinced you'd be dead by now? Your stuggle is valid to the conversation of suicide as a whole. Just because you never attempted, doesn't mean you aren't feeling the consequences of those years you spent thinking you'd be dead by now.
This is suicidism. people tend to focus on the narratives around suicidality that can be sensationalized and also on the people who are "formerly" suicidal. This is talked about in Baril's essay/book Iirc? we notice sometimes people have a hard time with people (like us) who are always going to be kinda suicidal, who experience suicidality as a chronic or natural state rather than a phase to grow out of.
this article talks about passive suicidality! some parts of it really resonate with us.
But for me, and I suspect for countless others like me, the threat of suicide isn't like being carried over a waterfall — it is like living in the ocean. Not as sea creatures do, native and equipped with feathery gills to dissolve oxygen for my bloodstream, but alone, with an expanse of water at all sides. Some days are unremarkable, floating under clear skies and smooth waters; other days are tumultuous storms you don’t know you’ll survive, but you’re always, always in the ocean.
this metaphor, for example. there are some things about this article we dislike but this ocean metaphor was very useful to us. It captured the feeling very well.
