I Want To Die

This has been a prevalent thought in my life for as long as I can remember.

Throughout my life, I have suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts. Like many men, I hid it well. I adapted, performed and numbed myself to avoid confronting what was underneath. I have also had some incredible times in my life, but there was always an underlying fear that when those moments passed, the same thought would return. Looking back now, I can see that my inability to let go of people, relationships or outcomes was never just about what I was afraid of losing. It was also wrapped up in not wanting that thought to come back. If I could keep life under control, perhaps I could keep it away.

In recent years, as life brought me to my knees time and time again, that thought inevitably appeared more and more frequently. Having experienced suicide first-hand through someone I loved, there was a part of me that wanted what she had so deeply for myself. It genuinely felt like the only way I would ever find peace in my life. The only way I would ever truly be safe. At the same time, I was incredibly angry that another part of me still wanted to live. Why could I not even give myself the peace that death seemed to represent? Why was there still something in me that kept holding on?

As with many of the other experiences I was having, I became curious rather than automatically pushing the thought away. I began to wonder whether my own thoughts, just like my relationships and experiences, were also mirrors. What if they were inviting me to meet something my younger self had been carrying all along?

Writing Remove the Mask, Unveil the Man seemed to change something in me. It was almost as though I had written it without realising I was about to need it. I had managed to put into words something that I didn’t yet appreciate the power of. It feels like the poem has become a compass for the next part of my journey.

I had spent the previous few years taking off the mask. Seeing myself more clearly. Calling back my personal agency. Letting go of performance, self-abandonment and my attempts to manufacture outcomes. What I didn't realise at the time was that I wasn't just removing a mask. I was also laying down every strategy the boy within me had ever created to survive his childhood.

So, in the middle of all of this, he naturally returned to the one thought he had always known.

"I want to die."

Not because his strategies had failed, but because we had consciously decided to stop using them.

It felt like the Man, the King, now needed to step forward and do as the poem articulated, to sit beside and not to run. Not to argue with the thought, not to convince the boy he shouldn't feel it, but simply to meet him with enough curiosity to understand what he was really trying to say.

The following internal conversation unfolded between that younger part of my psyche and the man who is now holding all the parts of myself.

Boy: This is no good. We are destined to be alone. If we don't become what other people want us to be, nobody will ever want us.

Man: Tell me more about that.

Boy: I'm so lonely. Nobody sees me. Nobody comforts me. I just want someone to hold me, someone to love me. Nobody considers my needs.

Man: Where do you think those feelings come from?

Boy: Why doesn't my mother love me? Why doesn't my father protect me from her?

Man: So you want to die?

Boy: Yes. It's my only option now. I used to know how to protect myself and now even that's gone. I knew clever ways of getting my needs met, but we're not doing that anymore. So how am I ever going to feel loved again?

Man: Why do you think it's your only option?

Boy: Because I can't see another way. If I don't have my protective strategies anymore, then death is the only place I think I'll finally find peace. It's the only place I think I'll ever feel safe.

Man: Okay. Then let's walk towards it together. Let's really look at what suicide would mean.

Boy: Okay.

A period then followed where we explored suicide together. We looked at the different methods, the statistics, what happened when attempts failed, the long-term consequences for those who survived, and whether assisted dying was even an option. We looked into euthanasia, the countries that allow it, what it would take to qualify, whether mental health alone would ever meet the criteria, and even technologies like the Sarco pod and the circumstances surrounding its use.

Eventually we realised that assisted suicide wasn't going to be an option for us. If we were going to end our life, it would have to be self-inflicted. Guns weren't an option because we didn't have access to them. Jumping wasn't an option because we both hated heights. That really only left bleeding out or hanging, so we explored both in detail.

The more we looked, the more obvious something became. Neither offered what the boy was actually searching for. Neither guaranteed a peaceful death. Neither guaranteed safety. Both carried the possibility of surviving with life-changing injuries, never mind the devastation it would leave behind for my children, whether we were successful or not. 

We weren't romanticising suicide anymore.

We were simply looking at it honestly.

Man: So there is going to be nothing safe or peaceful about this.

Boy: I understand that now.

Man: So what happened to you that made life feel so unbearable?

Boy: I'm not sure I can put words to it.

Man: That's okay. You don't have to.

At that point I started journaling. It became a letter to my mother containing everything I had spent my life wanting to say, without the fear of being gaslit or hearing those familiar words, "John, don't be ridiculous."

It was far from pretty.

As I wrote, I noticed my face began to contort. I was snarling like a wild animal. Then something shifted. The words began arriving faster than I could type them. What had started as a journaling exercise became waves of rage screamed into a pillow, stopping only long enough to breathe. It felt as though my entire body was pulling years of stored anger from every part of me and releasing it back towards the person it had always belonged to.

Man: Wow... you've been holding all of that anger inside you.

Boy: Yes.

Man: Thank you for showing me.

Boy: Thank you for not abandoning me.

Man: Never will I abandon you

Boy: Really

Man: You can never be alone again, because I got you now.

When I reflect back on what actually happened, I can see something now that I couldn't see then. The desire to die was never simply about wanting my life to end. It was anger that had nowhere to land, turned back against myself. I had spent my whole life making myself wrong because my mother could never admit her own failings. I became the bad baby. It was always my fault. By protecting her, I also protected the hope that one day she would finally see me, love me for who I was, accept me for who I was, and simply say, "I'm sorry. I didn't do a great job."

What has changed for me is not my mother. She is still who she has always been. What has changed is that I no longer need that acknowledgement to come from her, because I have given myself enough safety to acknowledge what happened myself.

I can also see now that the thought "I want to die" was never really asking for death. It was the boy's way of telling me that he couldn't carry the pain any longer and that he couldn't see another way to make it stop. Once we stopped trying to push that thought away and instead sat beside it with curiosity, it slowly made space for the anger and pain that had been hidden underneath all along.

Today, I see my role differently. I am no longer trying to silence the boy or convince him that he shouldn't feel what he feels. My role is simply to remain present with him. To become the steady presence in my own life that allows him to show me what was once never safe to express, trusting that when he no longer has to carry it alone, he no longer has to carry it in silence.