The Thing About Being Suicidal When You’re a Mother

The thing about being suicidal when you’re a mother and wife is that your duties don’t stop just because you want your life to.

You still have to sort care arrangements with the home educator who keeps changing days on you and is becoming more and more inflexible.

You still have to plan people’s lunches and think of how to create healthy, interesting meals out of literally nothing. Also while knowing full well that all your 3-year-old will eat is vegemite sandwiches. For you, anyway.

The piles of dirty washing, the dirty kitchen floor, the mess of toys and clean dishes waiting to be put away — they don’t all disappear just because you want to disappear. There’s no Fairy Godcleaner that comes and does your chores so you can write your suicide letters.

You can mourn and wail and bawl your eyes out all night, sleepless from the dark fist that has plunged itself into your heart, but you still have to get up and give your son breakfast in the morning. There’s this annoying “thing” that always ruins your ability to have your own plans — a “conscience.”

People you have to interact with don’t even realize they’re dealing with a suicidal person. They make life difficult, taking their own stress and including it in the way they speak to you.

Heaven forbid you try to hold down a job as a suicidal mother. That’s just too humorous for words. Especially if you choose a job even more inflexible than your childcare provider and your 3-year-old combined.

Your boss won’t wait for you to go on respite, or adjust things while you stay in the hospital where supposedly it’s safe. You’re not worth enough for that honor.

You see, it’s this existence that makes being suicidal that much easier. There is a nothingness to everything. It’s all monotony. Colorless, disengaged monotony.
Yes, being a mother and wife has delayed the act of suicide. The guilt trip you’re given when you try to talk to someone… “Just think of your son. How will he cope without his Mum?” The words play out like a bad pop song.

Little do they know, he’s without his Mum already. His Mum is there in body only. Her soul and mind and intelligence and humor have all seeped out with every tear that has slithered down her face. Her sadness still allows for cuddles and “I love yous” because that’s innate and needed.

But, people. People don’t know. They can’t really care either. I mean, it’s the human condition. You get so wrapped up in your own little world that fake emotions are all you have left for everyone else. No one has time anyway. There’s much more important work to be doing with people who are normal and not disgusting or needy or mentally and physically unwell. There’s no time for talk of suicide. It’s silly and doesn’t pay the bills.

Eventually, nothing will matter enough.

Depression‘s trajectory doesn’t just stop all of a sudden. It keeps moving till there’s an end. The end. But you keep going.

Can you relate? Share some words of support in the comments below.