Ask a trusted person to stay by your side until you are able to access professional help.
Call the National Suicide Hotline: 988
Or text HOME to 742742 to connect with a counselor through the Crisis Text Line.
Maybe you feel weird about going to the ER for a mental health crisis. But think of it this way: if you had a broken leg, you wouldn't feel weird about going to the ER. Mental pain is real--and worse than a broken leg, I would argue. Although I've never had a broken leg. I have gone through labor, and I would rather feel the pain of labor than the wretchedness of my worst depression.
If you are in a mental health crisis. . .
This is bad. Real bad.
Time to get another brain in the mix.
A brain that is not in pain.
This really isn't the time for poetry.
It's always the time for poetry.
It's really not, though.
(You don't have to be suicidal--they can walk you through any mental health crisis.)
If you are worried you might hurt yourself,
go to the Emergency Room.
I'm worried they might look at me weird.
Dude, this is your LIFE on the line.
Yes. Best to
stay home
with me.
And I promise you this: you will not always feel this way.
Many people have been where you are. They've gotten better.
There are so many books about (or by) really cool people who went through acute mental health crisis, and survived, and went on to thrive.
With help, you will get better.
During my first depression, at the age of seventeen, I believed the Voice of Doom. (It was not a cute jellyfish. It was more like a cyclone of radiating, urgent, gnawing, mental clamor, but that is hard to draw.) I was 100% convinced that the cyclone would envelop me for the rest of my life.
We really
pulled a number on her that time.
I was a little nervous about making this website, and especially this page. Because it's like: god, what if someone is in a crisis and I say THE WRONG THING?
But I think it makes sense to call a hotline when you are in a mental health crisis. It makes sense to go to the ER if you are worried you might hurt yourself. Those seem like the right things to do.
It didn't.
When I was seventeen, and in the Cyclone of Doom, I searched about suicide online. (Parents didn't know about checking search history then.) I found this random guy's website, where, with poor graphics and a pixelated background, he laid out a logical argument against despair. He had a picture of a little paper cup of pills (some kind of meds or supplements), and wrote something along the lines of: you want to hurt yourself to get out of your pain. I too wanted to hurt myself to get out of my pain. Then these pills got me out of my pain. Therefore, there is another, better, way out of your pain.
There's no way this guy was a professional. I wouldn't have believed a professional. I would have dismissed a psychological health pamphlet. But this random guy's message was convincing. The tackiness of the website made it feel sincere and real.
What I'm saying is: a weirdo's weird website sort of saved me.
I was also saved by reaching out to a friend. Which is something I urge you to do.
And if I have said the wrong thing here--or said it in the wrong way (like maybe it is tacky to have cartoons and the suicide hot-line on the same page?), I am sorry. Ignore the wrong-ness of my way of saying, and do the right thing anyway. Which is to reach out for help.
And know that you are worthy and loved. If you ask how I know that, I will say that there is a statistical likelihood that you are loved by lots of real human people, and even if you are not beloved by humans, the love is just there, all around you, and it is the most real thing. In time, the heaviness and dank fog and cyclone of misery will dissipate. You will throw off the depression like a ragged heavy soaking cloak. Your body will calm and you will stretch your limbs in the sun. You will see that The Voice of Doom was lying the whole time, and it will seem ridiculous that you ever believed it.
You're really cramping my style, here, sister.
That's the whole entire point.
Crisis Text Line Text HOME to 742742
Copyright 2022 - Kathleen Founds - Depression Whackamole