Hope & Suicidality

Hope and suicidality make strange bedfellows. Why? Because hope is the ultimate antidote to suicidality. They coexist for so many people, people who struggle with suicidality yet hold onto at least a kernel of hope close to their hearts. It’s this kernel of hope that I urge you to hang onto for dear life (pun intended – battling the Beast that is suicidality sometimes calls for, perhaps perversely, a sense of gallows humor).

I’ve waxed philosophical on hope before – maybe I’m being a bit repetitive, but bear with me (I may actually have a point). What is it about hope? Why is it so elusive - especially when one is struggling? Where does it go? In my humble opinion, hope doesn’t go anywhere; it doesn’t abandon you. Instead, in the face of utter despair, hope can go dormant. 

Why? Because people tend to dismiss hope out of hand when the situation at hand is dire. At these times, hope seems laughable at best and sadistic at worst. From personal experience, I know that at my lowest points, hope has been elusive and taunting. 

My difficulties with hope center on a period of my life (well over a decade) when I constantly waited for the other shoe to drop. It was during this time that I would have weeks, even months, when I was highly symptomatic, and days – sometimes mere hours – where I would feel lighter, more hopeful, and on a slightly more even keel.

These moments of reprieve were few and far between, and I almost grew to resent them. I felt like they were teasing and taunting in nature – showing me fleeting glimpses of a life I was never meant to have.

Truth be told, there was a long span of years when the bad far outweighed the good (hence my constant state of suicidality – that didn’t come from nowhere). But gradually the hospital stays lessened from upwards of ten times a year to roughly twice a year. (Yes, there are still hospitalizations because, yes, I still struggle and sometimes need more support than can be provided on an outpatient basis.)

When I was living at The Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas (where I spent two years in residential care), there was a nurse, Lynn, who was well aware that my best friend and I HATED mornings, so she took to coming into our rooms, flinging open the curtains, and proclaiming, “It’s a BEAUTIFUL day!” Now, you have to understand: Lynn proclaimed it to be a beautiful day regardless of the weather – it could be monsooning and us needing to be rescued by boat, and she’d still say it was a beautiful day. She taught me that my day was what I made it and that I had the power to choose to make it a good day – or a bad one.

It might seem silly, but I eventually learned something from her proclamation that every day was a beautiful day. It was years later, but I had a shift in my thinking, and I taught myself to see the good in things. Sometimes a difficult and thankless task, but I get up and look for the good, even if that good is infinitesimal in size (sometimes it’s a beautiful day when it’s raining). 

Something to keep in mind is that others believe in you, even when you have lost all belief in yourself. My therapist, way back when in Menninger (incidentally, we celebrated our 26th year working together this August), told me something one day that has stuck with me ever since: I told her that I had no hope, and her response was, “Then I will hold your hope until you can hold it yourself.” It’s hard to put into words, but that simple sentence was one of the best gifts I have ever received. In it, she told me that my case wasn’t pointless, or even hopeless; that it just needed some TLC. 

It was a long time (read: years) before I could gingerly hold onto my own hope. At first, it was like a hot potato, but gradually, I returned it to her less and less. And, oh, believe me, there are still times I feel hopeless, but these days I don’t necessarily have to tell her I need her to hold my hope; rather, I have internalized the verbal exchange, and I know she is always ready to hold my hope until I can again hold it myself. Do yourself a favor and find that one person whom you trust implicitly with your hope so that the hope you do not have does not become too weighty. Remember, hope floats.