I was 20 years old when I tried to kill myself. It doesn’t feel like such a big deal now, and I’m clearly quite open about it, but it’s hard to pretend it’s not the most significant event of my life. It was something I had dwelled on and considered for at least two years before I actually attempted it. My memories of the day itself are reduced to a series of disconnected blurs, though the date “Thursday the 18th of February 2016” is etched into my brain forever (I tend to remember my life in terms of when albums were released, so this was in between The Life of Pablo and untitled unmastered). When I try to think of the day, I faintly recall the sound of a friends’ voice over the phone without any corresponding images, or glimpse flashes of the hospital room I found myself in. I remember I was wearing my favourite jersey, this ridiculously ugly Liverpool away kit from the 90s my uncle had given to me recently. The start of it is a bit clearer. I had met with my GP about a week before, and upon hearing what he was prescribing me for my current condition, had to consciously stop myself from smiling as I knew exactly what was I was going to do in the near future. The day itself came, I woke up at about 11 and knowing both of my parents were out of the house I went downstairs, took what I had to and wrote a sticky note left on my door that said something along the lines of “sleeping in – do not disturb”. I put my headphones on and started listening to Billy Woods’ ‘Today, I Wrote Nothing’, and everything I’ve written here amounts to my recollection of the events. I had been talking to people on Facebook and tweeting apparently, and one of my friends notified my parents of the ongoing circumstances and lo and behold, I’m still here. (I apparently got sick on my dad on the way into the hospital. Sorry Kev)

My GP said to me recently enough that he always felt the main underlying factor in my depression was that I had reached an impenetrable belief that life was just not worth living, and based on this apparent logic, consciously chose to disengage. I would tend to agree that this was one of my problems although it’s a bit reductive, and I think it’s why it became clear that medication wasn’t for me after my attempt. I moved back down to Wexford permanently, without officially dropping out of DCU til August of that year, and start seeing a different therapist for a brief series of sessions. By May, I was entirely out of the formal psychiatric system, which seemed a bit premature, not only because it was within 3 months of a suicide attempt but I was also convinced that how well I seemed to be at the time was almost a bipolar high. In the immediate aftermath, I was experiencing this really weird kind of energy, which at a lot of times would manifest in bouts of serious anxiety where I’d lie in bed for 2 hour periods, bursting at the seems with physical energy but crippled by a fear of everything so I couldn’t do anything. My sleeping pattern went completely off the rails, I’d sleep for maybe 4 hours a night but experience no drop in energy. This might be related to coming off the medication, but I wonder if some part of it is just a reaction to trying to take away one of the only things you ever truly own. The meds I was on had been particularly notorious for weight gain, so within 3 months I dropped from 82kg to 68kg. There have been more periods of this irrepressible energy/anxiety in the coming months, but none as significant as the first.

Though I’d always been pretty open with my friends, the depth of my depression and any suicidal ideation I had was a topic I’d only broach with humour. On Poisenville Kids No Wins, El-P raps “how the fuck do you explain your own self destruction and still remain trusted?”, and describes the mind frame I’d been in until I’d played my hand. Thankfully, El was wrong about how people would react, and most of my friends and family were all very supportive. I’ll always remember the first night in the pub after it as a great time, though I imagine my friends were surprised that I was still light hearted and joking after something so serious.. I was genuinely convinced for a long time that everyone’s life would be better off without me in it, and my friend’s showing a willingness, or more so a desire, to be around me after trying to take my own life really helped me out of this mentality. I eventually recognised the flaw in this idea anyway, that if the people around me didn’t want me around them, I wouldn’t be. It’s a pretty insidious idea, on the same song El raps about a thought that “came for conjugal visits” and this belief still returns to me sometimes, but I do a much better job of dealing with it now.

With all the resulting turmoil in those few months following the event, I had a lot of time to myself and to pursue my own interests, and I was deemed sick enough to start receiving disability allowance. With a lack of social restraints and work or college commitments, I was allowed to forget myself to some extent and just live. Dennis Rodman, basketball player extraordinaire and friend to Kim Jong-Il, once sat in his car outside the Detroit Pistons’ parking lot with a shotgun in hand, intending to kill himself there and then. Instead, he writes in his autobiography that he killed the “Dennis Rodman that had tried to conform to what everybody wanted him to be”. I think the idea that a certain self died in the series of events resulting from that incident is an accurate one – the line “my empty shell shedding me” from Death Grips’ Artificial Death in the West is called to mind as all this time allowed me to “shed” parts of myself that were not beneficial at best, and self destructive at worst. I think this personal turbulence and coming off medication were the main factors in how much I changed after my attempt, though I wonder if the attempted rejection of what may be our primary instinct, to stay alive, forces something out of someone who survives such an event, even if it’s not always good. At least in my case, things changed for the better.

Understanding the lack of funding for the mental health system in this country is it’s own issue, more financial support alone wouldn’t fix it. I think it needs an overhaul, even if I’m not sure how to go about this. The best thing I can offer to anyone is that I genuinely never thought I would re-engage with the world, yet here I am. I’ve moved from studying Physics with Astronomy to, at the moment, studying Philosophy, Politics and Sociology which has been noted by some of my new friends in Maynooth as a pretty drastic switch. The conventional trope that things can change is always thrown up in these situations, but understanding that I’m not special, and my situation did, it’s very likely yours can too. I hope for your own sake it doesn’t come to the point my own did. I’m not sure I can offer words of advice for anyone in that situation. Even at the time, I had a strong network of friends and family and despite worries that they would treat me differently in light of what happened, they definitely helped me get through the resulting turmoil. There are a lot of people willing to listen to anyone in that situation, and I’d like to think it’s the majority of people.

(originally published in District Magazine Issue 04:Rebirth as ‘The Days After’, May 2018)