I don't know

I think I am at some sort of crossroads, a brink that will decide a lot about my future. It isn't just that I am going to graduate college this year and have to figure out my life. It isn't just that I am reaching this point where I can't make decisions based on how they will be perceived by other people. It isn't just that I am on the edge of self-understanding. This brink I'm on is life or death. Really, it is.

That makes it sound like I am about to kill myself. Believe me, that is part of it, but I am not on the verge of suicide at this moment. The brink is more like climbing a mountain and being very near the first plateau. I can either keep climbing a bit longer and make it to my first sign of progress or I can let go of the side of the cliff and fall. I am under no delusions that I am about to reach the mountain's zenith, but I am near a certain recognition of how far I have come. Yet, there is still something within me that craves self-destruction, and it stops me from fully recognizing the steps I have made toward betterment. Something holds me back and convinces me that it isn't real progress unless I am near the zenith.

I had a counseling session on Monday. It was good, but it left me feeling pretty uneasy about myself. We are getting to a stagnant point where we can either talk about what is still really going on inside of me or we might as well stop meeting. It has almost been two years, after all. We have begun to talk about death and suicide--concepts that plague me terribly. I don't want to be that person so dark and selfish. I don't want to be that person who can't recognize her blessings, because I do. I know that I am so blessed. Still, there is this deep darkness that I can't shake. This darkness that makes me think so much about life and death and the meaning of it all instead of things like schoolwork and friends and careers. I don't know if I want a future, so how can I think about it yet?

It was weird to talk about it. I don't think that I expressed myself well. It is the first time that I didn't feel in control of the session, like I was floundering and grasping for a response, because truth be told, I don't know why I want to kill myself. I know that I still struggle quite profoundly with self-hatred, though I can't figure out why. I am much more confident and kind to myself. I feel much more affirmed by the people around me. I feel more intelligent and even, to a certain extent, more capable. So, when she wants me to explain why, I stutter, and my faces burns blood-red. I don't know. I don't know how to explain why when I trip in the hallway or sing a wrong note in choir or make any mistake big or small, I can't help thinking about killing myself.

It's like an addiction, a coping mechanism. It helps me survive by reminding me that I have an escape if I need it. It's sick. The problem is that I seriously consider it, despite all I know about how it affects the people left behind or how there is no feeling of relief or redemption--it just ends. In my religious tradition, I would even go to Hell. Yet, I consider it. I romanticize it. I make it a beautiful drama, when it is a messy punctuation mark. There is nothing romantic about choosing death when others don't get to choose.

We talked about it, but I explained it wrong. I felt like I had to explain in terms of tangible reasons. I mentioned that I fear losing everything and that kind of desperation would make anyone suicidal...but that wasn't really helpful in regard to myself. I do fear those things, and I do think it would lead me to the kind of desperation that ends in suicide. But my problem is that I don't need to be desperate to think about it. It plagues me though I am getting better and happier. Will the thought ever cease? It takes me down, down, down into the depths of nothingness. I don't want to go there, but I don't know how to combat it. And she could help me, I know, but I explain it wrong. I fumble. I lose my words. Because I am ashamed. Because it is exposing my darkness, my very core. Because I want to appear better. But she even recognized that I am still not in the "best" place. I don't want to disappoint her.

I am uneasy. I am not better yet. I don't think I ever will be. I am broken, but who isn't? I am broken, but is there a fix?