I’ve been trying to come up with a way to explain not wanting to die but having suicidal thoughts. Saying only that baffles concerned loved ones: if you don’t want to die, if you don’t want to take your own life, why are you thinking about it? I worry that the contradiction makes me sound melodramatic, that I’m crying out for attention despite my life lacking any real terrors. I am financially secure, I am healthy enough, no one ever yells at me at work. “You’ve had a hard year,” people say as they pat me on the shoulder, their mouths dipping in concern. It’s normal to feel sad or overwhelmed when two of your friends die suddenly within a few months of each other. But suicide is a bit extreme, no? A bit childish? To the mentally well, the phrase “suicidal ideation” suggests panic and white jackets and blood, probably. It’s difficult to talk about how I feel right now when the reaction I get is either alarmed confusion or annoyance.
The only way I can explain it is suicide radio. When I feel like this, it’s like there’s a radio in my head, the dials turning themselves on too slowly for me to notice. The radio starts suggesting things, little murmurs from a familiar frequency, the host’s voice similar enough to be mistaken for my own: What if you were just dead? If you were dead, you wouldn’t have to answer this email. You wouldn’t have to show up to that social obligation. Dead people don’t have to RSVP or approve these Google Doc margin notes. No one asks a dead person what happened to that book proposal.
The frequency is the same as a daydream, as a curiosity. You should talk to your parents about your will. Maybe they’d put your name on a bench at Wesleyan. Would you trend locally on Twitter? Suicide radio plays all the greatest hits. It’s more like a curated Spotify playlist than an FM station.
I have an anxiety disorder. It’s not a sexy one: as far as I know, it’s generalized anxiety that crops up when I’m feeling taxed, or at no time in particular just to mess with me. When you’re a kid, people label you a “worrier,” a conscientious soul, nervous. I was afraid to order for myself at McDonalds until I was thirteen or so. I cried when teachers used stern voices. My high school years were marked with frequent sinus infections until I was considered a truancy concern. Undiagnosed anxiety runs in my family of New England WASPs, dismissed as a personality quirk rather than a treatable condition. The women in my family are quiet and over-worked. We bicker and carry grudges, we cry and we deal.
Anxiety disorders flirt with depression, the relationship between them a spectrum rather than a straight line. The medication I currently take, Effexor, is an anti-depressant. I always assumed only depressed people commit suicide—a misunderstanding most likely the influence of pop culture and mental health stigma—so when I was diagnosed with anxiety, I didn’t consider myself at risk of more. When I first heard suicide radio, I was disturbed and unprepared. I was waiting for the L train, days or weeks into an anxiety spiral, and there it was: If the subway hit you, you wouldn’t have to answer your text messages. You should jump.
I didn’t know what to do with the thought. I loved being alive. I had no desire to be dead. I just wanted to be gone for a while. The thought freaked me out so much that I went to a doctor and finally got treatment, first Lexapro and eventually my current medication. I started talking about anxiety online and off. But suicide radio stayed a dark joke or a dirty little secret. I genuinely do not think I am at risk of hurting myself. I do not want to hurt myself, even when the radio is on. It’s easier to keep the radio secret than freak out people in my life unnecessarily. I don’t want to scare my parents or be marked as an unreliable flight-risk at work. Even in New York City, stigma is really, really real. When I finally wrote publicly about my anxiety in 2016, I didn’t mention suicidal ideation at all.
I want to write about it now for two reasons. The first is that my second friend who died last year took his own life. The rumor is that he jumped in front of the L train. I wasn’t as close to him as I was to Tahlia, the first death, but his funeral freaked me out so much that I didn’t even go inside, instead chatting for hours on the sidewalk with high school friends until everyone left for the reception. It stuck with me for months, this glimpse into a parallel universe where I had listened to the radio. He was a month younger than I was. We made out in the front seat of my car when I drove him home after rehearsal. I saw his ruddy red cheeks at age twelve. He heard the same radio. The duality haunted me for months until a patient friend pointed out that I was mourning both of us.
The second reason is that “suicide radio” is the first way I’ve been able to help my friends understand how I feel. When I tweeted about it, it seemed useful to other people too.
So here’s the best way I can explain it: The challenge of suicide radio isn’t not obeying it. The challenge of suicide radio is identifying it for what it is: an impostor. These thoughts aren’t yours. They’re not coming from your soul, from your self. They’re the suggestions of brain chemistry, the influence of illness. Suicide radio is a symptom of a disease. It isn’t a death wish, it’s a caution flag that something is seriously wrong. Being okay is figuring it out and yelling, “You’re not me! I’m not the one thinking that! Get out of here, suicide radio!!”
To our friends and loved ones, we can say: I hear suicide radio, and I need your help turning the volume down.
If you are struggling with your mental health, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Line at 1-800-273-8255, 24 hours everyday. For international resources, go here.
Hey there! My name is Ella and I’m a sex and culture critic. If you enjoyed this essay, you’ll be right at home in my Patreon community!
Patrons get access to exclusive essays about intimacy, mental health and shame, monthly discussion threads, and other fun perks. My community makes it possible for me to write full-time and invest in my voice as a queer creator. Plus Patreon lets me get to know my readers — that’s you! — even better.
Ella Dawson 
Loved reading tthis thank you
Just wanted to say thanks for putting this out there. I could never fully comprehend the terms suicidal ideation until now. I have also started to delve into your other writing, including one of your posts on herpes. Sharing your experiences and knowledge is really a great service for your readers. I admire your courage in trying to shed light and educate on such personal issues.
Thanks, Rob!
Stumbled across this tonight and can really relate. Thank you for putting words to something I could not. The radio station is why I don’t go to the top of tall buildings or near cliff edges
Ella, I’ve read about you searching for some help, two years ago when i was diagnosed with HSV.
Today, I ended up here two times in a row: reading about your 3rd OB and the Suicide Radio. Im living the remix of both articles.
My dad commited suicide in 2012 and its difficult when i find myself thinking about doing the same.
Sometimes, when Suicide Radio turns loud into my life (always during OBs) I try hard to go for that challenge you mentioned: NOT OBEYING.
Thanks for writting this. Huge hug from Spain.
This is a terrific post! I learned so much from reading it and appreciate your candor. It opens up the topic of suicide in a way that I had never imagined. This was a complete illumination for me. Thank you for sharing.
Roger
Mind and Love
I loved your post. Thank you.
It’s great to get a sense of how others experience such things.
For many-a-year I experienced, what i sometimes call my ‘death wish’, almost as a business manager laying out all of my strategic possibilities with some vast existential oversight:
“Well of course those exams will be far to hard, so you could just be dead.”
Thank you for sharing, I feel a little less alone with that part of me now.
Peace and love.
Spence.
I’ve never heard the term “suicide ideation” though I’ve been treated for bi-polar disorder for decades. I’ve wanted to write about my suicidal thoughts for years now, but have only recently “come out” as a person who has suicidal “thoughts” to my friends and family. There’s a voice that always offers death as a solution. Death is the answer to everything from cleaning the house, to dealing with my degenerative disorder that has me using a wheelchair at age 58. When people wonder why some celebrity commits suicide when they seem to have everything, I know. A little soft voice told them how pleasant death would be, an end to all troubles. It never talks about the impact on your friends and family, it’s just offers rest and comfort forever. It’s like a courtship, promising that peace we all crave. I’ve had it as long as i can remember — as a young girl even — I remember suicide fantasies as early as age 12. I don’t think I’ll ever act on it, because I’ve felt the hurt the death of friends cause me. But the radio station, the spotify of suicide, is such a good metaphor. A little song, like a love song, promising so much but delivering little in reality. Thanks for this wonderful post.
Hi Ella, love your posts as always. There’s a typo in the last line –“during the volume down” should probably be “turning the volume down” yes? Feel free not to post my comment 🙂 Love and solidarity.
Oh my goodness thank you!!
I know that radio station well. I’ve learned that when it comes on, it’s time to bump my meds. It does help a lot to identify it, to put certain types of thoughts on a list that 1) I do not act upon under any circumstances, and 2) regardless of how true they seem in the moment, they are fake news.
Thank you for sharing. I’m sending you love.