What I Want You To Know When I’m in a Crisis

What I want you to know when I’m in crisis is that I probably won’t say, “I’m in a mental health crisis right now” with some laid-out spreadsheet of exactly what I need. I won’t say, “I am self-harming and plan to keep doing it.” No, when I’m in crisis, the shame for being back in this state and the crippling fear of adding one more burden to your plate when you already have so much else going on will not allow me to be so frank. My brain is screaming, “Don’t hurt yourself because it will hurt others. But maybe it won’t? But maybe it will? In which case, you are a HUGE burden to others which means they’d be better off without you…”

I fear my mental illness makes me a terrible person, friend, and member of society. The guilt is so strong that I am willing to end my life in an attempt to relieve such a burden from you and the world.

I try to compromise in an SOS message by finding a way to convey my need for help without adding to your overwhelm, but much to my shame, forming the right sentences when my body is in an altered state and my brain is screaming at me does not come easy. It’s like trying to hold a heavy conversation while at the world’s loudest and most crowded party. My failure to find the words and form the sentences (or even reach out to the right people) in these moments then feeds into my false belief that you’d be better off without me.

I might say something like, “Can I text you in the morning so you know I made it through the night lol” or “Gah, I feel like hurting myself today hah plz send help” or “I low-key wanna down something right now hah it’s okay though I don’t think I will actually do it tonight.” I know for you, the thought of my death is not funny. It’s serious. You probably wish I would be more eloquent in my wording. I worry you are mad at me for being so flippant in talking about something that for you feels so heavy. This fear makes the thoughts louder, my heart beat faster, and the cycle repeats.

I am so, so sorry.

What I want you to know is that I know it is serious. I know you care deeply and I know you are scared of what I might do to myself. I know my pain is yours too. I wrote, re-wrote, and then deleted and wrote that text again, and then I waited three hours to send it. The knowledge that you care so much is what prompts the decision to send my poorly worded text in a moment of crisis because even though I know it’s not eloquent and I am scared of hurting you, I also know you’d rather read something from me than never hear from me again.

What I also want you to know is that I’m trying. I’m trying. I’m trying. If I’ve reached out to you, it means I probably have already tried going for a walk, holding some ice cubes, snapping a rubber band on my wrist, and distracting myself with Reneé Rapp interviews (shout out to Renee Rapp—because girl, I couldn’t do this without you). I even reached out to a crisis line, but if I hear from someone I genuinely know that I am needed and I matter, I’ll be more likely to believe it. What I want you to know is that I promise I am trying to do everything I can to cope before making my burden yours.

Lastly, what I want to say is thank you. Thank you for holding my hand and breathing with me through my panic attacks. Thank you for asking me what color my socks are and what advertisements I can see on the Dunkin’ window across the road while I ride out the urges. Thanks to your help, I will get to see the early release of Wicked. Thanks to your help, I will get to watch many more sunsets over Lake Champlain. Thanks to your help, I’ll be able to rescue all the dogs (okay, maybe not ALL the dogs), have sleepovers with my nephews, and battle the next Ticketmaster “Great War” to secure Taylor Swift concert tickets. In case I don’t say it enough, and I don’t think I ever could, thank you for saving my life. I couldn’t have made it this far without you.

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Whatever you are facing, there is always hope. And we will hold on to hope until you’re able to grasp it yourself. If you’re thinking about suicide, we encourage you to use TWLOHA’s FIND HELP Tool to locate professional help and to read more stories like this one here. If you reside outside of the US, please browse our growing International Resources database. You can also text TWLOHA to 741741 to be connected for free, 24/7 to a trained Crisis Text Line counselor.