Like yesterday morning, since I have been doing okay for a while and can point to lots of joyous moments, the thought that I summoned to meet my desire to die was: “Okay, I hear you don’t want to be here anymore. This must mean that you are missing something / someone. Which means you want to be here but not without certain people or needs being met.” (My experience is less that I don’t want to be here, but more like I don’t know how.) From this place, and after a supportive phone call with a friend, I was able to talk myself down from this place. But it took a lot of energy: writing, dancing, singing, crying — just to remember that I could find ways to be okay.

I am starting a 100 days art project (which starts today). It’s my first one. You are supposed to pick a theme and, unsure if this a good idea, mine is little bits of truth that I’m not sure I’m allowed to say out loud. I think that some of the thoughts, ideas, and stories I hold on my own carry the most shame and disconnection for me, so it can help to share it.

I know I’m not the only person who has suicidal ideation and the way that these thoughts become the most dangerous to us as individuals and our communities is when people are not allowed to process and share that they are having them. So hi, I’m mads, this is an everyday part of my very normal human experience. I hope that my sharing about my insides makes all of the aliens of your mind feel welcome and normal, too.

This is one way I can summarize what I’m trying to describe. It was really healing to paint this and spend a lot of time with it! I’m not really an image person — I’m still learning how to translate what’s inside me to the outside world through images. I am, however, a words person. So I decided on this. When I showed my best friend, she said: This really doesn’t look like it took you three hours.

“Wanting to die is also hunger for a life that feels like it wants to keep you.” This is one way of thinking about my thoughts that helps me validate my pain and talk myself down from a high cliff inside me. Whenever I hear my mind say it wants to die, I feel a little ashamed and embarrassed: I have so much good to be grateful for. While this is true, the shame I feel doesn’t really help me get to an easier mental state. I’ve also experienced lots of loss and had generally a hard time in this world, some of it preventable, some of it not.

In my experience, our society is not built to hold people in grief, and unprocessed grief can sink even the sturdiest ships. I’ve had to do a lot of inner holding around grief, and grief is the biggest part of me that can’t really figure out how to be itself on this earth. Every emotion / feeling / thought is rooted in some redemptive quality, even if the shape it ultimately takes can’t be condoned by any of us. Suicidality emerged in me born from my sensitive inside world interacting with a less sensitive outside environment, and being curious about what it’s trying to tell me helps me tolerate its presence.

I often think of my feelings as people at a party inside my mind. Usually I’m not very excited to see grief or pain or suffering, but that doesn’t really make them go away — they are like the underwhelming partners of my dearest friends: I’m stuck with them. Since being unfriendly toward them doesn’t make the party any better, coming up with ways of seeing them generously but rooted in reality helps me be more welcoming and helps me figure out a creative way of being on earth and staying in relationship with all of me.

Suicide and death are difficult topics, but like it or not they are here. And, this is a time that is asking us to learn how to be with what is difficult at a pace that most of us are not used to. This is not just a crisis of physical health; this has the potential to be a major mental health crisis. I already know of one person in my extended community who has committed suicide. The less isolated we are in difficulty, the more likely we are to figure out a way to stay alive. Being with difficulty is a skill and a practice that anyone can learn and do. Humans know how to grieve and cope, but we can’t do it alone.

We can help make this world an easier place by becoming more welcoming of what doesn’t make sense to us. So much of our pain is a direct response to what we try to throw away because it makes us uncomfortable and we don’t get it. If you are someone who has never wanted to die, I think it can be easy to think that people aren’t trying hard enough or don’t want to be alive. I sometimes come to that conclusion about myself. But it’s less about not wanting to be here and more about not knowing how to be here.

We want to stay alive and in connection with each other — if we didn’t, it wouldn’t be so painful to want to leave. We belong here, to each other, and sometimes the pain of our disconnected world, dysfunctional families, systemic oppression, and senseless death is just too much to process, especially without ritual, connection, and easily accessible community. It’s more a question of figuring out how to be here in a way that feels tolerable.

To everyone struggling with having these feelings: you are not alone and you matter. To everyone struggling to understand these feelings: thank you! With patience and curiosity, you can be a loving — and maybe life-saving — resource to others.

Our thoughts and feelings are not choices, but our responses to them can be. And the more that we practice being with these difficult topics, the more people we can save in this crisis.