I’ve been doing well for 3 years now without any violent outbursts or suicide attempts. I’ve been on a really helpful medicine that helps me stay on my good side and I’ve adapted some peaceful mindsets to avoid letting small conflicts really get to me. But for a while now, a creeping thought has been popping into my mind, and I can’t get it to go away for good.

I think I’ve been avoiding and distracting myself from this thought, but as I’ve learned many times over the years, these thoughts always come back bigger and stronger if I don’t resolve them. You see, two years ago I began dating the most wonderful and loving person I have ever known. 

Things have been great and she’s supported me through my journey to sound mental health. But I’m afraid that losing her to some tragedy will very quickly send me into a downward spiral of self destruction. I know that life is a fragile thing and tragedy can strike and pull the rug out from under me at any time, and that makes me realize how little there is between me and suicide. 

It’s not that I view all my relationships as being small, but my sensitivity to emotional pain is so high that something like the death of a loved one could utterly shatter my psyche and drive me to end my own life. I’m deathly afraid that I’ll get a call that some unavoidable accident has happened and the person I hold the closest will be gone. It scares me to think about what I would become and my biggest fear of suddenly falling back into the awful, near death condition I was in 3 years ago that I escaped by some miracle.

So my question is, how can I deal with this fear? How can I set up a plan to make sure I don’t completely lose myself when something tragic happens?