Over the passed few years I have gone through varying levels of suicidal idealisaion / suicidal tendencies.

At times, I have used it as a comforting thought. I used it to get to sleep telling myself "well I could just kill myself" as a response to the numerous thoughts, worries and regrets that race through a sleeping mind... 

In conversations with family/friends I would convey that I dont want to be here, I just want it to end etc but the "want", the desire was absolutely there.

After a particularly difficult period during the last year,my thoughts towards suicide changed. I found myself in a situation where I thought I may actually kill myself, and I was scared because I no longer wanted to. There was no desire, but I thought I may actually do it to stop the unbearable situation and pain that I was in. That change from "wanting" to end my life, to it being the "only option" i could see at the time to stop the way I was feeling was a major shift and surprising to myself.

If people ask me today, or I ask myself I would say that I do not want to be here. I dont want to kill myself either, but I dont want to be here.

And then the other night something hit me for the first time. BPD is painful. Daily, intense, unpredictable pain. 

If you think about how if you had a chronic physical injury,you would have pain every day. Some days, it would be less, others it may be so much its hard to function normally. If you hurt your arm for example, there may be only certain exercises or particular movements that cause incredible pain, but others that dont.

Applying this to emotional pain makes so much sense to me. When people ask me "how are you doing?" Or "how have you been?" I normally have no clue how to answer, because overall, clearly not great. But, thinking to myself "how much pain am I in today?" Changes it completely. And, like a physical condition,some days I'm in lots of pain and others not so much. There are also some activities or situations that I realise now, are just harder for me.

Living with chronic physical pain can be incredibly debilitating, especially when a level of pain becomes your new baseline. Now, emotional pain is different but I would say stronger than physical pain, and then the bpd multiplies that by 10, so our pain is on steroids. Theres a lot of it, and its intense.

It made me realise, my desire to kill myself isn't that at all. Its a desire not be in pain anymore. This is such a painful painful experience and something that I don't think credit is given for.