Precursor: This is a long one. I'm not in danger nor do I need help.
I'm in my forties. I've moved countries right before COVID due to my situation, married and have 2 children.
I screwed life up when I was young, grew up to be made to feel like my life and my situation were completely my fault and that I was worthless. I ran across the road when I was 8 and thought I would be able to get across before the cars coming down the road. I was hit in the back, slid up the good to the windshield, cracked it, flew forward 100 ft, and landed on my chin, clinically dead. My parents were able to resuscitate me through CPR, and I was in a coma for 2 weeks. Brain damage and lack of oxygen while I was dead was so severe that I had to learn how to talk, walk, basically start life over at that point. Also had to overcome paralysis on my entire right side during this. Going back to school and getting ridiculed for 'being dumb enough to get hit by a car' for years by my cousins who were in my class made me first want to kill myself when I was 10. It never stopped.
After so long of being made to feel that way the darkness, depression and self-loathing became home. I found comfort in the pain. I was sad all the time. It was torture and I hated it, but it was the only thing that was there for me. Cried myself to sleep for years thinking about how bad it would make my parents to bury one of their own children and kept hanging onto the desire to end it without actually doing anything. Painful music and the darkness were my companions. It became high-functioning depression. I've read about the psychological attachment to despair and depression, and that became part of me.
I got married when I was 23, had kids when I was 28. Life changed.
Going back to when I was 25, after 15 years of daily suicidal depression during my formative years, I got really drunk and cut into my wrists for two hours and tried to drown myself in a tub as well while listening to some soul--crushing music. There are a few details I won't add here as well due to their personal nature. My sister ended up breaking into my apartment as I pulled myself out of the tub soaking wet as I didn't want her to see me in there.
I got medication and after finding out which one worked, life was good for a long time. I just skipped meds for a couple of days because I wanted to test the waters. The amount of emotion I've not felt in two decades. I need the pain. I know I can't kill myself (absolutely will not sure that to my kids), but the deep internal cut of pain is where I am thriving. I put on some music that brings me there, and it's the best and the worst at the same time. I can't describe how much I love it.
The thrill and existential neurochemical high of the bottom is my love. I'm not going back to not having emotion anymore. I'll weep and loathe myself during my alone time, loving the thought that the end will come, and knowing the eternal struggle that I can't bring it about. Man I've missed this.
That's all. Just felt like sharing. The doom doesn't always mean it needs help.