The best word I can use for the state called suicidal depression is despair. It is a state of complete disconnection and isolation from everyone and everything, a state where life is no longer worth living. Life was monochromatic, devoid of colour or brightness. There was no beauty in the world, only pain and suffering. I felt this inside myself, and I saw it reflected everywhere in the word.
And then I saw the connection between the pain that was stored inside of me and the thoughts and feelings I was harbouring as a result of this. I decided that at a certain point I was the one who was perpetuating the pain, because the causes for it had been removed from the time I left home. This reversal in my thinking, that rather than the pain coming from the outside in it was now being transmitted from the inside out, was a key step in moving forward. I decided that I needed to own my life up to that point, and everything in it, in order to begin the healing process. As long as I saw myself a victim of the circumstances of my life I was going to feel powerless to do anything about it. This shift in my thinking would be crucial to moving beyond my painful past, to go from standing at the base of the climb to stepping onto the ice and venturing upward.
