Sylvanna Devlin

Quite a while ago I tried to write an explanation of what suicidal thinking is really like and why some commit suicide young or seem at peace once the plan is made.

It helped my mother cope with a friends experience with her neighbors suicide.

How could one take on such suffering?

How could one suddenly seem at peace a few days before the planned out kind?

How does a young super star take his life when “he had everything going for him.”?

I had tried when I was 17.

I explained that with the young death there may have been pressure he was really too young to endure – at least without someone older to help offer perspective.

Great family, great girlfriend, great grades. Athletic and heading to an Ivy League.

Depression is chemical. You can’t always reason it away and can have everything going for you, be working so hard at everything expected of you, and all it does is mask misery.

From the emotional standpoint he was about to be plucked from a successful familiar life into the great unknown.

Combined they can indeed be lethal.

Death like that is usually what I call a “sudden snap”. Others likely refer to it without really understanding what happens when the pressure breaks and death becomes more inviting than life.

That was what I experienced.

I was depressed, dysphoric however so it was hard to detect from a certain wildness. I had friends over and my best friend at the time was in the next room.

I got off the phone – someone I had met in San Francisco and had a crush on was departing for Alaska to join a lucrative position on a boat- the dangerous kind made popular by TV.

We weren’t involved. We hadn’t even had sex – though we had certainly fooled around. I loved him but I wasn’t Shakespeare in love watching my heart’s desire leaving. (As the movie had it, reality is probably less exciting).

It makes no sense logically.

But I was 17. It was finals week at St Mary’s College. Expectations were high, and my learning disabilities were finally being recognized. I didn’t have a boyfriend – intellect like mine was off putting to male classmates.

But I had life and energy.

And depression.

I snapped. I swallowed pills, lots of them. Enough ritilin to cause a heart attack. I ended up in the hospital. A triage nurse was on the receiving end of a teenage attempt at death and had the unfortunate question, “And why did you take so many?”

I cocked my head to the side. “Why do you think?”

What can I say? I was 17 and it’s an understatement to say I was “in a mood”.

I somehow didn’t end up on a two week hold but I wouldn’t even take tynanol after that.

At least until 2004 when I started treatment for bipolar. I promised to to take meds and never missed a day. I was late once early on because I wasn’t used to regular medication. And that was it.

Even homeless and sleeping in my car I took my meds.

I did everything I was supposed to, ad nasium, pulled back by bullies and gaslighting, harassment and abuse.

I tried fell and again.

July 15th, 2025 I made a very serious attempt at killing myself.

I should be dead.

I saw God. It was all over for me.

But not the surgeon who couldn’t lose another that day.

A week later I woke in in a hospital bed.

I had been depressed and suicidal so long,

When the danger was acute it was ignored. When the desire to give up, the ideation, started May 2023, I warned everyone. Had my meds restricted by my choice. Fought to fight my mood and mind.

A week before my attempt I went into the hospital for a psychiatric emergency.

I fell asleep. I was safe.

I was sent home without an interview with the psychiatrist. I only met her for as she was informing me I was “okay.”

Gee thanks.

Even halfway there 30 pills of 120Xl propanol down? I called 911 and “turned myself in”

But the paramedics were bored and disinterested, and I wasn’t communicating at my best. I sent them away and took 120 pills of 15mg of buspar.

My rescue was a miracle of modern science and cutting edge medical theory. I had tried, I had fought. But one too many people said “no one can live through all that” And I agreed.

I did forgive him. But he knew never to take the desire for death lightly again. I had made a similar mistake of not listening when I was in my twenties. He lived but I cleaned the blood from the bathtub.

So I understood the mistake. But neither of us will ever make it again.

Be careful of your words, the other might not always be alive for you to take them back.

The planned kind? No to far off the sudden peace that fell over me when I was certain I was dying.

“She seemed so happy.”

My mums friend took in the pup of a woman who had suddenly seemed at peace and deliberately drowned in her pool. She put her affairs in order. She left a note. And it was going to be painful but death was alluring and waiting so the numb waiting and preparation seemed like happiness on the surface.

Really be careful. Take every impulse seriously. It’s no always time for the hospital but it’s never the time for cruelty.

You can’t always tell who is about to snap, who was ignored to her death, who is peacefully planning.

Please be more careful with your words.

I understand the exchange in that I’ve wielded words as weapons in defense. But I regret falling to nasty quick wit. I may be funny but death isn’t.