I've been actively suicidal only twice in my life---once when I'd just lost my newborn daughter, and the other this past March right after I was diagnosed with bipolar. The rest of the time when I'm depressed, it's passive......like it wouldn't bother me one bit if I were to go to sleep and not wake up, or get sick and die.

Luckily, the first time I wanted to kill myself there were no means available for me to do it; I was recovering from a C-section and could barely get out of bed. The last time, I was contemplating eating the rest of the Ativan in the pill bottle, but there wasn't enough to do the job; then for awhile I fantasized about crashing my car into the center divider on the freeway at 75 MPH. However, I didn't want to take anyone else out with me, and then I figured that I'd find a way to screw up the wreck by surviving and then winding up in a nursing home for the rest of my life with permanent injuries. Nope......my life sucked badly at the time, but it wasn't worth risking THAT. So here I am, to tell the tale.