I've tried participating here before but could never get past the feeling of being lost in the crowd. There are so many others here who are known and recognized and get hugs and so forth. I'll never be one of those, just the anonymous lurker.

I don't expect anyone to have an answer. I've been through all the meds and the major therapies and ECT. It's treatment resistant and that's that.

For several years I've been trying to adjust to the fact that it's the "new normal," but no matter how hard I try to convince myself that that's okay, the feeling never lasts for long. Within an hour or a day or two I'm always back to talking myself out of ending this. Every ten minutes or hour or two it pops into my mind unbidden and I have to consciously fight it off.

It's exhausting. For a while I held out hope that if I held on long enough things would get better. It's what everyone and every book tells me. But it's not true. Not for all people. I've been lied to so much - including by myself - that I no longer believe it. I have come to view "it gets better" as propaganda, a delusion. It's just a thing people say. Most of them have no idea what they're talking about. I don't blame them - how could they say otherwise? It would be cruel and unethical not to lie to us.

I have no evidence to suggest it will get better. I keep telling myself, if this is how it has to be, well, better to curl up in a corner and cringe for the rest of my natural life than to inflict on others the pain that would ensue if I were to exit by my own hand. The sum total of all pain I could possibly feel over the next 20 or 30 years is as nothing compared to the pain so many others would feel, and for far longer, were I to leave.

So far that has kept me from taking the last step. For several years now I've held on by keeping that thought in mind, but it increasingly seems to be a delusion. My confidence and my strength are eroding, and I worry about waking up one day soon and finding I can no longer endure.

As I said, I realize no one has the answer and I'm not expecting anyone here to have one. I don't expect anything out of this. It struck me just now that if maybe somebody else who's in the same situation reads this and realizes he or she isn't alone, then maybe that's enough.