At 27, I’ve settled into a comfortable coexistence with my suicidality. We’ve made peace, or at least a temporary accord negotiated by therapy and medication. It’s still hard sometimes, but not as hard as you might think. What makes it harder is being unable to talk about it freely: the weightiness of the confession, the impossibility of explaining that it both is and isn’t as serious as it sounds. I don’t always want to be alive. Yes, I mean it. No, you shouldn’t be afraid for me. No, I’m not in danger of killing myself right now. Yes, I really mean it.
How do you explain that?
You could take Marin Preda’s approach: use suicide as a figurative escape hatch that you don’t have to use, but gives you the solace that there is a choice, which helps make other choices in an absurd world, which paradoxically makes it easier to endure through absurd situations.