*Trigger warning - suicide* - to ask you, honestly, how common suicidal thoughts really are?

[thisisannc]

I'm currently planning my wedding to the most wonderful man - I truly feel some happiness every day that I found a partner as great for me as he is. Yet, I realised tonight that when I really think about my own future, I've always assumed I'd take my own life in the near future. It's always seemed like my 'destiny'. I feel terrible, obviously, because I'm planning a future I really do want, but don't in my heart believe I'll ever have.

I should be clear that I have absolutely no plans to hurt myself imminently - this is a feeling I've had since my early-teens, and I'm 31 now. Throughout my twenties I kept and regularly updated a note (in electronic form), ready for when the time came. I stopped doing this as it felt too self-indulgent.

I just wonder if I'm really that unusual in genuinely seeing no future for myself, despite having a great career, wonderful partner and family, etc.? It's such a triggering/upsetting subject that it would be entirely natural for friends/family to misunderstand and react as if the 'threat' is imminent, so is it the case that a great many people feel as I do but don't talk about it?

If it's at all relevant, I was treated for anorexia, bulimia, depression and anxiety for most of my mid-late teens, so I do understand I may very well not be normal.

I used to all the time as a child and way up until my 30’s - which I think was the cptsd talking. Had therapy but it didn’t really change anything. Then…Since the pandemic I’ve rarely had them. I’ve also given up around 80% of my possessions, quit most of my work with no plans to take up FT again. I’m sure most people would say it’s madness but I’ve truly become incredibly stoic over the last year and a half and rarely feel the need to have the control I think my suicidal ideation was about. If anything’s been proved in the pandemic, it’s that I have no control really and I can be ok with that in way I’ve never been before.

All the time, I know how and where.
What stops me mainly is the thought it could go wrong and then I’d be left with brain damage and in a worse position than now.
I also don’t want to die exactly...I just want this to stop. There is a subtle difference I think.
Also will to live is strong. Objectively it would be better for me to not be alive and yet there’s an annoying little voice in my head that protests every time I’ve driven to the place where I know I’d do it.