I know what it’s like to live suicidal.

When it comes to my personality, you could compare it to “Bones” from FOX network’s hit forensic anthropology show.

I’m logical, practical, and intelligent. I am not really capable of “shootin’ the shit.” I do not know how to have conversations like that! I don’t know how to make small talk. (Trust me, it’s true.)

I don’t know what it feels like not to have something pressing on my heart and mind 24–7, and it is not that I am not happy. I believe happy is as momentary and fleeting as any other emotion. I have a logical idea of happiness, too! Some may say that makes me broken.

If I connect with someone, in any way, it’s personal. It’s not that I do not know professional boundaries. I do. More so, I understand, more than most people, that gaining the maximum utility from any relationship requires a personal connection.

I have an incessant need to know people, and that need cannot be filled by standard, textbook definitions, of how I should relate to people or what is and is not true said any one group of people… because every single person is different. And I, more than most people, understand that, too.

It has haunted me since around the age of six. All of my life, I have silently watched and intricately listened. So, I know a thing or two about human connection. I also know a thing or to about pain, trauma, illness, and … suicide.

I guess you could say, more than most people.

In my mind, it should go without saying, if you want to connect with me, you will need to know how to connect with people… most than most people really know how to do. Which puts me in a hard position.

See, people who can do that, they’re the one-of-a-kind kind of people. You do not meet a lot of them; not in friendships, not at work, not in hospitals… and sadly, not in your counselor’s office.

I don’t see things like most people do. So, when it comes to suicide, I hate that we see it as a moment of crisis. I hate that my thirty-year fight of survival gets minimized into some little package as simple as acute life crises or mental health issues. I hate that professionals think I am one in another million people who feel, think, breathe, see, and receive life, they same way they do.

I know what it is like to live suicidal. And it’s not that I wake up every day with a gun to my face, begging the world to stop me from pulling the trigger. I don’t “lose my shit,” I don’t practice goodbye notes, I don’t make attempts (until I do) … and thinking that my life can be saved the way you would save everyone else’s… well, in my eyes, it just makes a fool out of you.

We are not all the same. Maybe, for some, suicide comes while they’re on the run, life is overwhelming, and they don’t know what to do, but there is a whole world of us out there who aren’t like those people.

There is a whole world of us who know how familiar suicide becomes when it is the only thing in your life that has ever been faithful to you. We know how normal it becomes. How routine it becomes. How much you pick your own thoughts apart and rationalize every reason behind why suicide is a logical response. Even if it’s not.

And when we get the end of our rope, it is long past the point of lost hope. We need one-of-a-kind heroes, one-of-a-kind family, one-of-a-kind crisis care workers, counselors, and one-of-a-kind doctors, too.

The kind of one-of-a-kind people who understand they can help guide you by the hand, but if they want to save you, they will have to love and connect more than most people do. The one-of-a-kind people who understand what suicide means, not to them, but to you!

We need those people.

If you or someone you love is feeling suicidal, please reach out the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 1–800–273–TALK (8255).