I’ve talked about my mental health before. 

But it’s been a while. 

I haven’t really used my journal lately, so it hasn’t come up that the age of thirty-eight has been Mental Health Awareness year for me. I’ve been reading and studying the topic and all of its treatments, mostly because late summer of 2014 was one of the darkest periods of my life.  

I’m going to go more into this later, but the short version is that I went into a deep depression that took months to shake. It left me suicidal for the first time in about five years. This was different, though. Back in 2009, I was ambivalent about living and dying—an emotional state sometimes called “passively suicidal.” Last summer, though, I was ready to actually do the work. I didn’t, because reasons. 

But it passed, and I haven’t thought about killing myself since … until three days ago. It came out of nowhere, and it’s really rattled my shit. 

I’m not depressed. To be honest, I’m feeling a little ennui, which is really not that bad. But one afternoon, while cleaning the dishes, I considered my future, and at the time, it looked pretty bleak. I thought about my miniscule contributions to society. I thought about all the crap I’ve accumulated through my life, whether they be toys or notebooks full of drawings and writings I can’t get published—or even acknowledged by my family or Facebook friends. I thought about retirement and all the work that was going to take. The logical solution, my brain said for a split second, would be to die, and to do it soon. Just get it over with. Let someone else sort it out.  

And then it was gone. I was startled and upset, but I noted my overall okay mood, and I put it behind me as a weird little fluke. 

Until it happened again yesterday. Again, only for a moment. So now I’m worried. I should probably talk to my doctor about this …