Theology of Wanting to Die

I didn’t mean to write this today. Honestly, I was just trying to escape the noise — ducking into a coffee shop, scrolling through the news on my phone, hoping for something numbing. Then another headline popped up about a celebrity who had died by suicide. My stomach dropped, not from shock anymore but from recognition. That quiet, heavy recognition: I know that place.

If you’ve never been there, it’s hard to explain. If you have, you already feel the edges of the room tightening as you read this. I’ve been in that room more than once. I’ve sat at my kitchen table with my hands folded like prayer, not because I was praying, but because I didn’t know what else to do. People think despair is loud, but the moment you decide you might actually go through with it, a strange calm arrives. It’s eerie, almost sacred.

In my Catholic childhood I was taught that God was in silence. I didn’t expect to find Him sitting across from me on the night I almost ended everything.

I’ve lost friends to suicide. I’ve attempted it myself. Those sentences still feel like they belong to someone else, but they don’t. They’re mine. And if you’re here, reading this, maybe you’ve brushed up against that same dark stillness. Maybe you’ve wondered if wanting to die makes you selfish or broken or unforgivable.

This isn’t a sermon. It’s not a manual. It’s just a story about what it feels like to live in the wanting — and sometimes to live through it.

I call it a theology not because I have answers, but because I’ve been searching for language big enough to hold the experience. Faith, doubt, despair, hope — these aren’t opposites; they’re siblings at the same dinner table. When I write about wanting to die, I’m also writing about wanting to be seen, wanting to be spared, wanting to be forgiven. That’s what I mean by theology: an attempt to name the sacred in a place everyone else calls profane.

The first time I thought about dying

The first time I thought about dying I was fifteen, sitting in the back pew of a small Catholic church, counting the ceiling tiles because I didn’t know how to pray anymore. My friends were making college plans. I was memorizing the Stations of the Cross like escape routes. Nobody suspected a thing. I was still funny in the hallways. Still turning in my homework on time. Still wearing the face of a person who was fine.

At home, my bedroom light leaked under the door while my parents watched TV. I wrote in a spiral notebook — not poetry, not a suicide note, just fragments. My handwriting looked like someone else’s. Some nights I’d trace the edges of my wrist and wonder if anyone would notice. Other nights I’d stare at the crucifix above my bed and whisper, “If You’re there, say something.”

He didn’t. Or maybe I didn’t hear Him.

The calm before

Years later, during my first attempt, the calm was the strangest part. You’d expect chaos or panic, but instead there was this stillness. Like a snow globe after the flakes have settled. I remember thinking: this is the most peaceful I’ve felt in months. It’s the moment outsiders call selfish. It doesn’t feel selfish. It feels like exhaling after holding your breath for too long.

When I woke up, everything smelled like disinfectant. The lights were too bright. Someone had written my name on a plastic wristband as if I might forget who I was. A nurse asked if I believed in God. I said, “Sometimes.” She nodded like she understood.

Nobody told me recovery wouldn’t be linear. Nobody told me you can survive and still want to die. Nobody told me survival can feel like failure, too.

The friends I lost

I carry them like prayer beads: the friends who didn’t make it. We met in dorm rooms, in waiting rooms, in group therapy circles where we traded gallows humor like baseball cards. One by one, they slipped away.

At their funerals, people said the usual things — “If only we’d known,” “They had so much to live for,” “They seemed happy.” And I stood there, nodding politely, screaming inside: We did know. We do know. You just didn’t want to see it.

Losing them cracked something in me. It made me angry at God, at systems, at the way we talk about mental health like it’s a weather report: passing storms, chance of sun.

It also made me hold on tighter. Not to life, exactly, but to honesty. I stopped telling people I was “fine” when I wasn’t. I stopped treating my survival like an embarrassing secret.

The myths we believe

There’s a myth that suicide is selfish. Another that it’s cowardly. Another that talking about it will “plant ideas” in someone’s head. All of these are wrong.

What I’ve learned, sitting on both sides of the equation — the one who wants to die and the one who’s left behind — is that wanting to die is often about wanting the pain to stop, not about wanting life to end. It’s not weakness. It’s not moral failure. It’s a human response to overwhelming pain.

My Catholic upbringing taught me suicide was a mortal sin. For a long time, that theology was a weapon I used against myself. But buried inside it was a question: if even Christ could cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” then maybe despair isn’t absence of faith but part of it.

The search for language

That’s why I call this a theology. Because sometimes the only way I can survive is to imagine there’s a shape to the suffering. A story bigger than mine. Some mornings I pray. Some nights I swear. Some days I write posts like this and hit “publish” even though it scares me.

I don’t know what you believe. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. But if you’re still reading, you know what it’s like to scroll at 2 a.m. looking for words that won’t judge you. I wrote this for you.

The ritual

Here’s something that helped me, and maybe it will help you. It’s small. It’s strange. But it’s a way of reclaiming your own story.

Write your own obituary. Not the one you fear people will write. The one you’d want. Fill it with the things you’ve loved, the places you’ve seen, the jokes you’ve told, the people you’ve held. Then, at the very end, add one thing undone. One thing still waiting for you.

It doesn’t have to be profound. It could be “teach my niece to swim.” “See the Northern Lights.” “Finish that stupid crossword puzzle.” Something unfinished, still calling you forward.

That little undone thing is a thread back to life. It doesn’t solve everything. But it’s a start.

If you’re here

If you’re here because you’re hurting, I want you to know you’re not alone. I know that sounds like a cliché, but it’s true. There are people who will sit with you in the dark without trying to fix you. There are hotlines. There are therapists. There are friends who don’t even know yet that they’re going to save your life just by picking up the phone.

I’m not here to preach or prescribe. I’m here to say: I’ve been where you are. I still visit sometimes. And I’m still here. That counts for something.

Closing

Wanting to die is not the end of your story. It’s a chapter. A painful, complicated, holy chapter. It can feel like a theology — a dark liturgy you never asked to practice. But even here, in the wanting, there is the possibility of grace.

I used to think redemption meant coming back shiny and whole, the prodigal returned, the testimony tied with a bow. Now I think maybe redemption is just staying. Waking up one more morning than you thought you could. Sitting at the kitchen table with the coffee still bitter and the sun still half-hearted, and saying quietly to no one in particular, I’m still here.

That’s holy work too.

Some days the only prayer I have is breathing. Other days it’s sending a meme to a friend just to make them laugh. Sometimes it’s crying in the car and then still showing up to work. That’s survival, yes—but it’s also worship in its rawest form. Because when you stay, when you take one more breath in defiance of the voice that says you shouldn’t, you’re declaring something profound: that your existence is its own kind of faith.

You don’t have to be “better” to be loved.
You don’t have to be “strong” to stay.
You don’t have to have a five-year plan or an Instagram-worthy recovery arc.
You just have to have one thing undone. One small, ridiculous reason to stay curious about tomorrow.

Maybe that reason is a song you haven’t heard live yet.
Maybe it’s your dog’s head tilting when you say his name.
Maybe it’s the smell of rain on hot pavement, or the way the ocean doesn’t care who you are when you walk into it.
Maybe it’s just the hope that this ache might one day mean something to someone else.

The theology of wanting to die is also the theology of wanting to live — even if you don’t call it that yet. It’s the space between giving up and giving in. It’s the heartbeat that keeps going when you swear you’re done. It’s the whisper that says, What if?

If you’re reading this in the middle of the night, scrolling because sleep feels impossible and silence too loud, let this be a small light in the dark: you’re not alone. There are people—some of them complete strangers—who are holding out hope for you when you can’t hold it for yourself.

Maybe God is one of them.
Maybe you are too.

So, stay. For the undone things. For the tiny mercies. For the chance to rewrite what surviving looks like.

And if you ever forget how to pray, just breathe.
If you ever forget why you’re still here, remember: you are part of someone else’s unfinished miracle.

That’s the theology I’m building—one breath, one page, one trembling act of staying at a time.