This doesn’t have to be the end: Therapist reacts to “Fade to Black” by Metallica
“Things not what they used to be
Missing one inside of me
Deathly lost, this can't be real
Cannot stand this hell I feel
Emptiness is filling me
To the point of agony
Growing darkness taking dawn
I was me, but now he's gone.”
“Fade to Black” lyrics by Metallica
The first two verses do a really good job of capturing what suicidality feels like.
“Life, it seems, will fade away
Drifting further every day
Getting lost within myself
Nothing matters, no one else
I have lost the will to live
Simply nothing more to give
There is nothing more for me
Need the end to set me free.”
It’s saying, “I don't want to be here anymore, and I don't have anything else I can try to do to get out of this place. I'm just literally begging to be set free. All I'm looking for is freedom from this pain.”
“Fade to Black” is such a relatable song for anyone who has experienced the depths of the pain of not wanting to exist anymore. This captures this belief that people with suicidal ideation might have, which is that the end is freedom, that the only thing I can do to escape this is die.
This idea of “emptiness is filling me” is so powerful and so profound. Often when people get to a point of suicidal ideation, it's one of two things: it's either the pain that they are feeling is so big, so huge that they feel like they can't overcome it, or it’s the emptiness. Not feeling anything at all is a different kind of pain. That can also lead to suicidal ideation and a desire to die, because it is so jarring to a human who is meant to experience and feel so many things to just feel empty, to just feel numb, to just not feel anything.
Now, suicidal ideation is a choice point, and the end of suicidal ideation will set you free in one of two directions. False freedom, which is death, because you can't actually be free if you are not living anymore. Or true freedom, which is found through healing.
Stay with me. Suicidal ideation is on the right track thinking that something needs to change, that you cannot keep on living and feeling this way. What suicidal ideation is not good at is being a compass. The direction that this compass is pointing leads to a decision that is not the best decision.
The problem with suicidal ideation is the direction the feeling is pointing us towards is not that something in us needs to change, but that something in us needs to die. Actually, the pain in us needs to die, but this suicidal ideation points in the direction of the wrong death. The right death is our pain. The death of pain comes from an action that is oriented towards healing, not towards ending.
The end of this song is actually super important because it sounds really powerful. I know that it is probably not meant this way, but we can use it this way. Most people think that suicidal ideation, that the desire to die, is the problem. But I know the real problem is the action that that desire inspires. As a therapist, I have also seen the same desire to kill the pain be the thing that changes someone's life.
So I want you, when you listen to this song, instead of pointing your pain compass in the direction of “I want to die and I'm going to take my life,” to point your pain compass in the direction of “I'm going to say goodbye to the pain. I'm going to focus on killing the pain instead of focusing on killing my entire being.”
Pain will make us feel like we are it and that to escape it, we have to kill our whole selves. But the truth is, is you can scream the end of this song. You can scream goodbye and use this song as catharsis to kill the pain inside of you while also using your voice, which is a vital part of living empowered.
I don't want you to bury those feelings. I want you to allow them to exist, but to allow the direction they point you in, the action they ask of you, to change. Instead of, “I need to kill everything I am,” I want you to say goodbye to that. Goodbye to pain. Every goodbye has a hello on the other side. Say hello to the new, say hello to the healing.
If you’re ready to get started, a great place to go is our anonymous support forum, where we’ll answer your post and encourage you to choose life today.
