My lived experience of suicide, BPD, heartbreak, and choosing life one day at a time.

Suicide is a really heavy, deep and troubling topic, but today, I want to delve into it and share my own lived experience that I have never publicly shared before.

I believe this article is timely also because just recently a South African footballer who played in the World Cup took his own life when he returned home to SA; and a Ghanaian man, admired and loved by many, also allegedly recently took his life.

Suicide is a topic we shy away from but it is a subject that deserves to be addressed and understood fully.

Here are some statistics:

More than 720,000 people die by suicide every year worldwide.

That means approximately:

• 1,970 deaths every day
• 82 deaths every hour
• One death approximately every 43 seconds

Suicide accounts for more than 1 in every 100 deaths globally.

Around 73% of suicides occur in low- and middle-income countries.

For every person who dies by suicide, more than 20 other adults are estimated to attempt suicide.

One statistic that surprises many people:

• Suicide is the third leading cause of death worldwide among people aged 15–29 years.

This is one reason suicide prevention has become such a major global public health priority.

When I was at the University of Ghana, I attempted suicide, an actual attempt. I had an interaction with someone I considered the absolute love of my life. We were in a relationship for a period of time, broke up, and then had this weird on and off thing happening, but I was deeply in love with him. He was everything to me. He came by my hostel one night and called me to come downstairs. I didn’t know if he was there to see me or other friends, but I went down all the same. We leaned against his car and kissed for a bit. A few moments later, we were interrupted by someone who called his name loudly. He pulled back quickly and his hand “shoved” me back just a little bit. It wasn’t a hard shove, but it was a gesture to indicate distance. I was stunned. The person who called his name came over to us. They hugged and started talking animatedly. I stood there for a bit, awkwardly, and then said to him that I needed to get back to my room. He simply said okay. My heart dropped. I felt so hurt, broken, discarded and embarrassed. I walked away silently and stoically. I went up the stairs quietly, no tears, nothing. Then I went to my room, went out to the balcony which overlooked the car park and stared at him talking to a group of friends. I was staying at the International Students Hostel, and my room at this time directly overlooked the car park. After staring at him for a little bit, I pulled a knife from the drying rack. There was no cooking allowed in the rooms, so my roommate and I had a mini kitchen on the balcony. I dropped down onto the floor of the balcony, took a deep breath and used the knife to slice my wrist with as much force as I could muster. It cut, but it wasn’t deep. Only a trickle of blood came out. My roommate and I’s knives had been blunt for weeks and we had talked about getting them sharpened but we never did because they managed to slice through soft tomatoes and bread and we didn’t even cook much. That was when I started crying, when I realized I had failed at even ending my life. I stared at the little trickle of blood and bawled my eyes out. My roommate showed up sometime later when I was still on the balcony, on the floor, with the knife, sobbing. She sat down beside me and held me, told me she saw my ex earlier and was coming to find me, to check up on me. In between sobs, I told her what happened. She did what most friends would do, eviscerated him completely, all the while removing the knife from my hand and cleaning up the little trickle of blood.

To this day, sometimes I glance at my wrist, and I can see the little line, my reminder of a pain that took me to a brink I didn’t expect to reach. I loved this person hopelessly and his hand on my chest, the little shove, it felt like he had reached into my heart and crushed it. At that age, in my early twenties, I didn’t know I had borderline personality disorder (BPD), but learning about the condition now, I know that is what I was going through, a deep, unbearable emotional pain and self-harm often associated with the disorder.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is associated with a genuinely elevated risk of suicidal thoughts, attempts and death. A 2025 meta-analysis involving 35 studies and more than 34,000 people with BPD estimated lifetime rates of approximately 80% for suicidal thoughts, 52% for suicide attempts and 6% for death by suicide. Earlier literature often quoted a figure of up to 10% for suicide mortality.

Basically, 80% of BPD sufferers will consider suicide, 52% will attempt it and 6-10% will succeed.

The connection between BPD and suicide is not simply that people with BPD are “impulsive.”

Several features can converge during a crisis:

• emotions may become extraordinarily intense very quickly;
• rejection, abandonment, conflict or perceived humiliation may produce overwhelming psychological pain;
• thinking may temporarily become rigid; e.g., this will never end; nothing can repair this;
• impulsivity can shorten the interval between suicidal thoughts and action;
• identity disturbance, emptiness, shame and self-hatred may intensify the wish to escape;
• dissociation can reduce a person’s sense of connection to themselves, their body or the consequences of an action.

All of that was me at that moment when I attempted. I was hurting badly. I was in a lot of pain. I felt rejected. It was a crisis, and I desperately wanted to shut it all down. It wasn’t just about him, to be honest. I felt completely worthless, that nobody I wanted me, truly wanted me. I was in my early twenties, and I was overwhelmed by crippling emotions. My roommate and I never discussed the incident again and I never told anyone, except my therapist and psychiatrist decades later, and now you, my readers.

Prior to that incident at the University of Ghana, I had made at least two attempts to run away from home. That was how bad I was managing my emotions. Sometimes you watch western movies that involve kids and teens acting out and running away and wonder how or why they do that. I’ve done that before, so I know how and why. There is this burning need in your soul to stop the pain. Once, I walked from Airport Residential Area (where Best Western Hotel, Airport, currently is) to the University of Ghana, due to a conflict at home, and attempted to find my cousins who lived on campus. I ran from the house and walked the entire way to Legon. I got to the main entrance of the University before I was found and scooped up. I either walked barefoot or my slippers were terribly worn because my feet were scarred and I couldn’t walk for a couple of days. It wasn’t my last attempt at running away.

Running away, self injury and suicide are all usually attempts to regulate unbearable emotion, interrupt dissociation, punish oneself or communicate distress that feels impossible to express verbally. These are not attention seeking or manipulative actions.

A couple of years ago, I came across a screenshot (find below) that summarized suicide really succinctly for me and I have used this analogy in several posts since. Someone is on fire and is in pain, unbearable, excruciating pain, and they feel trapped in this burning building, with no way out of the fire, except to jump through a window, which presents certain death. There is no logical thinking happening, all the person knows is that they are on fire and they need it to STOP. The challenge for most observers is that we cannot see the fire that the sufferer is going through. We just see that they are home and fine and managing, but we cannot see the unimaginable pain racking their minds and bodies. So we judge only based on what we can perceive, and that is usually nowhere close to the real picture.

A few critical things to note about suicide.

First, suicide is usually not about wanting to die.

One of the strongest findings in suicidology is that: most suicidal people do not primarily want death.

They want:

• unbearable psychological pain to stop
• hopelessness to end
• shame to end
• emotional suffering to stop
• a problem they believe cannot be solved to disappear

Researchers sometimes call this psychache (Edwin Shneidman).

In other words: suicide is often an attempt to escape intolerable suffering rather than a genuine desire for nonexistence.

Another personal example I would like to share.

When my son was five years old, there was a threat to have him removed from me. It was a real and palpable threat. I collapsed onto the floor, crying, pleading, screaming, and in the middle of my emotional breakdown, I started to think about what pills I had at home to call it a day if he was taken from me. I thought about it and I meant it, clear as day. I knew I would not survive losing him, and I had no plans to endure that loss. So I thought of pills. The threat to take him was neutralized, but the pain did not ebb away easily. I confessed to my mom and my aunt that night that if the situation had happened, I planned to take pills. I would be done. If he is taken, I will be done. My aunt prayed for me and my mother hid all pills, a futile attempt to stop something that couldn’t be stopped if I meant it. That threat, that incident, is still a trauma that weighs on me. I was completely and absolutely certain of what I would do.

Second, suicide is usually multifactorial.

There is almost never one cause.

Instead, suicide usually develops from multiple interacting factors:

• depression
• bipolar disorder
• substance misuse
• trauma
• PTSD
• chronic pain
• financial crisis
• relationship loss
• unemployment
• social isolation
• discrimination
• family conflict
• severe physical illness
• previous suicide attempts

Research consistently finds that suicide emerges from an interaction between vulnerabilities and acute stressors rather than a single event.

I can understand and agree with this research. My attempt at the University of Ghana wasn’t just about the “shove”, it was about all the other times I felt rejected, by that particular person and by others, all the times I felt unloved and unwanted. It was accumulated pain. It was also depression, BPD, PTSD, family conflict and several things all at once.

Third, previous suicide attempts are the strongest predictor of a future attempt.

Among all known risk factors: A previous suicide attempt is the single strongest predictor of future suicide. WHO identifies this as the most important individual risk factor.

And this is the data that got me onto anti-depressants.

In 2024, when my well-known (if you’ve been following along on my journey) and devastating heartbreak (discard) happened, I completely unraveled. I was broken. I was undone. Days later, I was hospitalized due to the trauma and the impact on my immune system. As soon as I was discharged, recovered at home for a bit, and showed up to my therapy appointment, my therapist insisted I had to go on anti-depressants, whether I wanted to or not. He even considered psychiatric hospitalization for me. It was that bad. He knew he was dealing with a patient who had attempted suicide before based on an earlier heartbreak, a patient who struggled with big emotions, who had run away from home before, and who had just been hospitalized because of breakup trauma. It was all a catalyst for something that could happen again. I was caught between a rock and a hard place. I did not want medications because I feared the meds would change me, but I also did not want to be admitted to a psych ward. I felt it would impact my life and my future. But I was suffering deeply. I was a mess. I was struggling to cope. My life was at risk, so eventually I accepted the anti-depressants.

Two things saved my life the period following the devastating discard – the medications which dialed down the emotions, and my son.

I remember once, when I told my ex that people with BPD struggle with suicide, he said to me, ‘but you can never do that right, you have Kojo.’ He was right about that. My son kept me going, he keeps me going. I never want to lose him, and I never want him to lose me, ever. It doesn’t mean I didn’t get to the brink following the heartbreak, but the thought of my son losing me is incredibly painful. I would be lost without him, and I know he would be lost without me too. I clung to that, in addition to popping much needed pills!

Fourth, related to my comments above, social connection is protective.

One of the most replicated findings is that people are less likely to die by suicide when they experience:

• belonging
• supportive relationships
• feeling understood
• feeling valued
• hope
• access to care

Conversely, perceived isolation and feeling like a burden are associated with increased risk.

I have hinged my life on my son. Obviously, someone would say that has its own risks. What if my son and I become estranged in the future? What if he leaves me, abandons me? I have decided that what is important to me, for my survival, is my love for him, and not the other way around. So long as he exists, I will love him and I will live to be around for him. It is somewhat unhealthy, I know, but it is what I have for now. He is my anchor, my tether, nothing else seems to have as much weight as living for my son. I don’t really have a sense of belonging without that.

Recently, I wrote about loneliness, an article published on my Substack that spurned deep reactions from readers. I am lonely, I am not going to lie about that. I seek mature, healthy, supportive partnership and friendships, but I am also afraid, of rejection, abandonment, of pain. I don’t want to suffer the way I have in the past. I don’t want to be hurt. I don’t want to be let go like I mean nothing. And so I hide and focus on what is in front of me, the son who depends on me. Relationships are costly, and I fear the next one could cost me my life for sure. And so I focus on my son, healing myself, and stabilizing and maintaining a decent life. I do wish I had more in my life, but I don’t yet have the capacity or the skills to risk going for more. Maybe someday.

Last but not least, suicide is preventable.

Evidence-based interventions include:

• restricting access to highly lethal means
• effective treatment of mental disorders
• crisis intervention
• safety planning
• follow-up after hospital discharge
• responsible media reporting
• community education
• reducing stigma around seeking help

WHO considers suicide a preventable public health problem.

Effective treatment has helped me. Crisis intervention has helped me. Safety planning has helped me. I actually have a suicide safety plan (it is necessary for me).

I also want to share some misconceptions that research has overturned.

Myth: "People who talk about suicide won't do it."

Evidence: Many people who die by suicide communicated distress beforehand, directly or indirectly.

Myth: "Talking about suicide puts the idea into someone's head."

Evidence: Research consistently shows that asking someone about suicidal thoughts does not increase suicide risk. In fact, asking in a compassionate, non-judgmental way can reduce distress and help connect someone with support.

Myth: "Suicide happens without warning."

Evidence: While some suicides appear impulsive, many people exhibit warning signs, behavioral changes, or escalating distress before an attempt. Recognizing and responding to those signs can be lifesaving.

It is also important to add that most people who experience suicidal thoughts do not go on to die by suicide. Suicidal thoughts are a sign of overwhelming distress, not an inevitable outcome. With timely support, effective treatment, and human connection, recovery is possible.

There is active suicidal ideation which involves actual planning, thinking and a resolve to go through with the act. There is also passive suicidal ideation where fleeting thoughts of ending things may occur, but there is no specific plan or follow-through. I have experienced both – active and passive.

When the breakup occurred, nearly two years ago in August 2024, I sent a text to my therapist following a session where he made all efforts to get me to hold onto life. In my text I said to him, ‘whatever the outcome, whatever happens to me, know that I fought hard, please don’t ever forget that I fought hard. I want to be here. I am fighting to be here.’

The core of that message still stands today. Each day I am fighting through pain, through illness, through grief and loss, through loneliness, through anguish, to be here. That is why I wrote the article The Fight Within (on Substack). You may not see the fight. I may not show it. Yet I am fighting, every single day, I am fighting to be here, to still be here, for my son, and for myself.

For the millions we have lost through suicide, for the close friends and family, for the colleagues, you have to know, just as I wanted my therapist to know, that they fought hard too. I know they did. They fought hard. They didn’t just give up. They fought hard. We are all fighting hard, through incredible odds and pain and illness. So please, when you hear someone didn’t make it, don’t judge, don’t assume they took the easy way out or they gave up, please don’t. And when you know someone is suffering, do some research, find ways to be supportive, to be safe, to be kind, to be empathetic, to be compassionate. So many are carrying demons that we cannot imagine. Kindness is so critical at this time.

I have not forgotten my fellow persons of faith. God is a constant for me, and it is through Him that I remain in this fight. Whatever we are holding on to, faith or otherwise, we are fighting. Be in the fight with us, not against us. Be gentle with your critique and your judgment.

I wish everyone long life, health and safety.

By Boakyewaa Glover

Boakyewaa Glover is a Ghanaian writer, organizational psychologist, and mental health advocate whose work centers on high-functioning mental illness, trauma, and emotional resilience.

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