How to Survive (LGBTQ+)

Suicide

Trigger warning: suicide, depression

Hi.

It's me, the author. Before I start, I was reflecting on how I maintained anonymity on this, and although I don't want to give out my real name, I wanted you guys to be able to call me something to make me seem less like a ghost writer and more like a person (because I am, indeed, a person). You know what? I'm a nerd, I accept it, but call me Meredith. The one from Grey's Anatomy. She's dark and twisty. I relate to her a lot.

Okay, now that that's settled, again, just a warning to you all about triggers. I had promised to write about this a long time ago, but I'm in a better frame of mind right now so I can phrase it more eloquently.

I've never been a particularly happy person. I think the chemicals in my brain are just wired to feel more pessimistic, self-deprecating, and plain depressed. There's not much I can do besides take medication, and right now I'm trying to see if I actually need medication or not.

A little over two years ago, the really bad thing I dislike talking about happened. That, for me, was when all the energy leaked out of my body and depression enveloped my mind, without relinquishing control. To say I was suicidal is a lie, I just didn't like waking up in the morning and having to live. But to want to kill myself? No. Things got better for me around March of 2014, and then proceeded to fall into the 'for worse' category probably around November or December, with my worst being in February to April (2015).

I would say that probably during those months, maybe even in January as well, is when I started thinking about wanting to die. And, quite honestly, it's hard to type that. Because when I think about it conceptually, we as a race are meant to think about survival rather than sacrifice, perseverance rather than needing death as an escape. As I started self-harming more often, I realized that if I were to theoretically do this or that then I could effectively cease to live. And I would stand there, wondering if that's what I should do. For whatever reason, I didn't.

Those months seemed like a blur of sadness and issues, but one of the consistent memories is just being upset that I'm still alive, wishing more than anything that a car would hit me, or I could fall the wrong way down the stairs and break my neck and sever my spine, or just anything to get out of being alive. I was desperate for a way to stop, to be able to no longer experience a deep hatred for everything that I had become, and be replaced by being one with whatever occurs after death. I would have embraced hell, if there is one, because my life had turned into a nightmare for me.

Nobody knew these things. How do you kindly tell your best friend that you love her and her jokes so much, but you hope to be dead before the end of the year? How do you explain to your parents over dinner that you have been thinking about why suicide seems like a damn good prospect? How can you convince yourself that there is a reason to stick around as you cling to a drenched pillow in the dead of night as you try to stifle your emotions?

You can't.

I never really saw myself living to an old age, I saw myself dying rather early, which was what I craved. "Just off me early," I would joke, meaning every word of it.

A month or maybe a bit longer ago, I was doing one of those survey things asking you random questions, and a question on it is: How do you see yourself dying/What will you die from? I panicked. How do I possibly reply, when my only thought was '"I'm going to die from my mind. I always assumed I'm going to be the reason of my death."

That was a low point for me. Realizing that it was assumed that I would be my own downfall.

This is your wake up call.

Please, don't kill yourself.

I was in your place, I thought your thoughts and breathed the same toxic air as you. And I didn't kill myself, and because I didn't, I've started learning about happiness. Maybe you and I may never escape depression, but you need to stay alive and see that life isn't always as horrific as it currently is. I promise you, things will eventually work out.

Please stay alive.

(For phone numbers, please look at the image. Stay alive, stay safe. I love you. I promise.)