I am currently a 21 year old male (with any luck I will not live to see 22) and I have wanted to die for the past eights years. It all began in middle-school when a few unpleasant events (I prefer not to commit them to writing but suffice it to say they were very painful) at a very formative point in my youth shattered my self image and set me upon a much darker and depressing path. I became very antisocial and I began to see myself as disgusting and hate-worthy. However, at that point in time I still did not have any concrete intentions of killing myself (although I may have thought about it and I did want to die). I would tell myself that highschool would be a fresh start, that things would improve and I just might be happy. Of course when I got to highschool nothing changed, I was still miserable and lonely. Throughout highschool suicidal thoughts became fairly common for me, however, once again I told myself that once I got to college things would be different. I would be in a new city and certainly I would be happy. So instead of suicide, I began hurting myself as an expression of my self loathing and a sort of self punishment for being so disgusting. Usually this would involve cutting myself. I would cut my arms, chest, stomach, thighs, wherever really. However, I would always try to avoid the wrist area because that would be way too obvious and attract too much attention. I did not want anyone else to know I was depressed and suicidal. Even to this day nobody knows how depressed I really am, I have gotten very good at hiding my true feelings, and if anyone ever points out a new scar on my arm I always have some sort of excuse. When I commit suicide I’m sure it will be a surprise to the few people who know me. Of course I wouldn’t just limit myself to cutting as a means of inflicting pain, I would also frequently whip myself with various items leaving my back raw and red. It is important to point out that none of this was done in any sort of masochistic way, I don’t get any pleasure from hurting myself, I simply hate myself so much that I feel I deserve to be in pain.
So by distracting myself with these acts of punishment I was able to get through highschool without actually killing myself. But once I got to college, once again, absolutely nothing changed, at least not for the better. Over the past few years things have actually gotten much worse. I am more depressed and lonely than I ever was. Things have become so bad that simply observing or being in the presence of happiness actually upsets me. It can be such a small thing, for example, if I am watching a movie with a happy romance plot it will seriously fuck me up and send me into a deep melancholy that can take days to shake (no wonder my favorite movie genre is horror). This time I am not going to be so naive as to tell myself that things will get better once I go to grad school. I realize now that things will never change, I will never be happy and I will always be lonely. I feel like my heart has died and all hope has run dry. If I continue to live I will probably end up all alone in some shitty hospital years from now nothing more than an old man full of regret and begging for death. This has become my greatest nightmare, and it is to save myself from this horror that I plan on committing suicide very soon. I have been experimenting and researching different methods of suicide over the past year and I think my preferred method is hanging since I don’t own a gun and slashing wrists and overdosing seem too unreliable. Currently I have tried to hang myself a couple of times, I don’t know if you would really call them full blown suicide attempts though, it is kind of a pain in the ass since my apartment is not conducive to complete suspension hangings; I have to kneel in order to hang. So far I have only been able to get as far as seeing blackness encroach on my vision before I stand up and take the noose off. Its hard to overcome the primal urge to live when all I have to do is stand up and I’m fine. I believe my next and most serious attempt is going to be on my 22nd birthday. I think this is fitting since in recent years my birthday has become a very sad day for me. It’s a reminder that my life and youth is slipping away while I have not done anything worthwhile with either. If I manage to succeed and I do actually die I really hope there is no God because I do not want to exist anymore in any form and I certainly do not want to go to any heaven. If I were to end up in some type of heaven it would absolutely destroy me. All I want is nothingness. So until my birthday comes around here’s hopping I have an aneurism in my sleep.