Strange

The strangest and weirdest thing about recovery is comparing who you are now to who you were before. It is also one of the most amazing and yet bitter-sweet and almost heartbreaking things.

About a year ago, the suicidal thoughts fully took hold of me, they’d been there for a year or maybe more, but I’d been preoccupied with various other things and hadn’t really given the idea of taking my own life very much thought. But for whatever reason, last March I became completely filled with a desire to fall off the face of this earth. To begin with, it was a case of wanting to disappear completely, not necessarily dying, just completely ceasing to be. There was a distinction between the two in my eyes back then and I can still sort of see where I was coming from- death is permanent and forceful and poetically ugly, whereas disappearance is nothing at all, almost beautiful in its simplicity. Of course, disappearing is just a concept and it is also impossible.
Anyway, my thoughts quickly became more violent and I found it hard to be at a train station without imagining jumping in front of a train, or be in a car without half hoping for a crash where I was the only victim, or overdosing on pills and falling into a permanent sleep. I just wanted an ending, and I somehow convinced myself that there would be no long-lasting consequences after my suicide. I’d convinced myself that everyone would be okay, that everyone would either get over it quickly or not care at all. That thought is one of the ones that scares me the most now- the fact that I was in such a dark place that I stopped believing in the love my parents had for me, in the love so many people have for me. I have friends and I have family and back then I had friends and I had family, I just couldn’t see why they’d miss me in the slightest, I just couldn’t see that my life was of value to anybody.
Even now I know that my life isn’t of any particular value to many, but it is to some and that is what matters: I am a daughter and I am a sister and I am a niece and I am a cousin and I am a granddaughter and I am a friend and I am a fellow student and I am a stranger  and there are many, many things I have yet to be. I just couldn’t see it then, I couldn’t see it at all. It’s terrifying how suicidal thoughts completely take hold of you, how you indulge the thought for one second and it becomes some kind of addiction, how not an hour goes by when the “I could always kill myself” solution pops into your head. At least that’s how it was for me, but it isn’t really a solution, because nothing is being solved at all, it’s just giving up. It sounds almost harsh, but suicide is just quitting, it’s never a solution.
It honestly makes me close to tears when I look back on how deeply unhappy I was, it’s not even like I’m totally recovered now, but I am significantly less dangerously sad than I used to be and that progress makes all the difference.

I wish I knew what it was specifically that dragged me down into the darkness and nearly made me take my own life, all I know is that it is currently nearly completely vanished and that makes me happier than I can say. For the time being, I am nowhere near losing my battle with life, for the time being I am still here and I am still living and breathing and I am still filled with hope and with potential and with love and with words and with a desire for everything to work out alright for everybody.
I wish I knew what it was that helped push me back into the light, that helped me chase away the darkness and made me believe things wouldn’t always be the way they were. I know some of the things that helped, the song ‘Color’ by The Maine usually served as a reminder that I wasn’t alone in feeling broken and the lyrics almost guided me away from my darkest thoughts, I’m not sure what it was about it, but that song honestly helped me save myself and I am forever grateful that songs like that exist. Another thing that helped was writing my thoughts and feelings down, not just on this site but in a diary as well, something about the physicality of writing your feelings down on paper with a pen and ink releases some of the pain. As well as writing my feelings, this also enabled me to write creatively as well- it hurts to be so deeply in pain that you want to take your own life, but it can lead to some amazing pieces of writing/art/music. Pain can be transformed into incredible things so that is one small bright spot about it. More than anything, though, I think I managed to save myself simply through not allowing myself to give into the thoughts entirely, I distracted myself and I coped dangerously, but I coped nonetheless. I got through it and I am still alive and I have not yet lost my hope and my compassion and my overriding belief that I can make sure that my life isn’t always dark. I can take care of myself and I can be my own best friend and I can tell everybody prepared to listen/read that it won’t always be this way.
I wish I knew when I started recovering- one of my worst days was in May, I think and another was, ironically on a family holiday in August when I was able to disguise my deep, deep sadness for when everybody was asleep. Another terrible day was my 17th birthday in December, sadly, I spent most of the day crying and hoping for it to end even as everyone around me tried to celebrate with me. It makes me shudder to think of my thoughts and the depth of my sadness on those days and of other dark, sad, lonely days and nights.

All I have left to say is to once again try to explain how completely different I feel about life and about myself and about people and about my future now compared to how I felt last year. Last year I couldn’t see myself living past 2012, now I’m studying really really hard so that I’ll be able to get into a great university in 2014 and make the most of everything I have and everything that I am. I can’t explain what made me want to die and I can’t explain what saved me and I can’t explain how it saved me specifically, but I can say that last year I would never have ever imagined being as happy as I am right now. Things are not perfect, it’s not like I’m completely surrounded by friends or never have bad days, it’s just that I find myself far more relaxed and hopeful and sociable and strong and capable of living an incredible life and doing incredible things and able to look back on who I was last year and want so badly to tell myself that it won’t always be that way, that there is hope and I won’t always be okay, but I’ll usually be okay and everything else will work itself out. It sounds incredibly patronising, but just remember that nothing is permanent and that you won’t feel terrible forever, you just have to give it time and you also have to try really really hard to not let life kill you. It is all really really hard, but you owe it to yourself not to give up. The future is yours and even if the only future you can fathom is tomorrow, work on making tomorrow bright enough to make you able to fathom the following day. It won’t be terrible forever, please don’t give up.