You need to read this if you have ever wanted to die. It’s long, but please read it.

You need to read this if you have ever: Wanted to kill yourself. Thought about death. Thought about who would and wouldn’t care. Thought you weren’t good enough. Looked at yourself in the mirror and hated what you saw. Starved yourself. Threw your food up. Made yourself work out excessively. Cut yourself. Burned yourself. Scratched yourself. Hurt yourself. Made yourself feel bad about who you are. Cut people out of your life. Been cut out of someone’s life. Taken pills. Written notes to yourself about what you should be and what you aren’t. Looked at someone and wished you were them. Cried yourself to sleep. Had someone promise they wouldn’t leave you and then they left you. Been used. Lied to. Hurt. Pain. Feel like there is no reason to live.

How many times have you heard someone tell you it gets better, and it just gets worse? How many pills have you been put on? Counseling? How many times has someone you loved held you and told you that you would be ok? Yeah…I know. A lot. I can pin point the day my life spiraled out of control. I remember being happy. Having innocence. I remember being a little kid and having fun. But all it takes is one thing to fuck your life up, and sometimes you can remember what it was that made you so cold, and sometimes you can’t. The day my life started to collapse was when I was just in 6th grade, almost 7th. I had a group of friends that always hung out with me. They were all skinny, and pretty. I was the fat girl though. They talked about me, they told me I COULD be pretty if I lose weight. I was always put in the back of pictures because I was FAT. We also danced together and had a dance group. We were going to try out for a talent show, and we had the chance to be in a play. I remember by then I had started running everyday. I didn’t want to be in the back of the group because I was FAT. It was 2 miles every morning, and then eventually became at night also. 4 miles in a day, and I lost weight dramatically. I had started depriving myself of food, and in just a month I had lost 40 pounds. I went from 160 to 120. I was so proud, but so weak. I still remember freaking out before the competition because I thought I looked too fat. I starved that day so I could look good for the audition. I was so weak, I could barely lift my dance partner. But, I felt so good in the leggings I was wearing…until I looked in a mirror that is.
We lost the competition….and about a week later I lost one of my friends…she said I was becoming a different person….so we kicked her out of the dance group. I lost more weight, and still needed to lose more. I began running 4 miles in the morning, and 4 at night. I didn’t eat until dinner, and I ate an ounce of oatmeal and a salad. I cried every night at how fat I looked. And eventually, my starving became binging and purging. I still remember getting a message on my facebook saying, “Liv, I’ve noticed the weight you keep losing, and I can’t deal with it. You’re hurting yourself and me…we can’t be friends right now..I am sorry.” She was the leader of our dance group so dance fell apart after that. Everybody stopped talking to each other, and after that I felt like I was on my own.  I lost more and more weight, and got down to 98 pounds by December.  I was so so sick…and my bones protruded at every angle. I was diagnosed with anorexia/bulimia, and my doctors and parents helped me gain weight…more like forced. I was so depressed that I resulted in cutting myself. From there on, things only got worse.
By 8th grade my best friends left me cause they couldn’t deal with me. I still remember sitting on my bed with my brother’s cub scout knife and pressing it into my wrist. I slowly dragged it down my veins, watching blood dribble out and all over the wash cloth. My pet rats died and then my grandpa, within two months from each other. I met a guy named Alex and I fell in love with him. He was my first love. We were in a long distance relationship for 6 months. It wasn’t a really long time, but let me tell you, when you feel like there is nothing to live for anymore, and like every damn day is the same thing, it’s a LONG time. He made me feel pretty and happy, and I was never so connected with anyone in my whole entire life. When I was talking to him I was the only person in the world with him, and together we were invincible. We had arranged plans to meet, and on December 19th he was coming. Our half a year anniversary was on December 16th, and he broke up with me the 15th. I still remember that goddamn day…my heard was instantly shredded to pieces, and the pieces ripped through my insides tearing me apart. I was oozing blood on the inside and I couldn’t breathe. I was so fucking broken, I would go to school and hear his name, think of him, and I would break down in tears and scream and cry and run out of the room. I ran to the bathroom and sat in the big stall to cry and cry and cry. I punched the walls until my knuckles were bloody and bruised, I slammed my head into the concrete walls. I cried every fucking night and it hurt so bad. I was so familiar with the feeling and every night I would do the same exact thing over and close my door, turn on my lamp light and take the cub scout knife, and cut my wrists, and eventually my legs. I missed Alex and the memories. He promised me we were forever and then he left and it hurt so much. I signed out bathroom passes every class and would sit in the big stall and cry and then I would tell myself to wipe away the eyeliner and reapply, then go to class and be a big girl. Sometimes I cried in class, and other times I had to go home because I couldn’t stop. I seriously wanted to die, and my cutting wasn’t even cutting anymore, and I actually broke the knife I cut so hard, and I moved to a box cutter, and I would stab the blade in my skin, an inch down, and I was so fucked up sometimes i drank the blood, and I started hearing voices, and seeing things, and Alex was gone and it still hurts. I would text him long paragraphs saying where did it go wrong, what did I do, please come back, I need you…but he ignored them and started dating another girl. But I remember running to my room after school and collapsing on my bed, screaming, crying, and cursing, I took a pillow and pressed it to my face and screamed and begged for help. I sat on the floor screaming “GOD IF YOU ARE REAL IF YOU ARE THERE PLEASE FUCKING HELP ME WHAT THE FUCK WHY CANT YOU HELP ME WHY CANT YOU HEAR ME WHY ARE YOU PUTTING ME THROUGH THIS WHY DID EVERYBODY LEAVE WHY ME WHY ME PLEASE HELP ME YOU FUCKING BASTARD PLEASE FUCKING SAVE ME OR I’LL SAVE MYSELF”

And one night I took a belt, and a scarf, and I tied it together, and I looped it over the shower rod. I put it around my neck, and I put this out on the counter —

“I wanted to kill the ME underneath. That fact haunted my days and nights. When you realize you hate yourself so much, when you realize that you cannot stand who you are, and this deep spite has been the motivation behind your behavior for many years, your brain can’t quite deal with it. It will try very hard to avoid that realization; it will try, in a last-ditch effort to keep your remaining parts alive, to remake the rest of you. This is, I believe, different from the suicidal wish of those who are in so much pain that death feels like relief, different from the suicide I would later attempt, trying to escape that pain. This is a wish to murder yourself; the thought of the kill is too mild. This is a belief that you deserve slow torture, violent death.

“Why? You want to know why?”

Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and peels off, roll in coarse salt, then pull on long underwear woven from spun glass and razor wire.

Smoke gunpowder and go to school to jump through hoops, sit up and beg, and roll over on command. Listen to the whispers that curl into your head at night, calling you ugly and fat and stupid and ***** and whore and worst of all, “a disappointment.”

Look in a mirror and find a ghost. Hear every heartbeat scream that everysinglething is wrong with you.

I can’t do this anymore. I am sorry, but don’t cry, don’t scream, just let me go and pretend this is a dream. I love you, and goodbye.”

I let all my weight fall to my knees, and I hanged from the belt, it hurt really badly, and my head hurt, my eyes were bulging, my mouth tingled, my fingers and toes tingled, I couldn’t feel, I started spazzing out, and I asked myself and I going to die tonight, am I going to do this tonight, am I sure? And I stepped back on the ground, and I ripped the belt off my neck and I started flopping on the ground and I knew I was having a minor seizure, and I closed my eyes and woke up on the cold floor, and I cried some more, and I took the belts and shoved them in my closet and I sat on my bed and cried and cried and my eyes were puffy and my lips were purple and I rolled over and went to sleep, and the next day I went to school. It became a game for me, the choking game. I would see how long I could go without killing myself, and one day I did it at school and fainted and then I went to the hospital and I just wanted to be saved and I couldn’t kill myself, I was so fucking scared, I didn’t know what would happen, so I cut and OD on pills, and choked myself and starved and I just didn’t think anything would go away. I thought my life was doomed, and I was too big of a ***** to kill myself. I looked up easy ways to die and how to make it look like an accident. I looked up what happens after death, what do I do? I can’t tell you how many times I just made myself so sick, how I thought everything was a mistake, and I was a mistake, I wasn’t supposed to be born, I wasn’t supposed to be here, and I deserved to die. I made myself feel like shit everyday, and every single day sucked. There weren’t GOOD and BAD days, they were all bad. I was used by lots of guys, I was assaulted, I was betrayed and hurt. My counselor was there for me, and doctors, and meds, but nothing seemed to help, and my family saw that I was breaking but they didn’t know how broken I was, and I didn’t know how to save myself. I still remember when I was at school, and crying and a really nice girl that had black hair came up to me, and she gave me a hug and told me I would be ok. I thought she was a liar, but I was so shocked that somebody cared and it made me feel warm and fuzzy inside, and then she hugged me again and told me to find her if I needed help. I  tried finding her again, but I couldn’t. I was also hugged by a really nice girl named Amber, and she made me feel like I was important for about a minute. Then she left the bathroom and I cried again. I wrote on the walls in really tiny writing saying, “Help me…please…I hate myself.” People wrote back saying, “GET HELP.” But I knew I couldn’t be helped. But, one day I didn’t feel all these things. It didn’t just happen overnight, even though it seemed like it, but everyday seemed the same…and when I look back on it, everyday was different. I just wrote this so I could tell you I got better. You can too. Suicide doesn’t end the chances of life getting worse, it eliminates the possibility of it getting better. I know when you’re sad you don’t wanna fricken hear that, you just wanna end it NOW. But, please…wait. I swear to god it will get better. It takes time, but it does. My life seemed so awful, everything…and some people tell me I have a good life, but if you are cursed with depression, you just want them to shut the fuck up because you feel so buried deep, and you just want to curl up in a corner and die. I met a really great guy that made me forget about Alex, and he makes me happy. His name is Danny, and I love him to death. Without him I wouldn’t be here today. My best friend Sydney who has been through every single thing with me, Stephanie for listening to me and understanding, my family for all the support, Dylan my older “brother,” and Izzy and Stephen for supporting me, and everybody who stopped me in the bathroom to give me a quick hug to tell me I would be okay. I remember cupping my hands around my eyes and felt the tears seep through my fingers. I thought back to the time where I once thought everything had ended, and my life was over. I remember waking up to complete darkness, darkness that provided my light. I saw my life in black and white. I remember that ache in my chest that pulled this way and that, tearing into my heart, ripping it apart all over again. I remember counting the  breaths I took, thinking it was one too many. I remember the happy memories that would stab into my head at night, screaming in agony that all happiness was lost forever, and devastation was my eternity. And as I sat on my bed I waited. I waited for all those things to weigh me down, I waited for the pain to tiptoe through my veins…but it didn’t come. I felt my lips form into something they hadn’t for a while. Something real….a smile. It was a smile because I was happy. I found the courage to move forward, to leave my past behind – and  to feel that goddamn feeling I had missed for such a long time. I felt relieved. I live by three quotes to this day.
1. You can’t appreciate happiness unless you’ve been through pain.
2. Every goodbye makes the next hello closer.

3. Destroy what destroys you.

I wish the best of luck to you guys, I know you can get through it – just like I did. Just remember – you have a purpose. ♥