I get it

I had a friend in college once who killed herself. She got into a fight with her boyfriend, and, when they broke up, she hung herself. People said, why’d Marie do it? Marie was so special, so unlike anyone else I’ve ever met… how could someone with so much to offer, someone with so much magic and life inside them, just up and kill themselves like that?

But I didn’t wonder why she did it. I knew. I understood completely why someone like that would want to die– or rather — why someone like that couldn’t bear the pain of living any longer.

I’ve always considered myself to be a person different from everybody else. My parents proudly tell stories of a child so full of life, so vivacious, so overflowing with spirit, stubbornness, and strength. Today people around me see me similarly. I don’t sweat the small things, I don’t get caught up trying to be cool. I do my own thing; I follow my own path. For the most part I land on my feet, and things have a way of working out for me. I guess you could say I’m lucky.

What people don’t realize about these magical people who are different is that very same lesson that children in grade school learn so quickly: that different is not always a good thing. Different means special. Special means of singular quality, of having nothing else even remotely like it. Special means alone.

My spirit, my love of life, of all things vibrant, and special, and honest is unusually strong, but the amount of things that make me not alone in this world is unusually small. I have only a little to lose, a very small barrier between myself and a pit of isolation, depression, loneliness, and despair.

Marie’s boyfriend left her, and she knew, like I know now that my fiance is leaving me, what exactly that would mean for her. For people like Marie, it’s not a “there’s always more fish in the sea” situation. People like Marie find themselves in a very large tank, with very few other fish. Connections are rare; finding real love, finding a person you can connect with in a real, honest way, a person you can give your whole self to, and let in on your own secret world,  is nothing short of a miracle. Losing that miracle is the death sentence of returning to a world of complete emotional isolation. On the outside Marie was magical, and beautiful, and singular, but on the inside she was completely alone. When she lost the one thing holding that barrier up, she couldn’t take the pain.

Because here’s the thing about depression: it never goes away. It’s always back, month after month, to rear its ugly head and let you know that your suffering will never end. After a bad night out, after a fight with a loved one, after another holiday spent alone, or just after a tough day– depression is there with you, telling you how worthless you are, how you will always be alone, how that life you wanted with a nice house and a husband and kids and holiday dinners isn’t for you. At the end, it’s only a matter of time until my depression drives the people I care about away. I fund myself completely powerless to stop it. And every time, the downward spiral, the fall, and complete and utter desperation at the bottom pit is worse than the time before.

I don’t want to die. The thought of ending my own life is terrifying. It’s more of a feeling of exhaustion. I’m so tired I want to sleep forever and never wake up. Never wake up to the feeling of loneliness, of knowing that not a single person in the world knows the horrible pain that I’m carrying.