My two cents

I might be violating this site’s guidelines or stepping out of line, but I saw that this place said it was alright to share stories of depression, and I wanted to get this off my chest to people who won’t be biased because they’re my friend.

At the time that I am writing this, I am 19 years old. Virgo. ISTJ. I would prefer no comments at all on the following but I identify as an aromantic bisexual agender. I’m currently a cashier, I’ve been working at the same place since I turned 18. I graduated in 2016 with no intentions of going to college. I live in the USA.

This is my first time seeing this site or doing anything like this. I just happened across it while looking over painless suicide methods because of the results of the election. I’d heard endlessly how Trump wanted to deport anyone who wasn’t white, including their legally USA born children, of which I am the latter. I suppose I will use this opportunity to also look over my life again before whether or not I get banned? Although I’m terrible at organizing my thoughts so please forgive me. This is going to be quite long so I don’t expect anyone to read through or comment on it, but… I guess an opinion or remark on my life would be nice.

I think the earliest time I felt like wanting to die was in third grade. Before I continue, I would like to say that I am well aware that I was classified as “the annoying kid” in school. I’m loud, I’m unpopular, I’m ugly, I’m everything that any normal person would think would be annoying. Of course, as a child, I was not aware of this properly–I haven’t gone to a doctor or anything to check, but I believe I may be autistic. I process things a lot slower than most people, I don’t come to the common sense conclusion if I find a question is phrased strangely, and other symptoms that I have found to be common with possible autism; the only reason I haven’t gone to check is because I don’t know how to and I’m relied on in my family as the sole English speaker that’s expected to understand everything.

Anyway, in third grade during a parent-teacher conference, my teacher, my parents, and I sat together as she told them about my academics; I was below average at the time and other such things. I don’t remember how it was brought up, but she said that other parents didn’t want their kids around me, that I was a bad influence. She said it right in front of me as if I would not understand. I didn’t cry when I went home but I was confused; I didn’t do anything like encourage drugs. I didn’t try to bully other kids. I was just an annoying, loud kid. But I felt so hurt that I started wondering about what it would be like to not be there anymore. At the time I didn’t know what dying or killing yourself was, let alone the word, but I knew I wanted it. I wondered how the other parents even knew about me or why they wanted to keep their kids away from me–I never had any friends in the first place and none of the children wanted to hang out with me. I just hung out with whoever said it was alright for me to play with them.

Moving onto sixth grade, it’s the same deal. I’m just loud and talkative, I’ve never made any real friends or hurt anyone seriously, I just followed. One day my classmate spouted out during recess, “you’re annoying!” Now I didn’t know what that word meant as a child but my brain clicked that it was something negative, something undesirable, something unwanted. I cried immediately and tried to run away and hide but the recess guardian people (I don’t know what they’re called) found me. In this same grade I thought I had a crush on a male classmate but I didn’t have any real romantic attraction. I always thought it was an oddity and that a relationship should grow out of friendship, because who better to have as your significant other than your best friend? This boy was nice to me and talked to me regularly. I decided to send him these dumb notes trying to hint at who I was, and he appeared to be interested until he suddenly found out who I was and said he already had a girlfriend.

He started being mean to me, calling me coconut head and not a real girl. I started to find myself unattractive and ugly; I’m sure it’s not a surprise to imagine an eleven year old girl having self esteem issues but it quickly grew to the point where I couldn’t stand to look at myself in the mirror. One time when his friend was about to fall on me, and might I add he was tall and weighed quite a bit, I panicked and pushed him away. He was alright but he turned around surprised; he said “that felt like a man pushed me,” and I felt… proud? To be called a man? I began to wonder if I was meant to be born male all along. My parents had always wanted a boy first and were disappointed with me after all, they tried to groom me into the perfect girl with high expectations of being able to take on chores and tasks that an adult woman should, and constantly compared me to their friend’s daughter.

Entering middle school and not quite yet having depression, I clammed up and tried to start over. I didn’t try to make connections with people and allowed my “friendships” to happen naturally until I had people I could tolerate hanging out with in order to have a spot at the cafeteria and such. I began to grow a disgust towards people in general, seeing my classmates cry and whine about their phone being taken away when they were using them in class or being caught playing games on their computers. “What if there’s an emergency and I need my phone?” Then you shouldn’t have been using it like that in the first place! If you don’t want your headphones taken away then don’t listen to music when you should be doing your work, especially if your grades are terrible and you don’t do any work! (And before anyone says anything, I also listened to music when I was allowed to and I did my work diligently, ending up in the top 10% of my graduating class.) Eventually I socially isolated myself from everyone else as I thought about myself as a person.

I’m not one to talk to people or butt into conversations. I became incredibly quiet after sixth grade and I never bullied anyone, I will guarantee you that. But somehow, I was bullied. Alright, so maybe I would be unaware of my own volume when I spoke, even to the point where the teacher would tell me to be quiet (in front of everyone in class, embarrassing me and making everyone else laugh at me). I don’t understand what’s so unlikable about me; presently, my friends insist that I’m fine as I am and that I’m not a terrible person. So why did I get bullied? I would get told that I was a lesbian and that I couldn’t have a boyfriend because no guy could date me. I only hung out with a female classmate that I could tolerate and would naturally partner up with her in projects because none of the other girls had any interest in befriending me. I didn’t bother them directly and yet they kept repeating themselves, that I was a lesbian and that I was ugly and that no guy wanted to be my boyfriend. I tried to ignore it but I began to loathe looking at myself even more, constantly staring in the mirror and wondering why I was so ugly.

I didn’t want to wear makeup, it was too much work and it felt gross. I didn’t want to make friends with any of my classmates, they were all unreliable and whiny. I wasn’t attracted to any of the guys so I had no desire to pursue them. I’m not racist or any of that disgusting jazz, so why? I didn’t know why I wasn’t considered pretty but I eventually came to accept that I was ugly. I still can’t find anything beautiful to this day, and that’s fine. I don’t cry about it as much anymore.

I had such low self esteem about myself combined with my parents considering divorce that I went to seek help because I had considered suicide, but it turned into an intervention where I was blamed for everything and upon returning home, my parents scolded me, saying that I shouldn’t be talking about family affairs to other people and that I don’t need friends when I have my family. My mom made an especially big deal over it, saying that she would kill herself if I did and that I was selfish for wanting to kill myself and going to talk to someone who wasn’t family about it. She didn’t ask why I wanted to kill myself or if I wanted to talk about it, she just talked about how she would feel.

It’s my life, Mom. It’s selfish because it’s mine.

During middle school I also began questioning if I should be identifying as a transgender boy, but I didn’t know about LBGQTA+ stuff. I knew at least I sometimes thought certain girls were cute, and that I couldn’t stand wearing any of the expensive skirts or dresses that my mother bought for me anymore. When it came to orchestra, something I had taken since sixth grade, I couldn’t bare the thought of wearing the uniform of a black dress and stated to my teacher that I didn’t want to wear one. I wanted to wear pants or a nice suit, something I wanted to say after that but he said he would have to call my parents because of my request. I didn’t know why that was necessary, why couldn’t we just talk as a growing adolescent and a teacher? Is wearing a dress that important? I was so afraid of what my parents would say if they knew I felt like I was a guy so I lied and said I just had stage fright.

Also during middle school I had a history teacher who liked to poke fun at his students. They were rather harmless, sure, but he rubbed me the wrong way. I used to smile a lot and laugh as a child but in middle school my face naturally rests without one, even to this day. I apparently look angry or annoyed but I can assure you my resting ***** face bares no ill will unless there’s good reason to. He would comment about how I would scowl apparently, and out of the blue while everyone’s working on the assignment and the room is quiet, he walks up to me looking rather serious and simply states, “smile.” I’m confused and try to ask him what he means, but he just says “smile, it’s an 80 point assignment.” I remember how my face hurt when I tried to quickly smile, it was so unnatural and I was scared, now that I was a straight A student. “That’s a smirk,” he said when he evaluated my attempt and I felt the corner of my lips twitching. He tried coaxing a smile out of me until I decided to purposefully rile him up and change the subject by rolling my eyes at him, successfully pissing him off. He had me stay after class before lunch to talk, saying that I was a respectable person or some nonsense, then “go wash your face, you’re crying.” When I went to the bathroom, it was at that point that I first thought of suicide.

I looked in the mirror at my ugly sniveling face. “I could drown myself in the sink,” I thought. “Everyone’s at lunch, I could do it,” but the only reason stopping me from doing so was because the water was incredibly dirty with long hairs and paper clogging the sink, as per typical middle school girls. Why did he have to embarrass me in front of everyone and make a big deal about my face? I had confirmed my thoughts of being a transgender boy when he suddenly made a huge fuss about it and that event didn’t help. Prior to this I had already been depressed to the point I had considered it many times because of how my peers thought of me and how I thought of myself. My teacher knew nothing about me or why my face was as it is, what right did he have to command me to smile? You’re supposed to smile when you’re happy, and I wasn’t. I couldn’t remember what being happy felt like or when the last time I was happy. Or even felt emotions, even. I had stopped feeling anything when I entered middle school and my body had even felt numb from my depression to the point where I couldn’t feel heat or cold.

The first real friend I made was online in eighth grade. For the sake of privacy I’ll call her A. When I first received a computer with internet capabilities the year before, I was thrilled and learned to be tech savvy right away. I met her through a site called TinierMe, which is shut down now, but I regularly visited it and eventually met her. We were supposed to enter a chat room at a certain time for a mutual “friend’s” post, but it turned out we were the only two who were there despite the mutual “friend’s” popularity. We talked and became friends and it became more than that. She was two years younger than me and she lived in England. I’m not a person who cares about people so easily or forms bonds, but she was different. I’m not good at giving advice or consoling people but when she felt like killing herself I did everything I could to talk her out of it, and I was successful. We continued talking and I listened to A’s troubles and we became best friends. Our time zones made it difficult and I don’t remember how, but we somehow managed to pull through and talk every day. I started feeling happy again. A enjoyed my company and I enjoyed hers, although my depression and desire to die always remained.

During this time my mother was scolding me for being ugly, for being fat, for not being the daughter she wanted me to be. I weighed 110 lbs at that time and I refused to wear feminine clothing or talk to her friends’ children. I was terrible at cooking, cleaning, and other chores and she hated it. The best I could do was wash dishes every evening after dinner. Two years into my friendship with A (which will place my story now in the winter of my sophomore year of high school) while she was asleep and I was still awake, my mother suddenly burst in and felt like yelling at me. I was useless, I didn’t do anything to help her, I was ugly and fat and I’m stupid for not getting straight A’s (I got B’s in P.E. because of my low athletic abilities). I openly cried as she berated me and I suddenly thought of A: while she had her own flaws that I wouldn’t try to hide, I was only happy when I was with her. She was one of the most tolerable people and I had nothing but positive emotions from spending time with her and receiving her support. A had admitted to having a crush on me before but I never felt the same and we didn’t let it ruin our friendship. A thought suddenly went through my head: “I would love to spend the rest of my life with her.” And that’s when I realized, I loved her.

I’ll say right now, I identify as someone incapable of experiencing romantic emotions towards real people now, and it was no different back then. This was an exception, so please excuse my contradiction.

I felt such strong emotions that I had never felt towards anyone else before. I cared about A, I never cried when I was with her, she was everything I wanted out of a friend, and she never abandoned me. And as an added plus, I was attracted to her physically as well. She was my first love and I started feeling jittery around her, being oh so not subtle with my affection towards her. She was interested in only girls so I thought I had a chance since I did not share with her my troubles with my gender. However I had absolutely no confidence that she had any lingering affection for me and I was afraid of ruining our delicate friendship. With my built up depression I decided to plan my suicide after I finished sophomore year and confessed to her after I was released from school for summer break. Unfortunately this was also paired with my suicide note so I believe that she pretended to love me back and only agreed to go out with me to keep me from killing myself. I didn’t think about this at the time because… she was my best friend. She never lied to me, and we trusted each other deeply. I was absolutely ecstatic when I saw her type that she loved me back, I felt my heart pound harder than it ever had. My fingertips started to have feeling and I awoke from the numbness of my depression. I believe this popular quote sums up how I felt then:

“You can’t love someone unless you love yourself first” Bullshit.
I have never loved myself.
But you
Oh god, I loved you so much I forgot what hating myself felt like.”

After I confessed she went to sleep and I eagerly waited the next day for her to come online at her usual time. She made me promise to be here tomorrow. I never break my promises, so I didn’t kill myself; I threw away everything I was going to use–a knife, a rope, pills, all the lot. I waited in silence, suddenly realizing how strange it was for me to have nothing to do and be alone. How did I do it before? It was so foreign to me, to not have anything to occupy my time as I waited.

She was late. By two hours.

A had never missed our conversation times in the two years that we had known each other. I got nervous and wondered if she was alright, or if she regretted saying she loved me. But when she finally came online, you know what she said? “Sorry, I was watching Doctor Who.” I was so confused–she was clearly worried about me the other day and that’s the reason she was late? Wouldn’t someone in her situation want to make sure a suicidal person was still alive? I foolishly brushed it off, feeling quite hurt, and we talked about our relationship. We started “dating.” It was short-lived. After a week she dropped the act and told another lie to me. “I’m going to be playing this new game that came out so I won’t be on as much.” That’s… understandable, I thought. I had no problems with that and wondered how I would occupy my time until I saw that she was doing no such thing. She had made friends on tumblr and I happen to be scrolling through when I saw her clearly talking with other people and participating in a group chat. I was hurt and assumed that they were participating in a group game. I have no right to try and control my girlfriend after all, she deserved to have friends. I wished for her happiness for a long time and for her to have more friends other than myself, after all.

The next day it was the same thing; she spent time with them. I waited some more days and tried to talk to her, send her lots of messages but she ignored me.

I waited another day. A week. A month. Then she suddenly decided to talk to me and I let my stupid nostalgia of when it was just us kick in. For an hour it seemed as if nothing changed, that we were still tightly sewn together and that she cared about me, until she left to sleep. Then the cycle repeated. I wanted to do anything she wanted for her birthday; I told her happy birthday at the stroke of midnight on her time and she ignored me, choosing to play with her new friends for the day. Okay, it’s her birthday, she can do what she wants. I understand. I had also made a new friend, whom I’ll call S, and had started spending time with her. However I missed A dearly, as much as I had fun with S. S, A, and I all talk in a group chat about this and that. Now’s a good time to bring up that A could never remember my birthday–it was fine, I hated the day so but since were “dating” I wanted her to remember–and so I tried to subtly hint at it. And all she says, in her sweet angelic voice, is “oh.” Full stop. And my heart sank.

I was too scared to ask her about our relationship. The week she was willing to pretend and act the part of my girlfriend was the best part of my life, and when she had stopped talking to me frequently I honestly suspected she never loved me. However I wanted to believe she would never lie to me about such a precious thing like love, that if I waited then things would go back to the way they were. A said that her new friends lived in England like her and they were planning a meet-up in October at a con, thus she wanted to make sure everything would go as planned and wasn’t talking to me. “I understand,” I said. “But it’s July, don’t you have more than enough time for that?” I wanted to say, but held my tongue. I desperately wanted to believe everything would be fine once October was finished and that I could have my A back.

My birthday rolls around. I wanted to spend my birthday with her, but I was too scared to ask. You know what she does? She just gives me a drawing and that’s the end of that. No good morning, no happy birthday, nothing. It had become normal for me now, not even to receive a greeting from her or a response back. She only talked to me when her new friends were all busy or asleep, and left as soon as possible when she felt she had fulfilled her duty as “girlfriend.” She always talked to me at regular intervals of once a month and that was it. I had been crying myself to sleep each night, tearing myself apart and wondering why our relationship had become this way. I spent my birthday just sitting around in shock, feeling empty as I couldn’t stand the warmth of my body.

You know the real joke about our “relationship” was? The very next day, she glosses over the fact that her girlfriend’s birthday had happened, and asks if I want to make a joke blog on tumblr with her. Being the foolish desperate person I was, I latched onto any kind of conversation or attention she sent my way and rode with it. I made more friends through this blog, but I always yearned for A. She started to only talk to me when there were other people, and even then she ignored me for the most part while we talked. But I deluded myself, believing that she would come back once October was over.

These new friends were hard for me to get used to. I had been with A for nearly three years and never needed any other friend. This group of people came to hate me for the same reasons I was bullied: reasons I don’t know. Only S really became close friends with me, and I only became close with two out of the thirteen people in that group to this day, who I will name D, 2, and K respectively. I didn’t keep my relationship a secret from the group, I cried and admitted it was on the rocks but I still denied that it couldn’t be fixed until October rolled over and things didn’t change. I wanted to scream and ask if she really loved me, to see what she would do if I said I wanted to break up or if I killed myself. Just anything to get her attention. “We’re dating, right? Do you even love me anymore?” But I was too scared. I wanted to believe in her. I wanted to believe that I would be rewarded if I waited long enough with at least some attention.

I met her on January 2nd, and had always considered that as our kind of anniversary. I thought if I sent her Christmas gifts or anniversary gifts then she would remember I was here. I spent $20 I borrowed from a classmate and had high hopes, but… After the mark of the three years we knew each other passed, she still had no words for me. Not until the 26th, just a few weeks before Valentine’s Day, that she finally decided to end our farce of a relationship. I woke up on the 27th to that letter, that ugly letter that sounded nothing like her, like they were someone else’s words. She appreciated the time we spent together and claimed she would never forget it, but she said “my happiness matters too.”

I didn’t respond because I was in utter shock. She was unhappy being with me? Despite having no form of a real relationship, just knowing she was my girlfriend made her miserable? She didn’t even want to go back to being friends? I was in complete despair and I wanted to kill myself. I couldn’t stand the thought that I had made the person I loved so dearly, the person I valued over my life and everything and everyone else, miserable. Then I remembered all the times prior to our “relationship” that she called me a “heartless bastard.” I don’t remember the context, but it was true–I hardly had any emotions growing up and only pretended, mimicking everyone else to learn facial expressions. That phrase still haunts me to this day.

I tried so many times to kill myself, my group of “friends” trying to help me and stop me until they eventually didn’t care about me anymore. According to one, because I was never successful, they stopped trusting me. They wouldn’t even say anything when I ranted or said I wanted to die. Excuse me for being unsuccessful, would it have been better if I did die?

I’m afraid of pain. I can break past whatever emotions or mental barriers people have from killing themselves; my barrier is physical pain. I don’t want it to hurt or suffer as I die, or to be unsuccessful and have long term damage to my body to remind me I’m hurting and still alive. I’ve tried looking up so many ways to die painlessly and never finding any that are within my capabilities or possession.

Anyway, another person of that same group who I’ll call E, didn’t particularly like me. I think it was because I didn’t notice he “liked” me while I was in a relationship with A. He only liked me because I used the persona of a fictional character he liked, and once he got over it he tried to use it like an insult against me. “I liked you but you were too dense to notice.” Well ex fucking scuse me for not being interested in other people when I think I’m in a relationship. He started being mean to me–he was originally a nice guy–and completely destroyed what little self respect and self esteem I had left. I couldn’t see myself as a woman or a man, I couldn’t find anything to like about myself, and I thought I was toxic and abusive. 2, K, D, and S insist that I’m not, but I can’t believe them. After years of being bullied and this reinforcement from E, who I thought I could call a friend, I broke down. I wasn’t a beautiful girl that men were attracted to, I wasn’t a man that could have confidence in being a man, I was nothing. The void. Agender. I am neither man or woman, I decided in junior year. I’ve had enough of caring about my gender.

I tried to get my mind off A after we broke up, went on a rebound and hurt one of my “friends” who had a crush on me and making them completely change their schedule to avoid me, met people in real life to try and date only to be told I was ugly. I then realized how I didn’t have crushes like everyone else (with the exception of A). I couldn’t love anyone. I came to realize I was aromantic.

Following that, I embraced being called ugly and accepted my fate. And that yeah, I couldn’t love anyone because I had no interest. Apparently my ideals are too high–to want someone who is kind to me and who loves me for the way I am now? No man has ever been kind to me or attracted to me, and I especially craved the approval and affection of a man because of my parents’ grooming. But because I desired it, I think it kicked in when my friends showed me the trailer for a video game later in February. A male character that would be three years younger than me at this current point in time that I didn’t think much of, but soon started to linger in my mind as I continued junior year with the weight of A no longer being by my side, still. I hadn’t gotten over her until this year, but this character–let’s call him R–was helping me cope. He wasn’t quite my ideal type in terms of physical appearance but I began to grow a sort of affection for him nonetheless. Or rather an obsession. I started to disassociate, fantasizing about him and walking around my house for no reason other than to make sure my body was doing something. I think about him every day now with constant fantasies… and constant agonies.

I got over A but my insecurities blossomed as I thought about R. While he can’t reject me in any way and I can shape him however I need in my imagination, I always fell back to my crippling self esteem. I’m ugly, I’m annoying, and I’m being disgusting with my behavior–he could never love me. I talk about nothing but my fantasies about R to D now. To think now that R is the last peg keeping me from jumping into the nearest car is pathetic. I’ve started spending hundreds on merchandise related to R just to try and keep my moral up.

I know it’s useless, though. As much as I can pretend and fantasize him saying he loves everything about me, I know that if he were real, R would never love a repulsive thing like me. Now I know that I said I was not capable of loving people romantically, but that’s probably because I find people so unappealing in the first place.

As I learned more about the world growing up, I hated people more. Why did the color of your skin matter? Why did your sexuality, your gender identity, your choice for abortion, or your religion matter? We’re all born human, we’re all human regardless of our differences, so why do we have a society where people don’t treat other people like people? Where we throw money at problems, at crumbling countries instead of investing it into things to actually help them?

At the same time, if we lived in a utopia where people had no worries, where if those stories of people seeking a perfect world were to come true, there would be some asshat who would get bored and start some crime out of curiosity. The election results tonight should not have happened. They should not have been a close call. Why are people like this? Why does the human race have to continue existing?

Why do I have to continue existing in this shitty world?

I’m 19, I’m too young to die, yadda yadda. I don’t want to live in a world where people don’t want to change their shitty ways, where I desire love yet cannot give it, where R doesn’t exist. Where R can’t exist anywhere but my imagination.

I want to close my eyes and sleep forever in my fantasies, where it is only R and I who truly exist, where I can live out my remaining lifespan happy.

Being in retail, I can only handle so much social interaction and forcing myself to smile because I’m required to. Where I have to pretend to be a docile, friendly person and yet be yelled at regardless. People hate me if I try to be polite, people hate me if I don’t talk to them, people hate me just because I exist. It’s okay, I don’t want to exist either. I eagerly await the day when someone comes to rob my store with a gun, because I would happily jump in front of it. My fantasies are the only thing keeping me from completely self-destructing; I imagine R holding me as I cry in his warm embrace, petting my head and telling me everything will be alright, that he loves me and that I mean the world to him.

I want to go to that reality where he’s with me.

I want to stop looking at myself in the mirror and seeing my hideous mug.

I want to stop crying every time I remember A, every time I remember how my family only keeps me around out of obligation and for the money I give to them, how they don’t really know me or love me.

Before the election results tonight, I had one last chance to start over–to move in with S and get away from the place I grew up and be with my best friend who accepts me for the way I am, but I don’t know how the US will turn out with our new president. I want to get out of retail but my autistic younger brother restricts what my parents will allow me to do. I don’t want to talk to people anymore, I want to do something secluded. But literally every job I want is out of my town or not available in my state.

I don’t want to suffer anymore. I want to go to R.

I just want to die and get away from the human race altogether. I’ve had enough of reading about this terrible world.

Help me, R. Why aren’t you real? Because if you were, you wouldn’t love me. But because you aren’t, I can pretend you do and make you say you do.

God, I’m so pathetic, falling back on a fictional character to make me happy again. “Happy” isn’t even the right word, I can’t feel anything anymore.

I just want to die. I don’t want to wait and see if life gets better. I don’t want to get married or have a romantic relationship again; I have R. I don’t have any dreams or desires, or a career I want to follow. I am nothing, just like my worth.

Why can’t I be lucky enough to be killed? Why does every suicide method have to involve pain? So many good people have probably been taken, why can’t I switch places with them?

Why can’t I lay in bed and die?