This is my story about why I almost killed myself back in late November of 2019. Most of the time when we hear suicide we get this idea of someone doing it because they want “the pain to stop” or they feel that suicide is the only way out. Well, that’s not why I almost killed myself. I did it out of sheer guilt. A little backstory as to what lead to this was that I had a friend that I unintentionally made them feel uncomfortable multiple times throughout the fall semester of my junior year at college. Nothing that I did was sexual in any way, but I didn’t find out about this until she sat down with me and said that my behavior appears to be possessive along with me having a crush on this person. However, I did not have a crush on this person and even if I did I would’ve suppressed it because this person is asexual so I never would’ve attempted to try and pursue an intimate relationship. Unfortunately, when they told me this I was already in a dark place and I didn’t give this person the apology that they deserved because I just shut down and was drowning in remorse. Then security is knocking on my door at 1:47 and says that they received a call that someone was a possible danger to themselves and they were right because I was. I told the security guards my story and they said that you seem to be drowning in guilt and even then “your life is valuable” along with the nurse that checked me into the wellness center on campus. I had to actually fight the urge to scoff and even laugh when they said this because I a pretty hard time believing that my life has any value. The next morning security comes back to my room and says that the person has issued a non-communication order as it was usually recommended by security when you call them about an individual, but I understood and asked them if they could at least tell the person that I’m really sorry about what I did. This was on the start of Thanksgiving break, but I didn’t try to kill myself until after the break when I was walking down a street at night when a voice in my head says “why don’t you just kill yourself you worthless piece of shit. No one is going to miss you and the world really would be better off without and it’s what you deserve.” And I almost did it, maybe less than half a second more and I would’ve thrown myself in front of a moving car and that would have been it. Through the months after that, I tried to heal, but today I had those emotional wounds opened up again because one of my friends found out and essentially threatened me, causing the region below my stomach to ache as well as my forehead. It made me re-evaluate whether I’m even a good person and whether I made the right choice of not killing myself back in November, but what do think?
… because I find it hard to believe that “the world would be much different place without you”
I’m sure many of us have heard this phrase before that we hear people say to others in an attempt to try and prevent them from taking their own life. However, if I was standing on the edge and ready to jump and someone said that to me I’m afraid that it wouldn’t persuade me to not kill myself because I’m pretty sure I would respond with something like: “The World? The World will remain the same. It will continue to spin on its axis. It will continue to revolve around the sun!! HUMANS WILL STILL CONTINUE TO BE CRUEL TO EACH OTHER AND OTHER ANIMALS!!!! People die every day whether by suicide or other means. The world as a whole will still be the same piece of rock, metal, and water drifting around a superheated ball of plasma.” And then I would probably just jump. What scares me is that I have tried to kill myself in the past and I’m afraid that someone saying that to me wouldn’t give me any reassurance if I were in a situation like this again. What I’m trying to say is that saying something like that to someone like me would most likely make things worse because none of us really do matter on the geological or cosmic scale. I know this isn’t anything positive, but what do you think? Is this something that we should continue to say to someone who is suicidal or do you think that we need to say something else to them? Your opinions would really be appreciated.
It seems like every day I wake up questioning whether love will ever find me. Whether I will ever meet someone that I can love romantically. Someone who can love, appreciate and accept who I am even my flaws as I will do the same for them. Or that anyone would ever find me attractive. Every day I can never seem to shake the belief that I am destined to forever walk the earth alone until the day that I die, not knowing what it feels like to have someone love you or what it feels like to love someone. Or maybe it’s that I don’t deserve someone to love, but I don’t know, maybe that’s just my self-hatred talking instead of what I truly believe deep down. Until the day comes that someone comes into my life where I can love them, this feeling will never go away and it feels like it’s eating away at my spirit.
It’s not as bad as it was before but there is never a week that goes by without me questioning whether I’m even worth anything to anyone around me. For a time I truly believed that I wasn’t worth anything and that I was a nuisance to everyone around me and that the world didn’t need me. I’ve seen all these online articles about how the world needs you when you’re questioning your worth but during this time I felt that the world would have been better off without me as that would’ve been one less resource sucking carbon-emitting sack of organic molecules. I’ve heard from others like my parents that I’m not a nuisance, but it’s kind of hard to take something like that in from my parents since they are partially responsible for why I’m suffering from emotional numbness and depression. I’ve heard people argue that the world would be a much different place without me, but the science part of my brain argued that the world will continue spinning on its axis and revolving around the sun without stopping, slowing or altering in any way, meaning that the world as a whole will still be the same, whether or not I disappear. When you have that kind of perspective it’s pretty hard to even take in ideas like how the world will be different without you. Usually, you see something positive at the end posts like these, but I’m just too depressed at the moment to say anything positive or reassuring to anyone reading this, so I’m sorry in advance.
A few months ago I figured out why I’m suffering from emotional numbness and it is because of my parents and older brother. It all started with a chat over Xbox live with my brother who admitted to being a shitty brother for most of my childhood. At first, I didn’t know how to emotionally process it and at that moment I just wanted to change the subject and just play the game and have fun. It was only afterward that I realized why I couldn’t emotionally process what he said and it was because he was a shitty brother for most of my childhood that I suffer from emotional numbness.
My parents aren’t innocent either because they are also responsible for me experiencing emotional numbness. Basically, when we were young my brother would tease me and I would “overreact” because I’m spectrum and instead of my parents punishing him they would almost always say “just ignore him” or they would punish us both. It was this kind of response towards my brother teasing me that made me feel as if it was my fault that he was teasing me. Another factor that has negatively affected me later in life was that my dad pretty much burned the idea of perfectionism into my head when it came to academics meaning that you either did good or you didn’t put in enough effort to satisfy him. Which, I found out later that perfectionism can be a sign of depression. It was only last week that I told my mom that I’m not in a talking mood with my brother because he is responsible for me experiencing emotional numbness. She responded by saying that seems to be a lot to place on somebody’s shoulders, but I told her that she and my dad were also to blame. She said that you need to forgive or some B.S. like that. This is what makes me angry because she said that everything she and dad did was to make me happy and comfortable in life, well they certainly failed at that because if they did then I wouldn’t be experiencing emotional numbness in my young adult years. All of this just pisses me off that she could even think of that and not show any signs of regret or guilt or admit that she made mistakes in my childhood. Not to mention it took someone dying that my brother did not know, whom he tried to save for him to realize that he was a shitty brother for most of my childhood, that he degraded me, accused me of lying most of the time when I didn’t, which made me feel so small and weak. It wouldn’t matter if I beat him in a knowledge argument, because he always had the size advantage. He would ask me why I always wanted to start fights with him and now I know why. It was because of him, every time I tried starting a fight that was me trying to stand up for myself but I would always lose. It doesn’t matter if any of them say that it’s all in the past because the damage has already been done and they don’t know what if feels like to go through that. For that reason, none of them deserve to know of my attempted suicide story because they are partially responsible for why I almost took my own life. Even if they were to find out I would directly tell them that they didn’t deserve to know and that the only people I did tell were ones who did nothing to hurt me in the past.
This isn’t a story about how I almost killed myself, but it certainly paved the way for me to experience suicidal thoughts in the future. The fall semester of 2019 for me was by far the most stressful and demoralizing period of my entire academic life up to date. If there was one good thing to come out of it, it’s that I discovered I’ve been dealing with depression and other mental issues for many years now. Never the less, this particular semester caused me to reach my breaking point where I just felt like I wasn’t good enough, that I am completely worthless, that I’m not worth anyone’s time and effort, that I am a burden and a nuisance to everyone around me and that I deserve to be alone forever. One class, in particular, was the most stressful and demoralizing of the four that I was taking that semester because after completing several assignments and doing so well on them, it shattered what little confidence I had left in my ability to excel in two of my other classes. While I did manage to pass the class in the end, this one, in particular, caused me to want to leave this cruel and dark world forever. By that I mean that if I had spaceship capable of interstellar and intergalactic travel and I knew how to fly it, I would have taken it and left this world without hesitation and with no regrets. I felt that if I were to leave this planet no one would care of bat an eye and that would confirm my belief that this world isn’t worth living on anymore or that if people tried to convince me to stay I would tell them directly by saying “you failed to save me and it is far too late for you to try to save me now, but you know what, I have accepted that this world is cruel and I shall no longer be a part of it anymore”.
For a time I wanted this more than anything in the world, to just leave this cruel spec of a prison drifting through space, because if I can leave then I won’t feel small or insignificant. I even considered leaving a video recording that I would broadcast to the world explaining why I left this world and why I abandoned humanity as a whole, never to return. As well as mentioning that I doubt this video would even have any effect whatsoever on the world as a whole. It wasn’t until early January of 2020 this year that I realized how many people would have left behind if I could do so. It was then that I realized I would have left behind so many friends and family who loved me dearly and that I would have broken their hearts to learn that I had left this world completely with no intention of ever returning. This may not be my attempted suicide story, but it paved the way for the time that I would attempt to take my own life, so to anyone reading this that is dealing with suicidal thoughts, know that you are not alone in this world and that there are people who would miss you dearly if you were to die. I won’t lie, this world is cruel and I think the problem is that far to often we don’t pay enough attention to the light in this world and way pay too much attention to all of its dark aspects. Know that this world is worth living in and that there will always be people who will love and value you forever, even if it’s hard to see.