The idea that nobody on this earth has lived their entire existence easily and carefree has been widely accepted time and time again.
I can't say that my life was full of devastation and terror, because it wasn't. My adolescence was filled with happiness and friends, family and love, revolved around grades and finding what made me happy and passionate. I was a good student, if a little shy, but my parents couldn't be happier and more proud of my life.
The only problem was - I took everything for granted.
I took the most mundane activities and turned them into ash - sitting up in class, friends, and love. One minute I was happy, trying to catch the attention of the cutest guy in class, and the next I wanted to die.
That year was the hardest of my life. I had come face-to-face with severe anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. I didn't want to go to school anymore, I wanted to drop out, and I hated everyone and everything for not understanding me.
I wasn't dying, my limbs were still intact, and I hadn't contracted a life-threatening disease, but I felt like my life was coming apart before my very eyes. Life had burnt to rubble along with every grade that dropped low, every friend that became bemused, and all of those loved ones that became desperate.
I learned the hard way that you can hear your heart beat in your ears when your scared. I could feel it so unexpectedly throughout my whole body; in my hands and toes and in the most private parts of my being. Panic made my pulse race and my hands become sweaty. I felt helpless, like a fish without water, as my panic skyrocketed so high, I could no longer think straight.
I didn't want this. I didn't ask for this. It most certainly didn't make me stronger...
The fight in me had left one night, when I locked myself in my bathroom, and all that was left was flight. I made up my mind and there was no need to think it over. I wrote a goodbye to my parents; the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. I could have never said enough in that letter, I told them I loved them but there was so much left, so much room to be filled with hugs and kisses that would cease to exist in my life.
I waited for my life to be taken right from under me, accepting that I had nothing else to do on this Earth. I decided running from my problems would solve everything. I would no longer feel loneliness, or the nervousness I felt every time I walked into a social setting or even the judgment.
I felt it all seep into my bones and become part of me, that time when I almost died. But I walked out, tugged my lips up into a smile for my father, who, unbeknownst to him, I had just taken pills. I didn't know if I would fall to my knees in a few minutes or in a few hours, or if my soul would slip out of my body while I slept. I only knew was that our bodies were just vessels.
There was sorrow and mourning for myself, that time when I almost died.
But I couldn't go through with it. Maybe I was weak. Maybe I was a coward.
It was in the moment that the doctor asked me if my parents were abusing me that I snapped; I reacted. My parents had done nothing wrong; I could never ask for better ones and it pained me to think that I was going to leave all the emotional baggage to them. I was never scared of dying, I was terrified of leaving my family, that time, when I almost died.
For the next year and a half, what most people would call a shrink was necessary. Lying to him of my recovery became the easy way out, but it would never deny my reality. Only until I told him that I wanted to die, to end my fourteen-year existence, did he and I understand.
Life is a peculiar thing; it's a mystery and a challenge and a beauty. You cannot live in your future. You cannot mull over your past. You cannot reject it because it will reject you first. So did I want to live?
This time, I did not hesitate. I felt it in my heart, and my bones, and in the deepest part of my soul that I wanted to live. I did not want to waste my life thinking back or looking ahead anxiously at what might happen. I wanted to live now.
Loneliness and being alone are two different things, I learned. Loneliness is interior, something that crushes your bones until you can't breathe and you're left gasping for air. Being alone is only exterior, and I learned to crave it, I learned to recharge and appreciate it.
What I know now is that suicide is a complex subject. I know now that we can't subject it to "cowardice" or "bravery", one or the other, because it is completely trivializing.
If I had died, I wouldn't have learned that fighting is what life is all about, I wouldn't have known that I was going to be an aunt to a beautiful, funny little girl, and I wouldn't have seen that there is more beauty in the world than terror. I would not have discovered what I'm truly passionate about, my strengths, and my weaknesses.
If I had died, I wouldn't have learned that mistakes don't summarize who you are.
I believe we're here for a purpose, and mine is to live.
Dedicated to my family who stood by me, my friends who never left me, and my psychologist, Jose, who challenged me.
