In the Face of Death

Prolouge

Death.
I never knew what it would feel like.
Would it be fast? Or would it be slow and painful, a horrible, pain-wrenching time of agony that you would never feel again once it was over?
Would you feel anything? What would you think in your last moment, when you know that you will never be able to breathe another breath, smile another smile, shed another tear, dance to another dance?
How would I feel? Would I feel sadness, as I will never be able to see life again, or happiness, as I will finally be free?

Death is different, in many ways. But even asking all of these questions to myself, I now finally realize what death is like for me.

Death, is strange. Freeing. But wrong.

Sure, it seems comforting, as if you have just come in from being soaked and chilled from being drenched in rain, then sitting in a warm fire with a fuzzy blanket around your icy shoulders. You think you will feel peace, as you know that you will never make another mistake or you will never be a burden to someone again. You think you will finally be free, free to do failures and not expect anyone to know that you were and are a mistake and shouldn't be alive.
But you are wrong.

Death is a deceiver. It will tell you you will get anything you have ever wanted if you rid the world of yourself. It will tell you it is everything, and you are nothing.

If that thought comes that you will be free if you kill yourself, you must not listen to it. It is lying to you. It always has, it always will.

At least, it has lied to me.

How would I know?

Because I experienced it.

Perhaps you want an explanation. If I had experienced death, I wouldn't be here telling you my story right now.
Well, let me tell you my story, and maybe you will finally understand how I have experienced death, that tempting, deceivable thing.  

My name is Perry Woods.

And I am a failure. A mistake.

Ever since birth, I feel like I always knew something was wrong with me. My parents split when I was two, then gave me up when I was three. I've been tossed to foster home to foster home, being thrown around like some old leftover that nobody wants to eat but is obliged to keep, because food is money, and you shouldn't throw out money.

Ugh, that was a bad simile. Maybe I should stop narrating. I'm an awful narrator, and I can't do anything..
No, I shouldn't listen to myself. I need to get back on track. I need you to listen to my story.
Please excuse me if I criticize or interrupt myself. I do that sometimes. I guess it's all of part of having 'depression.' I call it the 'I can't stand myself' problem.

Anyways, I grew up having low self-confidence. My weight, my hair, my legs, my arms. I couldn't bear to look at myself. I felt like my parents never wanted me because I wasn't cute or pretty or anything. I was only a burden, tying them together to a marriage they both wanted to forget. Even though my current foster parents at the time told me I was beautiful, I never believed them. When I looked into the mirror, I didn't see me.

I only saw a mistake.

Everyday after school, I would cry my eyes out. Tear by tear, I would imagine what life would've been like if I had been normal. If my parents never split or gave me up. If I could look into the mirror and tell myself, 'That is one beautiful girl.'

Whenever I wanted to feel normal, I'd always retreat to my favourite place. My 'normal' place. It was a place where I was finally happy, where I had two great parents, a sister and brother, a dog, and a big, happy house where we would be a happy family and where we would always go to every night and enjoy our time together. I would be beautiful, and I would know that everyone loved me and I loved myself.
My normal place saved me a lot of times. Usually from dangerous mistakes I would've had if I had never thought of my normal place. Time after time, I am thankful for my normal place, because in the long run, it saved my life many times, but I get to more of that later.

For example, once, I was feeling so awful about myself that I suddenly had an idea that the only thing that could make up for being a burden and a mistake was if I cut myself. Feel the knife slice through my skin, feel the weight of my mistakes grow lighter and the tears streaming down my face become heavier. At the time, it felt like the perfect plan.
I crept down to my foster parent's kitchen, grabbed one of their knifes, then sneaked back to my room clutching the one thing that I thought could release me from this state of mind.

I began to bring the knife towards my skin after sitting straight on my bed. Taking a deep breath, I slowly brought the sharp blade towards my skin, my fingers slowly running over the cool metal. My eyes welled with tears, then slowly closed, as I gingerly pressed harder onto my skin. As I began to make the first cut, a single thought popped into my head, one thought that probably saved me from something that could've ended into a very bad thing.

It was my 'normal' place.

I brought the knife down, releasing my skin from being sliced. I began to relish this thought, thinking about the imaginary place I cherished and dreamed of so much. As I thought of my imaginary parents, one thought sprung into my mind.

'Cutting yourself won't bring you to them. Only death will.'

This is when these thoughts started happening. Thoughts that could've ended my life so quickly if I gave in to them.

Death.

That mysterious thing.
That freeing thing.
That wrong thing.

'Would I go to my normal place if I died?'

This thought kept ringing in my head.

I couldn't possibly kill myself. No, that was going to too far. I had imagined cutting myself,  but not killing myself.

'Still, you could be with your parents. Your imaginary parents, your imaginary family. You could have anything you had ever dreamed for. Death is the only answer. You are already a mistake, a failure. You honestly don't deserve to live. You are nothing. You will always be nothing. The only way to be normal is to kill yourself.'

No.

'I can't kill myself. I can't. I could never bring myself to do it,' I thought.

Still, these thoughts never went away. Thoughts of suicide, thoughts of ending it all, ridding the world of a person who was never meant to be anything at all.

I still cried that night. Great, long sobs. In my mind, all I could repeat over and over was, 'You are nothing.'

I listened to all of these thoughts.

I believed all of these thoughts.

I think I have said enough. You will now get to listen to my full story, a story that will  hopefully will impact the way you view depression and thoughts of cutting or suicide. I was lucky, I didn't give in to these thoughts so quickly. Others haven't been this strong. Others hadn't made it as long as I did.

Everyone has a story to tell. That's what I always say to myself. Mine takes place in high school, a time where I was in the worst place in my life. A time where I experienced death for the first and last time.

End of Prologue.