I think the moment that I decided I didn't want to die was the moment I almost did. I sat there with the pills in my hand and wept. Not just tears, but soul-shaking cries that made my throat hoarse and my body ache. I screamed for someone, anyone to just please make it stop. I begged every being, every god you can think of, to please, oh please just take the crushing, crippling depression from me. I sat there for what seemed like hours, sobbing, shaking, bleeding. I screamed until my head throbbed and I could no longer hear myself over the rushing of blood in my ears. I was alone. I had never felt so alone, so empty. My chest ached. I just wanted relief. I wanted to feel nothing. I wanted to be okay for just a moment, a split second. A brief moment of no pain, no sorrows, no ache.
I wanted to die... but I didn't want to leave this earth. I didn't want to end sixteen years of life. I wanted to die, but I didn't want to kill myself. I didn't want to be held responsible for taking a life, even my own. But even that wasn't what stopped me. The thing that stopped me was the crippling anxiety that overwhelmed me when I realized I didn't know what came next. Surely, it wasn't golden gates and happiness. My faith had never been strong, but by this point it was almost completely depleted. How could a god, an almighty being, allow someone to feel this? How could they create a human being, a life force, a soul...and allow it to feel so worthless?
I don't think anyone truly knows what it takes to honestly decide to end your life—unless you've been there. Not many people realize how much you have to honestly hate yourself and how disgusted you have to be with your own life. Not may people know how much hatred you have to hold in your heart—for yourself—to truly decide that you, a living, breathing, conscious being, are not worthy of life.
What stopped me from taking the last step was the fear of what I would face after my last breath. Would there be the smiling faces of my loved ones passed? Would there be fire and pain and anguish for eternity? Or, even, would there be nothing? Would my consciousness fade away as I drew my last breath from this world? Would I be aware that I had passed on, that I had ultimately taken the life I was granted, or would everything that was me just fade away? Would I come back as someone or something else? How would it happen? Was there someone waiting on the other side to inform me that I had, indeed, decided to become a statistic? That I had offed myself just like so many other lost souls who couldn't find any light? Would I be forced to watch my family mourn as an eternal punishment? Is there even another "side"? Is there anything to cross over to? Is anything waiting for me? Or am I just going to become nothing, dissipate and cease existence completely? There was no way to be sure, nothing solid to go on—and trust me, I had searched. There was just such a big risk. A risk that I, a scared teenager, wasn't truly willing to take. How could I ever be sure of what was waiting for me?
That fear is what has kept me here today. Not the medications, not the therapy. The fear of what comes next has shaken me to my very core from that day on. It has grounded me here and never allowed me to fulfill what I had been dying—metaphorically—to do for so long. I remain here today, only able to look back on that time, because of one thing: fear.
