It Gets Better. I’m the Living Proof.

This is the untold story of how I narrowly avoided committing suicide when I was 17.

BEFORE YOU READ THIS:

• There is talk of suicide, anxiety and depression.
• I want you to know that nothing in the world is worth losing a young life. What I felt was valid, but when you’re struggling, you need to reach out and do everything to feel better.
• After that night I went to my doctor, I took a leave of absence from school and started having weekly coffee with my cousin whom I don’t spend enough time with.
• Just like that, I was feeling better.
• If you feel like I did in this post. You must talk to people who you trust, talk to family, close friends, anyone who can help you carry the burden.
• I hate that I got this low, but today, I’m grateful that I avoided a blunt death. I’m grateful to share this cautionary tale.
• I’m talking about it because no one does, and that inherently leaves the ones who are feeling isolated even more alone. Because when I needed to read about how I wasn’t the only one feeling like this, all I saw were pages and pages of social media articles boasting amazing lives.
• I’m talking about it so people who have never felt like this can understand how someone can get to that level. So they can learn to empathize and understand instead of criticize and condescend.
• I hope this article lets someone know that life is worth living. Even if you got to do it one day at a time.

“When we reach our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change.”

— Avatar the Last Airbender

Back to the story.

The experience still makes my blood run icy cold and sends a full-body electric shock of nervousness.

To anyone else, that night was no different.

I was alone in my car.

The car that was given to me for my 16th birthday. An old, small and unreliable 2005 Echo. My parents had bought it at a pawnshop for 2 grand.

It had taken months to scrape that kind of money together.

I’ve never talked about it.

A lot of moments and topics are hard to talk about.

Suicide has that vibe about it. It’s one of those topics that my dad’s face gets all red about. Then, my mom would make an exasperated sigh, saying that the whole thing is ridiculous to even discuss and she’d change the topic.

I dealt with a lot of suicidal people in high school. I did not have everyone’s ideal highschooler experience.

Even if we were losers, we were the outsiders, together.

I was not popular, and that’s an understatement.

My friends were a group of misfits and social outcasts.

We were not people with a high esteem of ourselves, and for five years, we met a variety of sketchy people who resembled ourselves. It resulted in physical pains, mental health issues, and stuff we were too young to deal with.

At the age of 15, my best friend called 911 after our third friend had confided in us that they were committing suicide at that very moment.

The ambulance was just in time.

We were fifteen.

I did not attempt to kill myself till college.

Honestly, that’s truly shocking to me.

I did not fight the same battles as my peers in high school. I like to think that I dealt with crap then, so I’d have a few years off when everyone else was catching up.

Or, perhaps their demons were just as bad.

Perhaps their future is bleak.

I was really anxious, struggling with every daily task.

I could not eat in a cafeteria; the noise and lights and eyes were brutal. When I would walk in the hallway I could feel my throat close up and my eyes water. I felt allergic to people, allergic to life.

Everything about my day reeked of depression, nervousness, and neglect. I felt incredibly alone and in pain.

Years later I was diagnosed with ADHD and Aspergers.

It excuses nothing, but it explains a lot.

I was an underachiever, a misfit, and an undesirable.

I wanted to succeed at being forgotten because being included meant dealing with too much.

It’s my understanding that the lowest of the social ladder behaves in weird ways. It’s a darker place where certain behaviors' are not gasped at, teased or shunned as well as they should be. This leads to even more isolation, introducing substance abuse and petty crimes.

I didn’t want people to see how much I disliked my life.

After years of being exhausted, depressed, and generally anxious. I was skipping meals because taking the time to eat was a bother. Food never tasted good enough, I wasn’t even hungry and the whole life experience was awful.

I thought that was life.

Being depressed, anxious, and wanting to die. I thought, “Hey man, I didn’t sign up for this daily shit show.”

By the time I got to college, I had no one.

I had lost touch with my high school friends (that’s okay, we needed to grow in separate directions.) My current social “group” was a club of outcasts. I had a rocky relationship with my parents, I was not taking care of myself and I had been holding in years of mental torment.

By then, I was having intrusive thoughts constantly. I developed agoraphobia, paranoia and had a full-blown anxiety disorder.

And that one time, something inside me snapped.

After years of being a rock. I had become a master of hiding the chaos inside of me. But that’s the problem with putting up walls; eventually, they have to come down.

One evening, during weather much like the one I’m having tonight: cold, damp, and gray.

Weather like this would look bad in any place. To me, it was a physical manifestation of my paint, the universe screaming that life wasn’t worth it.

The world was dark, cold, and scary.

• To this day, I am really ashamed of it. I’m ashamed because I knew all I would lose but I still preferred selfishly ending my own suffering.
• I preferred nothing over everything.

And I was so very tired of being utterly alone in my day to day struggles.

I was so tired of being trapped in my head; I was tired of seeing everyone else skip through the world while I was severely struggling with the bare minimum. I could barely get out of bed, bathe or feed myself. I was straight up flunking out of school, and I couldn’t get myself to care about anything.

It was about 10 PM.

An unremarkable Tuesday in November 2017.

I had finished a college class at 9 PM. High school was years behind me, but like a dark cloud, my brain was still the same. I could never shake the thunder and rain away, this time of year was always the worst.

From November to March, I can’t count on my mood being stable.

I remember having trouble walking to my car. Every step was heavier than the last, and I took a moment to sit on the sidewalk, unable to make the rest of the way to my car.

I was crying, I was tired, and I exhausted. Bonus, my closest friend was a raging sociopath.

I was empty, failing out of school because I simply couldn’t write my papers. I had reached my rock bottom.

I took out a cigarette.

At least they’ll end my suffering one day.

• The worst part of feeling like this is being unable to imagine a world where you’re not utterly consumed by awful emotions.
• I now know that life is like a rollercoaster, what goes up must come down. Consecutively, the awfulness will always get better. Or at least, sting less.

The rest of the way to my car was a blur.

What should have taken 10 minutes felt like an hour.

When I arrived home that night, everyone in the house was sleeping. I remember thinking that for them, nothing had changed.

For me, I was given a chance.

It’s always our worst moments that we feel like we can’t remember ever feeling anything positive, like ever.

It feels catatonic and permanent.

Logically, I knew that was false.

But I couldn’t be logical anymore.

My brain was screaming and I needed it all to stop.

Every year when we turn on daylight savings I remember the night I almost made a huge mistake.

Daylight savings can’t save you from the short winter days.

So it was dark, cold.

Here in Canada, when we say cold, we mean anything from 0 to -30. After that, the term f*cking freezing is adopted.

I’m stalling, back to the story.

I remember the turn.

I remember thinking; at least it will all just stop.

It was a highway turn, you know the ones with the danger signs of tipping over. The ones that tell you to slow down. The ones that curve just to avoid a large cement over pass above it.

I remember feeling numb, and this feeling in my stomach saying;

“It’s okay, it’s finally over.”

It felt like a warm cover had been draped over me.

I don’t know how else to explain it, but I felt like finally, after years. Enough was enough. I felt like I had finally made a decision for myself, it was all going to stop hurting now.

Peace and calm swept over me and the noise in my head sounded different, like I was underwater.

I pressed on the gas, slowly taking my hands off the wheel and closing my eyes.

It’s okay.

It’s finally over.

Today, I hate that I ever fell that low. I hate that I left myself give up.

I empathize, I know exactly how awful it was.

But I hate that I gave up. Because in that moment, my foot was ever so solidly on the gas.

In that moment I made a really bad choice that could have ended my life.

I approached the cement block that was on the other side of that turn.

At the last second, I was jolted alive and grabbed the steering wheel, evading a narrow death.

I had glided blindly across two lanes and was awoken by what I can only call a protective spirit that shook me alive, it saved me.

No matter how sure I was mere second before, I can tell you that in that moment I knew I had to live. I knew that I was making a mistake.

I don’t believe in god, but I sure do believe in spirits.

I hit the highway safety spikes so quickly I nearly lost control.

It would have been an ironic ending. I skated through three lanes twice before regaining control of my vehicle.

I was trembling with adrenaline. I didn’t even react. I drove the way home, my heart still pounding, went to bed, and acted like it never happened.

Now and then, it still crosses my mind

When I’m driving, and I’m feeling particularly depressed, there’s a little thought in my head that goes;

“Why don’t you just swing your arms and… BAM. No more problems.”

And each time I blink, and I don’t do it.

So I stopped believing I would.

Oh, poor, privileged, suicidal white girl.

Today I am mostly okay.

My anxiety is calm on most days, my depression comes and goes.

I am in love, and loved.

I have my place in the world because I made it.

I am no longer in constant pain.

I am one of those people that modern science has saved.

But that’s one night I’ll never forget.

Because being suicidal is like having a stormy cloud over your head.

When you see it, it is all-consuming and dark. And when it’s not there, you completely forget its existence.

Having grown is knowing that after the sunshine, there is always thundering rain.

But that doesn’t mean it won't ever be sunny again.

Looking back, I still only partially understand what happened.

A fever dream, so to speak.

I must say, I’m glad I’m alive. I have a family, a life, and hobbies that passionate me. I guess the point of life is exactly it’s pointlessness.

It’s painful to remember how low I’d gotten, especially at such a young age. I’m only 23, but I know I wasn’t supposed to go through such things so young.

• We need to make meaning out of the meaningless to give a sense to our days, we need to take care of our bodies, minds and social lives.
• We need to heal our life force. (A new therapy concept from the awesome Documentary Stutz on Netflix. I absolutely recommend watching it for the ones who are struggling.)

Moreover, we need to talk about it.

I think it’s ridiculous that a 17 year old girl in a good home with all the right cards nearly offed herself after years of being told that mental health wasn’t a real problem.

I couldn’t ask questions about suicide without getting yelled at (which probably came from fear.) That only reinforced my isolation.

All we say is, “suicide is not an option.” That closes the conversation in a neat and clean way.

But there is nothing clean about mental illness.

Suicide is not a solution, suicide is putting a bookmark in a novel you’ve only begun reading and now, will never finish. Don’t you want to know what else fills those pages?

I know I do.

Suicide hotline Canada

Call: 1.833.456.4566

Text: 45645

Every other country: https://blog.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines/

Hi there. If you’ve made it through this post, you must enjoy reading about my pain and troubling life experiences. Unfortunately, there’s more where that came from.

I was the kid your parents warned you about.

But, today, I’m much better and happier.

However, it makes for good lessons. Here’s another one you might like, I go more in-depth about what was going on in my head.

The other facet of the coin; so to speak.

• If you enjoy my writing, please consider following me to join my healing journey. I assure you, there’s more where this came from.
• If you didn’t know, this website is called medium, and it pays me to tell you all about my life. If you’d like to have unlimited access (and earn some dineros writing.) Consider joining with my link, to no additional cost to you.

Take care,

Sue