I know what it is like to want to die

“I know what it’s like to want to die.
How it hurts to smile.
How you try to fit in but you can’t.
How you hurt yourself on the outside -
to try to kill the thing on the inside.”

Life is going on around you and you are part of it, but you’re not. Everything happening seems far away. Numbness consumes you. You pull away from everyone because you don’t want to hurt them or burden them with your problems and feelings. Nobody wants to hear those. They all have their own shit to deal with. You ache to join their lives, join the world, but you don’t know how, so you sink further into the black hole. It’s like quicksand and you see no way out.

Passersby sometimes try to lend a hand, but you’re too afraid to reach out for them. So you stand there paralyzed and eventually they give up and leave. You feel so alone. You doubt that anyone loves you. Before long you begin to think that everyone would be better off with you dead.

Then you give yourself permission to die. You want to die and you are trying to figure out how to make it happen, but if you wait too long a little voice deep inside talks you out of going through with it. It makes you want to live just a little more than you want to die.

However, that little voice can’t take the feeling of wanting to die from your mind or heart and it doesn’t do anything to address the issues that drove you to this point. They build up again and the desire to die gets bigger and bigger until you find something to take your mind off the emotional pain.

Pick your poison: self-injury, alcohol, drugs, sex, food, risky behavior, escaping through tv or the internet, or suicide.

When I want to die, I usually use razorblades or needles against my flesh to take my mind off the emotional pain. The release my blood provides helps me make it one more day. I don’t encourage any of the above behaviors. I write about them because it is the truth. They are the things people such as myself resort to in order to survive.