I've struggled with depression for as long as I can remember. At age thirteen, my paranoid schizophrenic sister tried to murder me for reasons I still don't understand. I ran away from home where I was taken in by a woman who sexually abused me for three years, keeping me sedated with opioids and locked in a closet when not "in use".
When I finally got out at sixteen, I made my first suicide attempt--an intentional heroin overdose. I would have been successful if it weren't for a nurse with an overdose kit who found me. Between the ages of 16 and 31, I would make six more attempts; hangings, cuttings, overdoses, intentional car crashes... Over and over I would try, and over and over I would fail.
Well, this week I lost the very last of what I've been holding onto, when after a bad car accident, I reached out to them saying I was struggling with suicidal ideation and they broke up with me over text saying I was too much pressure; too much work. I laid there, bottle of propranolol in my hand, trying, knowing I could stop my heart and stop the pain, but for the first time in my life, I couldn't.
Maybe it was the psychedelics I had done since my last suicide attempt, maybe it was just getting older, but for the first time in my life, I was afraid. I wanted to die so badly, but I was terrified of death. I was terrified of the idea of reincarnation, of needing to live an entire new life; I was terrified of the hell my Catholic upbringing taught me I was absolutely going to go to; I was terrified of becoming a ghost, getting the momentary satisfaction of getting to see my ex feel the same heartbreak they had put me through but then an eternity of consciousness watching them move on without me.
I never thought I'd be grateful and so angry and the same time for a basic fear keeping me alive. Truth be told, I do still want to die; I still feel so worthless and like there's no point in my being here, but here I am, and here I'll continue to be, at least for now.