I'll Be Okay: Depression, Self Harm etc. Recovery Book

Suicide

I'm pretty sure we've all been waiting for this part, the good old 'suicide isn't the answer' line. Oh but we're all just suicidal kids telling other suicidal kids that suicide isn't the answer. We never believe the bullshit we tell each other.
I will say this now, I have been there. I have been so close to taking my own life more times than I care to count. I've been talked off the windowsill by a friend. I slept with a noose under my bed for a year. I wrote my note. But I never had the guts. That's why I'm still here.

And I'm glad I never did it. Because I don't want to be that selfish. Yes, that's right, I said suicide is selfish. Because it is. Suicide does not get rid of the pain, it passes it on, multiplying as it goes. Suicide is not the end of the problem, it's just the beginning.

I know what you're thinking right now: "But no one cares about me, I'm nothing."

But can you honestly say to yourself right now that nobody would be affected if you killed yourself? Not your family, your friends, the poor soul who finds your lifeless body? You don't think anyone would be affected if you dropped off the face of the earth?

The corner of the classroom where you sit will go quiet. The person who works at the corner shop down the road will wonder why the cute customer stopped coming in.

Your baby cousin will not understand why you went on holiday and never came back. Your parents will forever blame themselves. I mean they're your parents. They should've noticed that something was wrong! Your pets will wonder why you never came home.

They'll do an assembly for you at school. And that kid at the back of the room will silently curse himself for not asking you out sooner. And the girl at the front will have cascades of tears falling down her face because she thought you were so nice and she wanted to be your friend but now it's too damn late.

But okay if you're too selfish to think of all the other people, think about yourself. Think of all the things you'll never experience again. The smell in the air just before it rains. The satisfying crunch of autumn leaves under foot. The squidginess of fresh snow as you make a snowball. The papery-ink smell of a new book. The look of a stunning sunset over the horizon, tinting the sky a salmon pink before decending below the skyline and darkening the sky to a blue-black.

Or all the things you'll never get to experience at all if you leave us now. Your heart filling with love and happiness as you look at your one true love, whom you're about to marry. Your heart once again swelling as you look down into the face of your first born. The fear and excitement that pumps through your veins when you live away from your family for the first time.

Being happy. That is something you will never get to experience if you kill yourself. Trust me, it gets better. You will be happy again. But not if you opt out now.