Don’t Worry About Me, I’m Fine

*This piece was written last year.

When you get older and you have depression, people give you less empathy. You’re older now, no longer a kid in your early twenties trying to figure your life out. Now is the age when it’s supposed to be figured.

But sometimes childhood wounds never heal. How can there be scars when the cuts are still bleeding?

So much talk about forgiveness and moving on. But, what if not all pain erases over time? There are some things we can’t accept, some grief that can’t be released by crying it out. So we just live, we learn to live with the pain and the sadness. When you’ve been drowning for so long you eventually teach yourself how to breath underwater.

How can one find peace when they live in a storm? Maybe peace is a cruel concept that doesn’t exist. So instead we cope by teaching ourselves to be comforted by the rockiness, the uncertainty, and to learn to love the constant state of fear and shock.

When those anxieties never leave and you grow older, and more trauma has accumulated, it makes sense that sometimes you decide to commit suicide.

You’ve probably been suicidal your whole life. You hear it constantly: “Life has more in store for you!”  “Just trust.” “It’s a phase.” “You’ll figure it out.” “It’ll get better.”

Then you get into your thirties, forties, fifties, and realize it doesn’t. This pain is as attached to you as your arm is to your torso. The only way out is to cut the pain out, to cut yourself out of this world.

This is the kind of piece I may never publish because it makes people uncomfortable. This is the sort of thing you write that gets the “you’re so brave” and heart emoji or sadface responses, the temporary support of people pretending to care, because there must be a response just in case, you know, just in case one kills themselves, and people need to feel like they did something, like they were there, that space was held.

I hate when people do that. I hate those responses. It makes me feel worse, it makes me feel more alone, and makes me regret sharing these thoughts, these feelings and emotions. I struggle with whether or not people deserve to know that part of me.

But I still continue to overshare.

What does that even mean, to overshare? How can one be honest about their pain, their suffering, their loneliness and have it be considered revealing too much? Maybe that’s the problem, everyone is too afraid, too busy pretending.

Instead of silence, I choose to speak in the hopes of discovering that I’m not alone, and for others to find that same comfort. I know behind every pity-giving comment there’s sadness masked by inspirational memes and prayers of hope. I know despair rings loudly in these times, but it’s more proper to be kept tucked inside, hidden behind the many ways we all choose to self medicate.

I know me writing about this, sharing my pain, gives voyeuristic pleasure to some, and connection to others.

But, to those who have already thought exactly how they would do it, whether or not you would leave a note, imagined how the funeral would be, and for a moment felt a sense of ease, this is for you.