Writing my suicide note was quite contradictory. The words flowed out of me like water yet were stopped by a dam. Tears pricked my eyes while having no emotion at all. The guilt was weighing heavy on my conscience but never crossed my mind.
I wrote my suicide note when I was 15 sitting in my sophomore biology class. My fingers danced along my computer keyboard while in another tap was the suicide hotline, disregarded.

My journey of mental health was messy. At first we thought it was mono, the kissing disease. My constant low mood and irregular tiredness was puzzling to me and my parents, so mono seemed to be the obvious answer but no. It wasn’t until I started planning my suicide in that biology class that they knew it was something more.
I was diagnosed with depression.
That crushing feeling in my chest once I heard my diagnosis was like no other. I knew what this meant, I knew this was a lifelong battle, and I hated that fact more than anything. I was and still am angry about that fact.
My journey continued into going to and from different hospitals. I’ve been to three now, freshly out of my third one. My third visit was different. It gave me hope and crushed it simultaneously. This visit was less severe than the last. I didn’t write a note this time. What crushed this hope was that it was my third visit. Third. I met many people there who told me this is their 4th, 5th, 6th visit.
I thought to myself, “It truly doesn’t get better does it?” But one crucial thing I learned there is you have a choice to choose life.
Part of the reason for my third visit was school. The work piling up was too much for me to handle, so I thought death is the only way out. But hear me when I say this: there is always another way. Find hope in the idea that it is your choice and make the decision to live.
Making that choice is a hard one that I’ve newly made. I lived for so long having the idea in the back of my mind that if things get too hard, if I can’t carry the weight, I always have the final option. That is not an choice anymore. I am committed to living no matter what life holds for me because what I know now is that I would have missed out on a lot if I decided to take my life.
Family game nights, my dad’s impromptu 90s trivia, my little sister’s smile. I would have missed all these wonderful things.
So I urge you to accept you have a choice to live and make the decision to.
It won’t be easy but it’s more than worth it.