The day I decided to die

It was a wonderful morning, the sun shining through the window and the amazing blue of the sky making me feel alive and witness life in beautiful colours.

As usual, the first thing of my day was heading towards the kitchen and making a nice cup of coffee, there were some dishes left in the sink, so I decided to wash them whilst enjoying the lovely sun rays radiating through the open window and caressing my face.

Life was so enjoyable at that moment; how could I have ever suspected that just a few hours later I would be making preparations to end my own life.

Having finished the dishes, I took the coffee and went back to my room, organized the table a little bit as it was full of papers then opened my laptop, making myself comfortable in the chair, moved the cup of coffee right next to my hand, then finally went to the Indeed search bar and started looking for jobs while sipping my coffee.

Life was still good at this point.

I started reading the offers that were catching my eye, I even had the impression that some might be suitable so decided to apply, took a quick look at my CV and tried to send the first application.

I was then notified that I needed to go to the company’s website to progress the application. Heading there, I realize I already have an account on the website. Of course, I don’t remember the login details, so I try to cheat and make a new account, as soon as I enter my email address, I am notified there is already an account for my email address. I change the email address on the form again press send, yet once again I am notified that there is another user with the same details.

As all my cheating attempts failed, I circled back to my inbox and tried to retrieve my details to access my old account and apply for the job. All was going well until I arrive at the section where I need to enter the three secret answers to the security questions.

Attempt after attempt, although the questions seem simple, given they are all connected to specific moments of my past, I manage to provide the wrong answers every time.

As my anxiety grows with each attempt and my fragile emotional balance seems ready to tip over after almost an hour expended in the silliest way, I finally decide to move on.

I start reading job offers again but the dense fog of misfortune seems ready to swallow me.

The failure to access that silly account feels daunting, not because of the irrelevant event in itself but because this increasingly becomes my daily reality.

With growing frequency, I seem to spend sometimes hours trying to retrieve passwords or other information: often information that I have used only some moments previously. Many times, this hell breaks loose at the very moment when I am trying to create the blessed account, as either I have forgotten the security combination created or I have somehow pressed some wrong character resulting in my input being not what I intended.

Now I know you might ask why I don’t write them down, well most of the time I do, but finding the piece of paper or the actual notebook where I wrote the information is another matter.

Sometimes in a rush, I write down just the password but not which account it is related to, exhibiting a lack of focus, confusion, and forgetfulness:

all blessings of my ADHD brain.

Now no normal human being would even need to go through all these troubles, as the combinations I use are pretty much the same for all job websites, the only problem is the distinct types of characters or sometimes the mandatory number, might not seem like much, but this really caused me havoc every time.

Returning to my special day, although I have started everything with all the goodwill in the world, the situation is rapidly changing, the more job offers I read the more only negative details are jumping out at me.

Fast learner: when it comes to learning - I have the speed of a snail.

Driving license: three times I auto sabotaged my chances of taking the practical test, terrorized by the idea that due to my lack of capacity to focus I might end up killing somebody.

Organizational skills: yeah right! I can’t even organize myself as much as to be able to access some silly internet account five minutes after creating it.

Almost forty years of life and yet not being able to solve the most basic problem, finding a job that wouldn’t end up causing me a nervous breakdown:

Take that for amazing problem-solving skills!

Language skills? Well, I do have those!

I mean I do speak four languages, not badly either, but what do I do with those fantastic moments when I can barely remember my own name and, as much as I try, the right word in the correct language at the right time just doesn’t come to mind?

As for the writing, no matter how many times I have ever read or how many times I have ever written a word, there are very few chances for me to remember how to write it properly without the precious help of Google.

Now, what else is there?

Excellent communication skills: well, I certainly have those right?

That’s so in the rare case where people have the immense patience to repeat their sentence three-four times, as my blessed perception problem stops me from understanding what they meant despite hearing them crystal clear.

Multitasking? I can of course do that!

I can eat, listen to music in the background, write on my book and watch a movie on the tv all at the same time. But there’s no guarantee that there’s no flying pan catching fire on the kitchen stove while I am being so productive!

Now capable to work under pressure: I used to be able to do it, and this together with the consequent nervous breakdowns is what got me into this mess of a situation in the first place.

I pull the curtains closed, trying to hide from that intense sunlight, the beautiful sunny day is mocking my misery.

My biggest problem always, was reconciling that voice telling me that everything is possible, that I am a valuable human being with so many gifts and talents, with the reality of the fact that there are indeed too many things I cannot do in my everyday life.

So as a result, that positive voice became always weaker with another one repeating me that everything is pointless and no matter how hard I try I will never be able to reach any of my goals or fulfil any of my dreams taking its place.

But returning to this memorable day, as the situation got more and more frustrating I started getting hungrier and hungrier, this blessed nervous hunger that made me gain more than ten kg in the last years adding yet another problem to my long list: that of really hating my physical appearance. Therefore, although I usually avoid eating too early in the morning, so I might have some kind of control over my intake of calories, as I know in the evenings the anxiety grows so much, that there is no way I can avoid stuffing myself with food.

I decide to go to the kitchen and prepare something to eat.

I prepare an omelette and a beautiful salad and although I am enjoying the food, while eating, all the misfortunes of the last days start to look bigger and bigger.

The universal credit failure, the obstacles in getting a new job, my bank account always emptier, the guilt of having other people changing their plans in order to help me, not being able to at least start studying something that I really like, all the many broken hopes and dreams and the way that nothing seems possible anymore.

It’s all painfully overwhelming as there doesn’t seem to be any way out, yet what I feel is not desperation but complete tiredness and emptiness, the suicidal thoughts are always there of course, and they are becoming progressively more alive, although so aware of the fact that I have never wanted to die.

I love the idea of really living life, I always did but I can see so clearly now that I have no chance of ever managing to.

Is this continuous struggle worth it?

Messing up other people’s lives, becoming a burden suffering all the way through, and all for what? For becoming every day more this person that I don’t even like?

A person so full of anger, regrets, and frustrations, so empty and tired, one that doesn’t have anything to offer to itself or anyone else.

A human being so broken and so sad that I am somehow stuck with for the rest of my life. I look in the mirror and I do not like what I see:

An overweight middle-aged woman that never grew up and whose existence makes no sense in the big scheme of things. There might be more to it, but all I can see is the extra weight, the useless white hair, the wrinkles around my eyes, my whole existence swallowed by nothingness and the realisation that there’s no one else to care and I don’t either: putting an end to everything seems like a logical and even an enlightened solution.

Touching this point there is no sadness or despair, it’s just cold logic and that is what makes everything feasible.

The conversation that I had just three days ago with the girl from Talking therapies, this all happened just before being taken off the program and left without any support for a month and a half until my psychiatric appointment only because I had mentioned suicidal thoughts.

Anyway, that conversation comes to mind causing a bitter laugh, she made me promise that if I would ever get to the point where I decided to take my own life, I would call an emergency hotline.

I promised to do so, although even at that moment the idea seemed to me hilarious, and I knew I was lying. The reason why anyone should call and ask for help after having decided that death is the best solution goes beyond my power of understanding.

I had been asking for help, for months now, making phone call after phone call and talking to all kinds of "professionals", one more clueless than the other about what patients with mental problems need or how they can be best helped.

Most of these people being cringengly obvious only interested in the poor amounts of money their silly jobs paid, and how to reach their daily norm.

I remember messaging one of these online national services in one of my darkest moments and being so bullied into writing my answers quicker, or getting off the line, that I had to call the whole thing off in order to protect myself from the horrible attitude of the person who was supposed to be there to help which instead made me see my inadequacies and my incapacity to think fast and find the right answers quicker in a even more monstrous light than I did before talking to her.

I had contacted charities, NHCS I had been talking with all these professionals the only thing they had to offer, instead of practical solutions, were empty words or harsh judgements and, in the end, I realized that there was no help coming from anywhere. There was only me with all my problems and there was no one else capable, or willing, to help me solve them.

I couldn’t either. I had already tried in vain far too many times to keep on believing, so death really seemed like the only viable solution.

With all these thoughts, suddenly, my body starts shaking, the pain in my chest becomes suffocating and breathing becomes increasingly difficult, my every muscle twitch and contract.

I feel like screaming but there are people in the next room. A destructive wave of rage takes over and I start convulsively hitting the improvised table always harder, but it’s a calculated release of anger, books, papers and random things flying everywhere! I am silently screaming and punching every innocent item that has the misfortune to show up in front of me, and yet I am still lucid enough not to do any irreparable damage.

I am uselessly trying to direct this anger that I know well, it has only my own person as a target towards the outside world. So, I could avoid actually hurting myself, I am even uselessly trying to cry hoping that this will give me some relief, but I have no tears, so the unreleased pressure just keeps growing and growing.

It is the last gesture of rebellion against the unfairness of life, through all this what I did was reaching a decision point. This is not life, and I don’t want to go on anymore, but I do not want to die either and this is what my anger is protesting.

A life, the idea of which I love, but which I know I will never be able to live. Left only to cope until the end: I know I do not want this fate!

Suddenly everything seems calmer and clearer, tears are starting to flow.

I can just let go now. I can die taking with me not only the regret of a life that I never managed to live, but also the factual certainty that I would never be able to live it anyway, so there’s nothing that I would be missing out on.

Obviously, I am still here writing this article so the irreparable didn’t materialise.

What stopped the event was the fact that no matter how much I hated myself and my life at any given moment I have never managed to completely stop caring about others, and I do believe this is a trait of character that can often save us from ourselves.

Once decided that the bathroom was the best place for the final act, so as not to mess up the carpets with my blood and create unnecessary trouble for my flatmates. I headed there and sat in the bathtub. While feeling the touch of the cold blade on my skin, I was watching the hypnotic dance of the shadows on the walls thinking that I was ready to take that ultimate step, but right at that moment, the image of my mother popped into my mind.

She had been through so much more in her life, yet she had always been there standing strong, being everyone’s rock in moments of need. She wouldn’t have approved of my cowardly escape, but then again, seeking approval was never my strength, so that didn’t much matter. The pain of losing a child whose existence had proved to be so useless to himself and the rest of the world: that loss would not worry me much either.

What really shook me was the sudden realization that I was about to put yet another huge financial strain on her already overburdened shoulders.

I had nothing but debts on my name and she had always struggled financially, yet she would have been left to not only pay for my funeral arrangements, but she might have also been forced to transport my lifeless body across countries and borders and I remember how traumatic it was to transport my grandfather's body just from a city to another , this coming on top of everything else, seemed to me like monstrous punishment for her inocens.

Realising this, I decided that the responsible thing to do was to find a way to set everything up in advance.

I figured cremation would be the best solution, but how to arrange it for myself in advance, and how to pay for it all?

This dilemma needed to be solved.

And suddenly my purposeless life got a purpose, it was a morbid and temporary one but one that would safely get me over the threshold of a very dark moment.

As a conscious scholar, I dived into cremation research for the rest of the day, and dear readers that was a life-changing moment for me. The physical dimension of the after-death reality in all its obscure splendour, shook me to the core and made me understand that I much preferred my miserable life to having my poor lifeless body manhandled by strangers in troubling ways.

Looks like I did have some love left for myself after all, for my physical vessel at least.

Love which was brought to life by the cringe-worthy information regarding the after-death reality with its gruesome details found online, and that was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

Until this day whenever darkness seems to take over, those thoughts come to mind and still I greatly prefer my miserable and precious life.

A life which by the way, stopped being miserable a long time ago,

that precise moment when I finally understood that in the big scheme of things, none of the issues that took the appearance of unsurmountable tragedies that fated day really matter.

Not being able to do so many little things that other people do without thinking, why should that matter?

There must be plenty of things that I can do, and which others can’t, and even if there aren’t, what makes that so necessary?

There are still things that I can do, period.

There are always things that any of us can do, no matter how crippled our self-esteem is.

Despite all my perceived inadequacies, it never took me too much time to become one of the best workers in any job I ever had. Often, I have even been offered promotions, admittedly they weren’t great jobs, but that was never because I had really failed in getting better ones, but because my low self-esteem never allowed me to even apply for better roles.

And this is what is all about, that perceived reality that many times ends up not only controlling but destroying our lives.

That perceived reality of being weak, inadequate, helpless, useless, purposeless, sinful, undeserving, and all other terrible labels that we attach to ourselves before realizing that there is no way we should be and no thing we should do in this lifetime and who we really are and what we can actually do is more than good enough.

Being our true selves and shinning our own inner light, that is the only thing that Life and the Universe will ever require from us. And this is the biggest truth that I have ever discovered in my many years of troubled existence and the one thing that changed the game forever by freeing me from past conditioning and allowing me to live my life in a loving, peaceful, and purposeful way.

But you will find more about that journey in other self-empowering blog articles so please feel free to roam around.

Much love and light to you my reader and see you on the next venture!