This is a heavy and difficult topic for a blogger debutant but an important one. To drown the Internet with relevant texts about suicide.
I have experienced depressive episodes in my life three times. I was on the edge of nothingness, vegetating, feeling deeply meaningless. I did not want to be a burden to people and ironically this was one of the reasons I chickened out of the final trigger. I thought of how much trouble and pain will it cause my flatmate to clean my corpse, inform my family and organize my funeral.
Three times I have reached such bottom, that I could no longer bear that meaningless existence. The only thing that was painful was the ghostliness of the entire experience. I could not bear it and I started looking for help.
I turned googled phrase from ‘how to kill yourself’ into ‘how to save yourself’. I have lost all my dreams and all my ambitions, all the things I cared about. Perhaps, I lost them long time ago. Only one thing mattered – to be happy.
Surprisingly if you focus solely on being happy rather than the things you think will bring you happiness, such as love, money, ambition, travel, career, beauty or whatever is that matters to you, only one thing is left to complete – happiness. You don’t have it but you start looking for it everywhere possible, in the places you have previously ignored, things you previously dismissed as too cliched to make you happy. Happiness of good night sleep, happiness of a soft fabric, happiness of sunrise, happiness of taste of coffee, happiness of a walk on a fresh air, happiness of relief that you found a courage to speak up and tell someone about your fears, trust me they will listen. Happiness of a cinnamon smell, happiness of a song, happiness of healthy meals.
Simple things bring happiness.
Find a soul, that is more lost than you. They are everywhere. Your world might be falling apart, I believe, but someone’s else world might be shattered to pieces too. Make them smile, even just for a minute.
Other people suffer too, connect with them, do not isolate.
Almost two years ago I was coming back from my therapist on a bus. I saw a girl walking in to the bus with a face full of tears. I did not know what happened but I knew how she felt. Before leaving a bus I wrote a note:
‘Smile, world is full of beautiful things and strangers care.’
Before leaving a bus I handed it to her and when the bus was driving away I saw her smiling through the window to me. I know this is silly and cliched, but if I managed to make one upset stranger smile that makes me happy.
Try. It is really worth it. When fighting for your happiness and recovering from your depression you will also enter the sphere of magic. If things are so bad that it cannot be worse, you have an enormous capacity to appreciate every little thing that makes you feel good. Caught up with daily routine normal people do not see it. You can. Your aching heart is so desperate to find a little bit of happiness, you will be able to notice every detail that contains it. I call it post depressive circle of happiness and I am inviting you to dance inside with me and other people who have faced the worst.
At the very beginning of your new quest for happiness start from checking this small simple list: Everything Is Awful and I’m Not Okay: questions to ask before giving up.
If you don’t have anyone to talk to, talk to me. I love getting to know new people and making strangers happy. All my friends were strangers once upon a time.
And if you are a blogger, who has stumbled upon this corner of the Internet, I am encouraging you the same as I was encouraged by Riennahera’s post) to write a similar post, let’s flood the Internet with the really relevant advice for those who want to know about ‘how to end your life’.
