Okay, fine! I wrote one of these…

Content Warning: mentions of suicidal thoughts

The last time I felt the overwhelming urge to end my life, after years of fighting a losing war against my brain, I made the decision to postpone it until after I turned 30. Before making such a final decision, I felt I owed it to myself to make sure I had exhausted all possible solutions. I was going to try something I had not tried before; I was going to try to live a life that was truly FOR me! It sounds so simple writing it now but at the time it felt so big and revolutionary and wildly impossible.

I recently saw a TikTok where someone said something to the effect of “if the choice is between ending your life and ruining it, ruin your life! You can end your life later if you still want to but you cannot un-choose death” and it dawned on me that, unknowingly, this is exactly what I had done all those years ago. This thought is exactly what saved me.

From the outside, the past four years of my life may have not looked any different from the rest of my life, it sure did sometimes feel like it looked a lot like failure or wasted potential from the outside but, thankfully, I have never been the kind to spend much energy wondering about how others perceive me. At the end of the day, making the choice to slow down from the rat race that is life under capitalism and prioritizing myself is why…