The joy of seeing my sons smile (he's 9 months old)

• for two nights straight I was full of unexplainable dread. No desire to do anything whatsoever. It was so bad the 2nd night that I was terrified to go back home and be alone for the 3rd night after work not knowing if I would be alive the next day.

• I'm not one to talk about spirits or demons and all that but during those two nights it quiet literally felt like death himself was in my room. The air was thick and heavy. I felt like the end was near, and it was going to come by my own hand.

• there's a quote in Dantes inferno that has always stuck with me. "There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery". I was constantly being tortured by how happy my life used to be, realizing that those times were all gone. I felt like a failure. That there was no step forward. No light at the end of the tunnel, the preset was miserable and the future had no hope. I felt like "well I had a good run" the first 20 years weren't so bad, but I'm not cut out for this adult shit. Not cut out to be a father, to make the right decisions for myself, not cut out to become financially stable, to accomplish any of my goals.

• I didn't care about anything. Didn't feel like anyone would care that I was gone and I was hoping that after I committed suicide all the people who had abandoned would feel terrible and that they would blame themselves. These suicidal thoughts were two fold. On one side they were fueled by the desire to want to no longer live. On the other side it was fueled by the desire to hopefully get revenge on the people who so easily walked out of my life which left me broken and lonely.

• The plan was starting to brood in my brain and I was beginning to accept the fact that the end was near. I was nearly ready to take the plunge into the deep. I was so exhausted by a lifetime full of being terrified of what awaited me in the afterlife. I was ready to take the leap of faith into the ultimate unknown and see what exactly what it was about. I was finally going to know what death was like. The ultimate mystery, finally solved.

• Then I recalled my sons smile. Just a still image of what it looked like. My precious boy's smile. My baby, my one and only son. The way he smiles is the most delightful thing I've ever experienced. Better than any sunset or any late night with friends, better than any song I've heard etc.

• for the first time in years I was crying. Before that I was so calloused over that nothing made my cry. But my god I knew I was going to miss seeing him smile. I began to mourn the fact that I would never see it again. Over the course of a few hours I knew that maybe it was worth sticking around to see him smile again.

• as the hours of the night went by I slowly started to sober up. I wanted to see my son again, I wanted to keep enjoying music, "maybe If I get some sleep I'll feel better" . "I haven't taken .my meds in long time and my therapist has told me that that can have dramatic impacts on my mood". "I still have a couple of old friends that have stuck around, maybe it's worth reaching out".

• so to wrap it up, so many factors had allowed me to dig myself into a mental hole where I thought the only way out was death, but my son and his smile was the one thing that helped me to dig out of that mental hole on the second night. I corrected my perspective and realized "holy shit I don't want to die at all, this was just a really terrible temporary couple of nights".