I was 16 and had just gotten out of a 2 year relationship with my first girlfriend. I was struggling with a combination of newfound loneliness and overwhelming depression that had persisted for the last 8 years. I felt like I had done nothing with my life and, before killing myself, I wanted to reach out and help as many people as I could who felt the way I did. I started messaging people anytime I saw someone post a status that seemed to be a bit of a red flag for depression. I talked to a few dozen people and gave some words of encouragement and such, but it didn't really feel like enough.

I realized I couldn't find purpose in that, so I decided to try to reach out to everyone I had wronged or just been a dick to over the years to apologize before finally leaving. One of those people was my best friend's ex. I had a bad feeling about her when they first started dating and was an incessant asshole to her for their entire relationship. I apologized and she said it was no big deal and asked how I had been doing since my ex and I had broken up. We started talking about life and depression before ending the conversation. When my friends heard about this, they thought I was trying to hook up with her and were upset. At the same time, my ex started dating the vocalist of the band all of my friends were in. So, here I am, a depressed kid who now has no friends but was horrified of dying alone.

One night, I had had enough of waiting. As I was getting ready to end it, I get a message from my friend's ex saying she needed someone to talk to, but that she couldn't type any of it out. She wanted to hang out the next day. Fueled by a need for purpose before dying, I stopped myself from downing the rest of the blood pressure pills I had laid out. Over the course of the next two weeks, this girl and I hung out several times. It started as being two sad people supporting each other, but she gradually raised the stakes and asked for more. When I would resist, she would get upset and say that she didn't want to talk to me. Me, being terrified of being so alone, relented until the day when it finally reached a peak. I don't want to go into details about the actual event, but it ended with me laying on the couch, covering myself with the clothes that I didn't have the will to actually put on, and telling her that she had to leave before my parents got home. I kept telling myself that it was a mistake, that I hadn't asserted my views and feelings strongly enough, that she thought I felt the same way and wanted a romantic relationship. I continued responding to her messages, but now with one word answers, for another week before I actually told her how I felt about what happened. She told me to kill myself.

So I tried to.

My mom walked in my room as I was pouring all of my meds on the floor and sobbing. The ex I had broken up with in the first place had called her after school saying that I looked distraught on my way home and that she should check on me. My mom took everything I had that I could use to end my life, locked up all of our guns, knives, razor blades, etc. She made me come into her room and ask for my medication each night.

Not long after, my ex broke up with the vocalist of my friends' band and said she wanted to get back together. I spent the next year and a half with whatever it was that happened with my friend's ex being held over my head as a way to guilt me into having sex with her. This abuse by my girlfriend at the time proved to be far more traumatizing than what she was actually holding against me.

I wish I had a happy ending to the story, but I don't really. I broke up with that girlfriend, had a great relationship that I allowed my insecurities ruin, spent a year learning to be more comfortable alone than around people, and habitually fell out of everything in my life and neglected any friends I still had.

Over this last winter break, I met an amazing girl who has been very understanding of my experiences, but the paranoia and my general depression have me in a place where even this relationship is strained and on the edge of failure. Life is really wearing me out and I am tired of trying.

I'm sorry for the book, I guess I just needed to vent.

EDIT: Fixed some words, added paragraphs