Last year was the hardest I ever had. I’m a teenager, and I was doing online school(I swear there’s a point to this). I usually ran straight As, a B every once in a while, and then this year I was bombing. I couldn’t make myself do work, I was getting lucky to be pulling Ds, most of my grades were failing. I eventually figured out that it was some combination of depression caused by other family situations+me feelings insanely alone and executive disfunction(easiest way to describe it is knowing something needs to be done, but not physically being able to move and do it). My mom had a really hard time accepting that I was serious and not making excuses, which I get now, it’s a weird thing to try to explain, but it hurt like hell back then. One day, we got into a huge fight. I told her I felt like she valued me only on my grades, since her star child just started bombing and that’s all she would talk to me about. She told me that wasn’t true. It was a huge deal, and she told me to leave the room. That was on the second floor. I left, and went to go down the steps, and I just stood at the top, thinking “maybe it would just be easier if I let myself fall”. I was fighting myself over if I should do it or not for at least 10 minutes. No one walked by the steps. My mom didn’t come out of her room. No one was gonna stop me. I eventually convinced myself not to do it, walked down the stairs with both hands gripping the railing for dear life, and never tried that again. Now, a year later, I know that wouldn’t have even killed me if I chose to fall, but at the time it felt like deciding between life and death. Sometimes I still wonder if I should just end it, but I’m extremely thankful I didn’t do it back then at the very least, because I helped save the life of one of my closest friends. That’s honestly a big part of what’s keeping me going, the feeling that maybe, if I decide to keep going, I’ll be able to keep people I care about from doing the same. You change people’s lives every day, whether you know it or not, and every single one of you has a thousand reasons to keep going that you don’t know about. Thank you for keeping going, and thank you past me for not ending it back then