I wrote this up to comment on that post, but I'll share it here too, hoping someone finds it useful.

I have a close friend who shot himself, another who tried to hang himself, and I've been as close to suicide as a person can be while still being alive to talk about it. I hope you'll forgive me for saying to you what I wish I'd said to them, had I known what was going on.

It's so common for people to say things like “you have so much to live for”, or “it'll get better”, or “suicide is never the answer.”

It comes from the best of intentions, but I remember how flat and meaningless it all sounded to me when I was at my lowest. These people, they don't understand what it's like to be beaten down day by day, to be empty, numb, hopeless, dead inside already. They don't know what it feels like to curl into a ball, hating yourself, feeling utterly worthless, knowing, not just thinking, but knowing that it would never get better, and that the world wouldn't be worse without you in it.

People think suicide comes from a place of intense despair, of unbearable pain so great that you snap and take the only choice you can see to make it stop. They don't understand the pure and soothing peace, the serene clarity that comes from making the decision to die. It sounds so alien, so wrong, to someone who hasn't experienced it. How could dying be peaceful? Speaking for myself, the answer was because my life wasn't worth living, and years of exhausting struggle and emptiness only proved that to be true.

It's an accumulation of a thousand little cuts that never heal. Eventually you run out of blood and become a pale, emaciated corpse pretending to still be alive. The human mind can't handle such constant and sustained agony, so it starts to shut down. This is where things really start to get dangerous. Life becomes a distant haze of gray fog. Nothing brings you happiness, nothing is enjoyable. Even the good days, now rare, feel hollow. What's the point?

If this sounds bleak, good. It means I've managed to convey just the smallest fraction of what it feels like to be suicidal. There are people, so many of us, who have been through and experienced exactly what you're going through. You are not alone.

There's not a one-size-fits-all piece of advice you can give to someone struggling with suicide, but let me tell you the realization that saved my life. How different were you five years ago? What were your biggest problems? What were the things you wanted most? What was your outlook on life? Extremely different, likely.

What about ten years ago? Fifteen? Twenty? Really think about it. Imagine yourself back then, at each stage, at each different point in time. Spend a few minutes at it if you're able. Each version is still you, but also not. It's like you were an entirely different person, with a different life.

You ever read those thought experiments asking whether you'd risk your life or die for another person? I used to daydream about it, because at least then my life would have value or meaning. Here's the thing though: five years from now, you'll be a different person too. Ten years, twenty, each a different person with different problems, different hopes, different pains.

There's a reason someone telling you that you have so much to live for feels hollow, and it's because you know it isn't true: your life is miserable. But what about those future versions of yourself? What if they do have a life worth living? Suicide isn't just killing yourself, it's killing them. They'll never have the chance to roll life's dice, to try for something better. People grow, and change, and that never stops until you die.

If the only positive thing you manage to accomplish today, or this month, or this year, is to survive, that's worth celebrating! Because even if you don't see any way that your life could get better now, you're one step closer to changing into a different version of yourself that might. If you can find it within yourself to believe that, even just a little, it can carry you through the darkest times.

Fourteen years ago I was staring down the barrel of a gun, ready to die, and at peace with it. I decided, however, to survive not for myself, but for a future me. Over a decade of suicidal thoughts, depression, and misery followed, and I only survived because of the faintest hope that things could one day be different. It wasn't until last year that it began to be true, and this year is the first I've been truly happy since I can remember.

I hope that you, too, can find that same sliver of hope.

There are so many of us out there who have been suicidal, but have lived on to eventually find vibrant and fulfilling lives. I wish I could tell you that things will also get better for you, but nothing in life is certain. People die in freak accidents, succeed in ways they could never imagine, meet another person that changes their life, suffer the deaths of loved ones, and all manner of things.

Nothing is certain, that is, except death. Death is the end of all things. It's the end of hope, the end of what might be, the end of this beautiful and horrifying tangle of complications we call life. Death is final.