Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve wanted to die. I think it was somewhere in 2nd grade when I realized that I went to school, and hated it. Then went home, and hated it. And went to sleep to nothing but nightmares. That cycle repeated indefinitely.
What was there really to look forward to out of life? Years upon years of school—followed eventually by a life of work... followed by death. I could skip all the uncomfortable parts of life by just going straight to end and dying.
Except… I could never go through with it. I couldn’t really die. I had too much family. Too many friends.
But still… I really wanted the thoughts of suicide to go away. It was so hard walking through my kitchen in the middle of the night to get a drink of water, only to see all the many different ways I could die everywhere: the toaster could electrocute me, there was a mountain of chemicals underneath the sink with that little yuck face poison sticker on them, not to mention my parents well-sharpened knives, or the medicine cabinet up top with who knows what kinds of prescription drugs my parents had collected over the years. And that was just the kitchen.
Walking anywhere was a death trap of thought spirals. There were just too many ways to die. Humans really are fragile. And I was a little thing who could die at any time.
What really made it difficult to ever go through with dying, was what I would leave behind. Did I really want my mother to find my dead body on the floor of the kitchen? Did a janitor really deserve to find lifeless corpse in a closet somewhere when they were trying to clean in the morning? Was there anywhere I could hide permanently that no one would ever find me?
No.
People knew me. People knew my name. I was my parents daughter, a big sister, a friend, a best friend, an acquaintance, a student. I was someone to somebody, and I couldn’t escape that.
A net of connections tied me to being alive, kept me from escaping.
For a time I tried to be a bully, psychologically hurting others so that no one could possibly like me. I thought for sure if everyone hated me enough that would give me reason enough to die. It didn’t work.
All it did was invite ridicule for my actions. I tried to keep my forest green hair as beautiful as I possibly could, even though all the other girls at school said that my hair would always keep me hideous.
And I deserved their bullying. I deserved all of the mocking, teasing, jeers, lies, and torment.
I deserved to die. I really did. It’s what I wanted after all. I just… couldn’t do it myself.
I got really envious of cancer patients and car accident victims. They just got to die for free without all the anguish. Sure—there was still sadness from the family and friends left behind, but dying from an accident or a sickness was socially acceptable.
Suicide is not an “okay” form of dying. No matter the age. No matter the circumstance.
Everything changed when I found the memory erasing stone.
I could die.
I COULD DIE!
I didn’t even hesitate. I erased the memories of myself from everyone at school.
Just like that. I lost all my friends. My acquaintances. Even my teachers were confused who I was.
The hardest thing I’ve ever done was erase the memories of myself from my parents.
It took several days of preparation for my own death. But erasing myself from my family's minds was crucial if I was really going to pull this off.
As long as no one had any memory of me, they couldn’t be sad that I was gone.
That’s what made this okay.
That’s what made my own suicide okay.
I slowly got rid of all my things, grabbed plenty of cash I stole from my parents, rode a bus a long ways away, and made my way to the woods to find a nice spot to stop existing.
I hiked for two days, trying to find the absolute middle of nowhere.
When I was absolutely sure I was alone… I…
I...
I failed.
I failed at the one thing I should have been good at. I had everything I had ever ever wanted within my grasp. It was the culmination of all I had dreamed of for years! I had absolutely NOTHING tying me down. No relationships. No family. No friends. Nothing. NO ONE!
And yet… I couldn’t go through with it.
I—
I had a thought go through my head that I couldn’t ignore, and it was that one thought that ruined everything for me:
I don’t want to die, I just want the desire to die to go away.
It was as if I could personify my own suicidality as another person inside of me. If suicide were a person, of course it wouldn’t want to be there. Suicidality shouldn’t be there. It should go away and leave the world to the living. And so I said goodbye to my suicidal self.
I had the memory stone.
All I had to do was erase all memories of my suicidality.
This was going to be the second chance.
If I truly wasn’t meant to be alive. My suicidality would return and I would come to this point again someday. But perhaps, there was a small, infinitesimal chance that I could “cure” myself just by erasing my own memories.
And so I erased the memories of my family and my suicidality.
