She loved me with her entire 16 year old being, and it was enough

Sometimes it is necessary to share stories.

I often feel that those stories that are most hurtful and scary are the ones that are most important to share.

Because sharing a story helps one lose the feeling of being alone.

Sometimes it is so easy to suffocate in our own uniqueness.

Yet, it is our ability to be touched by other people that saves our lives.

My life has been saved many a time.

When I was 13 or 14, I had an incurable desire to experience emotional extremes. I wanted to see how happy I could become. I wanted to see how sad I could become.

I thought that having a larger emotional range than most would make me a better person.

So, one day I decided to write a suicide note.

Just to see what goes through the head of a suicidal person.

The process of writing the note made me so sad that I couldn't even finish because I was crying so hard.

Sometimes I wonder if I was manic even then.

There would be times I would be inexplicably happy. So excited just to be part of this world. I would jump up and let out yelps of joy. That joy would surge through my body as I went outside and watch the green grass blow like clouds in my backyard on a sunny day.

All it took to make me happy was long grass blowing in the wind.

So, maybe it shouldn't have been so surprising that a few years later I wanted to kill myself.

As it always does, it started with feeling alone. Feeling alone turns into feeling worthless. Feeling worthless turns into despair. Despair turns into nothing. And nothing turns into death.

However, the first time wasn't so simple. There was a story behind it. A definite trigger. And I am thankful that my first time is memorable like that.

I lived far away from high school and didn't have a car. I was in student council and it was homecoming. We were having an after party after the game. My ride had left me so I asked the other student council representative from my class if he could give me a ride. He was a remarkably decent human being and said yes.

On the way home it started to rain. He dropped me off and I thanked him and said good night. The next day we were supposed to be finishing up the final homecoming decorations. He wasn't there. A couple hours past and finally he came in. I asked him what was wrong and he said that he had hydroplaned into a concrete ramp and totaled his mother's brand new car on the way from my house.

I felt bad, but there was much work to be done. It wasn't until I was at the dance that it sunk in what had happened. That this marvelous human being could have died last night. And I blamed myself. If he had never been on that road, he would not have had an accident. I felt responsible. And for the first time, instantly, miraculously, slowly unwrapping itself in layers upon layers, I felt suicidal.

On the way home that night I kept imagining getting into a car wreck and flying through the windshield. I kept longing for the car to slam into the concrete barrier. Luckily I didn't have license and my Dad was driving. But I had never wanted to meet death so badly.

I later started fantasizing about taking pill after pill. Wondering how many do you have to take to kill yourself. I thought briefly of slitting my wrists, but decided it was too bloody. Too unseemly.

I called this girl who I loved, who had moved away. And she reminded me why I should live. She loved me with her entire 16 year old being, and it was enough.

But that was my first time, and first times are forever.

It was the start of a period of time where I genuinely did not care whether I lived or died. There would be times later, times involving cars, times involving pills, times involving knives, where the death impulse got the better of me.

I would be intentionally suicidal at least twice more before I graduated from high school, but I constantly did things to put my life at risk. And upon reflection I am certain that not caring whether I lived or died was more dangerous than those moments of suicide.

However, those are their own stories and will get told in their due time.

What is most important is that you realize, in those moments of loneliness and desperation, that you are not the first to feel that way, that there is probably someone who loves you with all of their being, and that you are never alone.

Continue striving upward.