A Journey Called Hope

Pulled from the archives and originally written in 2012, updated and expanded.

Please be advised this entry discusses difficult emotions and suicide, it may not be appropriate for those easily disturbed or triggered by such topics. Support resources are provided at the end of the article.

When you’re just a kid and adults, both those that are strangers and those with authority that are trusted like teachers and priests, unknowingly convince you with their misguided words that the thoughts you secretly have are sinful, that it’s against the teachings of your God and your religion, it causes you to become shaken. You are confused and afraid. You feel wrong, you feel sick, you feel guilty as though you’ve done something wrong and yet you’ve done nothing at all, but be yourself.

You try to hide it, that part of you that’s an important piece of who you are. You push it down deep and try to keep it secret so that no one sees it. You learn how to fake things, to do things that prevent others from knowing the truth. You lie and you pretend, just so that no one will hate you, laugh at you or make you feel bad about yourself.

You struggle every day to keep a part of you caged up. Scared to death that someone might figure it out. Scared to death that you won’t be accepted, that no one will ever love you. Trusted adults tell you that religion dictates certain people to be bad, and these unfortunate and damned souls just so happen to remind you of you.

You become convinced they must be right because you don’t know any better. You look in the mirror and you think that you are bad. Even though you never made the choice, you are forced to live with the consequences of other people’s ignorance.

When you go home after school you withdraw inside yourself. You have so many thoughts that you try to fight. You tell your thoughts to go away, you fight against them. You tell yourself that the thoughts are bad and wrong, that you are bad and wrong.

At eleven years old you find a place to hide and cry, you cry out of anger, out of shame, you cry out and ask God why you are cursed, you cry because you don’t want to be afraid anymore, you cry because you don’t want people to hate you for having feelings you can’t stop. You cry because you don’t know what else to do.

You wipe away your tears and you carry on. You smile and you laugh because you don’t want anyone to know something is wrong with you. You try to hide the fact that you are different the best that a kid can.

By the time you are sixteen you have become someone that isn’t you. You don’t even know who you are. You are so messed up from pretending to be someone else. You are emotional, you’re angry, you’re lost, you’re withdrawn and quiet, you’re still afraid and still in hiding.

You don’t even want to talk to people in fear they may discover your truth. You don’t try to make friends because it’s too risky. You still cry when no one is around and you try to be by yourself as often as you can. You learn to write because words set you free, your bleeding heart fills up pages with sadness, self-hatred, loneliness, a blinding and painful misery you never deserved. A choice you never made.

You hear people still saying bad things about other people like you, use it as a slur to make fun of people. Sometimes you even join in just so no one notices you are one of them. In time, you start to blame those undeserving victims for your suffering. You blame them because they are open, you blame them because they are happy, you hate them for it.

Eventually, you fall to pieces and you hate yourself more than anyone else. You hate being alive. You hate that your heart flutters. You hate yourself for wanting to be loved. To just be noticed.

You begin to hate human contact. You don’t want people to touch you, to hug you. You don’t want to talk to anyone. Deep down, you want all of it, but you won’t allow yourself to have any of it. You don’t deserve it. You are filth, you are dirty, sinful, an abomination, you are depraved.

The pain consumes you. The sun stops shining, darkness embraces you. Your heart is dying and human contact evades you. You are falling down into a hole where no one can help you. Not that you expect anyone to want to.

You start physically hurting yourself to see if you can still feel anything other than emotional pain. You cut yourself in the hopes that the pain will bleed out too. You think about dying because you don’t want to hurt anymore. You can’t stand to look at yourself anymore. You keep hiding from everyone, but you don’t think you can hang on anymore.

Eventually you make the choice to kill yourself. You write a letter of apology to your parents and lay it on their bed. You walk outside your home for what you believe to be the last time.

For the first time in what feels like forever, you feel oddly free. Like a burden has been lifted off your shoulders, the choice to die feels like a relief, a refuge from your suffering. That the end of you is the end of it. The colors of the trees and the grass seem more vibrant, the smells more intense than what you’ve experienced for so long. In a strange twist of fate, now that you’re going to die, you feel more alive than you did before.

You walk until you find what you believe to be the place to end your life. You wish it didn’t have to be this way, that death wasn’t your only salvation. You wish that someone could love you for who you are. You wish that you could love.

In the seconds before your plan is completed and you do something that cannot be undone, you stop yourself as the faces of your family flash into your head, along with memories. You try to convince yourself that they will be better off without you as a burdensome worry. You’re no good to anyone.

You turn and look around you, as if others are there, watching you, waiting to see what you will do. Surrounded by woods on every side except behind you, you know that no one else is there, no one human anyway, just the trees and the animals, the only things that still understand you.

Like a tiny distant whisper, a voice seperate from the others in your head, reaches out from nowhere and offers you two words, “What if?” Your head races with thoughts of what if life could be different, what if you could feel differently, what if you could be loved, what if you could love, what if there is hope?

Your hand opens and your instrument of death falls away from you in slow motion, you watch it fall to the ground until it makes contact with the yellow grass. Everything else blurs, everything else goes silent, your legs give way and you collapse to the ground on your knees.

You don’t kill yourself. Instead you become angry at yourself because you believe you are still too afraid to die, you’re confused that a part of you wants a reason to live. You fight on desperately wishing someone would notice how broken you are, that someone would just reach out and ask you if you are hurting so that you could finally tell someone. But instead you remain alone and scared. You are only sixteen years old.

A little over two years later you find yourself without hope again. Unwilling to accept yourself because you think no one else will, you believe that death will come easier this time. You have no more hope. No one even seems to notice you, and if they do they have chosen to say nothing. You’re convinced you don’t matter, that no one cares.

You’re tired of everything. Tired of the pain, tired of the lies, tired of pretending, tired of hating yourself. Tired of wanting to drive your truck off the road every morning on your way to work, tired of thinking of other ways to kill yourself. You decide that shooting yourself is the only way this will end.

On the morning of what you think will be the last time you’ll ever see the sunrise again, you’re angry that still no one seems to notice how much you’re hurting, that no one will miss you, that no one cares about you at all, that you don’t matter, your life doesn’t matter.

Strangely enough your anger is actually your saving grace. Your plans are interrupted when people intervene after an emotional outburst. Your life is about to be forced to change, and though blissfully unaware, they have helped you save yourself from things they do not yet understand. The lock on the door that for so damn long has held you imprisoned within has been broken off the door. You are nineteen years old.

Three more years of emotional ups and downs, of medications and therapy, have come and gone and at the age of 22 you decide that you have nothing more to lose. You decide that you’ve wasted enough of your life and you finally open the door that’s been sealed shut since you were thirteen years old.

You choose to accept yourself and find the courage to tell others who you really are. You realize that living as you is worth more than dying as someone you were never supposed to be.

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