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Mental Health & The Suicide Crisis
***TRIGGER WARNING: THIS ARTICLE DISCUSSES SUICIDE AND SUICIDAL ATTEMPTS***
In case you haven’t been paying attention, there is a crisis of death by suicide going on — it is scary to me that so many people are feeling so alone.
I say scary because I know that feeling and it is dark.
I was nine years old the first time I considered killing myself.
I climbed the highest tree in the neighborhood, right up to the point that the branches began snapping under my weight, and I sat there. An angry, frightened child trying to process the complex emotions of humiliation, failure, and a loneliness so vast that I imagined no one would even notice I was dead. I don’t remember what happened specifically, but the emotions and the phantom wave of utter unworthiness have stayed with me for more than 30 years.
At some point, I realized that as high off the ground as I was, jumping wouldn’t kill me. There was a good chance I would wind up with some broken bones or maybe end up in a wheelchair, but I wasn’t looking for sympathy or to be further indebted to my parents — I wanted out.
If I couldn’t have that, I would just have to power through until a better opportunity presented itself.
