Written by Simon Zammit
Please don’t do it. This isn’t a pretentious throw away comment from someone who’s never experienced death, it’s a personal account and a desperate plea from a person who watched their boyfriend dissolve into thin air and couldn’t stop it.
There’s nothing comparable to the first time you learn someone close to you has suddenly died. Your whole world floods with memories as a black shadow grips your heart and shreds it. That’s what your loved ones will go through if you die. The hell they fall into in those first few hours is simply a teaser for the all consuming descent into madness the next few months will be.
And it’s worse when it’s not sudden. First they wonder why you aren’t texting, then they call three times and panic because you’re not answering. And finally they hear the news. The shock is immediate. All the anxious worries they brushed off as simply overthinking turn out to be the cruellest omens. The person they know is gone. They will never see them again.
After you kill yourself, the people who love you realise that the child they raised, or the partner they held in their arms, or the friend they grow up with, or the stranger they knew in secondary school decided that living was no longer worth the effort. The smiles they shared with you become poisoned. The laughs and memories permanently discoloured with questions they will never have
answers for. There’s no outrunning the earthquake that hits after that, and I don’t think there’s any surviving it either.
Losing someone to suicide makes you question every facet of your existence. It paints every mistake you made neon yellow and reroutes every pathway in your brain so you can never stray too far from them. It devours your relationship with yourself, and with the person who died. If you kill yourself, your friends are going to spend months arguing about how badly they treated you in your last few
weeks, completely ignoring the years of support that preceded them. Your partner is going to torture themselves because they didn’t notice the fire in your eyes dimming. Your parents will blame themselves for failing to give you a life that could make you happy. In one decision, a hundred people’s relationship with you will be crushed; reduced to doubts and over-critical introspection.
They’ll magnify their own imperfections because in their eyes they failed you. They weren’t available enough. They didn’t listen enough. They didn’t see enough. They’ll hate themselves for missing signs that may or may not even be there. Or worse: they might want to join you. If you kill yourself, you stop being a person and morph into a series of skeletons. One in a coffin and the rest tucked
menacingly into the closets of everyone who cared about you.
You might think they’ll never forgive you. That they’ll curse your name for months and beg every god they don’t believe in to take away the ghosts you left behind. And to be brutally honest, they’ll probably have days like that. But I can also guarantee that it never lasts. Regardless of how many times they feel horrible, there will always be more when they cherish their memories with you like
they’re solid gold. For every hopeless day there will be two others where the simple thought of you makes them wish they had five more minutes to tell how much they love you. One memory. The only thing they will ever want from you is one more memory.
You aren’t someone unloved, and you aren’t someone unsupported. So please, as I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, please don’t kill yourself. If you have the conviction to die, if you have the determination to defy your basic survival instinct, I trust you have the strength to seek help? One phone call. That’s all I’m pleading of you. When the fog gets too thick to breathe and when the
shackles are too heavy to pull and when this vicious, unfair existence is warping your view of death so much that it looks like paradise; please just call someone. You’ll save a lot of people a lot of grief, and you’ll give yourself the most valuable gift possible: another chance.
If I had those five more minutes with my boyfriend I’d wrap my arms around him so tight and wouldn’t say a word. I’d stay like that until I turn to stone if it means he’ll go back to his grave believing he wasn’t alone. But that’s not possible now. He doesn’t have any time left. You and I do. You and I have an endless number of chances to claw our way out of whatever whirlpool is pulling us underwater. We’re not dead yet, but no one’s going to throw us a life raft if we don’t scream for help. These are the moments that matter. The ones where we see our own mortality for as fragile as it truly is but still choose to preserve it. You’re not alone. You’re just too deep in the shadows to see all the loving faces around you.
But I promise they’re there, and they’ll hear you if you shout. Don’t let everyone in your life hate themselves for missing the distress calls you never sent out. Let them hold you through the harsh nights and laugh with you at sunrise. And give yourself the same thing. You’re not going to hurt anyone by admitting you’re struggling, but you will if they only find out about it after it’s too late. I never received that one phone call, and I will never stop wishing I had.
If you kill yourself you’ll become a ghost: a collection of fading memories, framed photographs, and an abandoned Facebook profile. You’ll disappear from people’s minds after a few months and only return as a sombre reminder of what sadness feels like. The rest of the world is going to keep living, so isn’t it better to stick around with them? Isn’t an unwritten future more appealing than a premature conclusion?
Please don’t kill yourself. You deserve more than that.