When you’ve felt a certain way for so long, you forget how to feel normal. 

This is my story, the story behind my smile.

I have always been perceived as the ‘fun’, ‘bubbly’ girl and why wouldn’t I want to be seen as that? It stopped any questions that would make me have to look too deeply into myself. It made the people around me happy. It made people like me. The gut wrenching feeling of not being good enough, if I wasn’t the happy person everyone believed, played on the strings of my mind. Living in constant fear of saying too much or my cracks starting to show behind my smile. The cracks that allowed people to see how I was really feeling.

Nobody wants to be around someone who is down or depressed and all I want is for people to love me, not discard me when I become a drain. This is why I don’t show anyone what sits behind my smile because nobody deserves to feel that sadness with me. I always say I do it to protect myself whereas, in reality, I am protecting everyone else – If nobody knows, nobody can feel any guilt for what happens.

I tell myself I am weak for seeking help. I tell myself I don’t cry, I tell myself I don’t like hugs, I tell myself not to do these things in paralysing fear of my guard coming crashing down. One of the hardest things is feeling scared of yourself, scared of the emotions flooding out, scared of how people will react. I guess I want to protect everyone else, but not myself.

I sometimes question myself; should I get help? I reach for it taking two steps forward and three steps backwards. I get so far, and I want to say how I feel, however, my walls come up and choke the words from my mouth leaving me in silence, unable to speak, frozen.

I am just a slave to my mind, a walking corpse, not living and barely surviving. I don’t have the strength to fight my thoughts, so they end up drowning me. I have been battling with my mind for five years now and I have let it win. It has won. Just surviving each day is a persistent struggle and one that I am slowly giving up on.

I don’t want to die.

I just can’t feel like this for much longer and death seems the only way to escape my own mind. I want the help and I try to reach for it but when nothing seems to help, I feel like giving up. Maybe some of us are just broken and can’t be fixed. I don’t think anyone can fix me.
I’m too damaged and that’s okay. It’s taken me some years, but I have come to terms with it. I don’t think anyone else would accept it, but I have so I’m ready.

I don’t want to hurt anyone. Nobody will ever understand why someone would commit suicide and will be left with the guilt in their hearts that they should’ve ‘done more’. Nobody could’ve done more. You shouldn’t have to repair the scars you didn’t create.

The thought of suicide consumes me daily. I think of how to succeed without having the label of ‘suicide’. I think of ways to make it seem ‘accidental.’ I know it would still hurt people, but I feel it would be easier to come to terms with than ‘suicide’. Accidents happen right?

Maybe if I can let my guard down, let myself cry, let someone give me a hug, accept the help. Noone has ever seen me in my most vulnerable state and maybe I need someone to. 

Maybe let someone see the way I’m really feeling. Breaking down those walls may be what I need. Maybe I need to be vulnerable and let people help and look after me because now I can’t.

I want to do that, I just can’t take that first step. I don’t want to cry by myself anymore while hiding away in shame. I want to be a normal person who can show their emotions without feeling the overwhelming disappointment in myself.

I am trying my best, I promise.

I don’t want to die; I just don’t want to feel like this anymore.