"Today my mother let me stay home from school because I told her I did not even have the energy to take a shower, let alone spend six hours in a too hot or too cold building surrounded by noise and a multitude of stress. She said that she was perfectly okay with allowing me to miss a day of school, but what she would not allow was another entire day of me sitting alone in my room in pitch black darkness. She asked me that I get out of bed, take care of myself, and spend the day with her. At first I thought this meant visiting all the familiar and friendly faces at her office. However, recently my mother has been undergoing a very new and unfamiliar hardship that requires a great amount of her time, and that is taking care of her mother who has terminal pancreatic cancer. She told me that today her and her sister had to take their mother back to the cancer treatment center for another chemotherapy treatment. I told her I would be glad to go and support her, which I think she was glad to hear. We arrived just before my aunt, who brought my dying grandmother. All three of them checked in and went to speak with the doctor, while I sat in the waiting room. I took a good look around me. I expected to see defeat, to see the unmistakable pain in the faces of people who were either slowly dying from cancer, or slowly dying from having to watch their loved ones deteriorate. But it was quite the opposite. I didn’t see sadness; I didn’t see an ounce of grief or a single tear. I saw determination. I saw hope. And I saw love. All around me were many elderly, and some not so elderly, couples and groups of friends, smiling and laughing and cheering each other on. I saw not only people fighting for life, but also people clinging with every fiber of their being to it. I don’t think that I have ever felt more selfish in my entire life. For three years, I have voluntarily deprived myself and my body of food, laughter, happiness, relationships, and of life. For three years I have wasted away in a deep, dark, treacherous abyss that I created. Here I am, 18 years old fighting for death, having nearly achieved it four times, while these people around me fight with any and all of the strength they have left to escape it. Eventually my mother came back into the waiting room to bring me to the room where my grandmother would receive her treatment. It was not until then, when I sat down beside my aunt and my mother, that I fully understood how fragile my grandmother had become. She could hardly move without something hurting, she looked sick, and she weighed only 100 pounds. Everyone in the room wished that this was not really happening and thought about how horrible it was for anyone to have to go through this. And suddenly I was reminded of my physical at the doctor’s office when I was 16 where my mother was informed that I weighed only 100 pounds, that I was severely depressed, and needed treatment immediately. I had never really thought about it until that point. Why would anyone subject themselves to a slow and painful death when there are so many people in the world hoping for just one more day? How could I at this incredibly young age have such an intense and powerful desire to end my life, if I have not even lived yet? The worst part of it all is that at this point, even though I realize how extraordinarily ridiculous the idea of deliberately wasting away is, I do not know how to shut it off. It’s almost as if this way of living, this vicious self-destruction, has been programmed into me. It feels inescapable. And although I wish I could just turn it off and make it go away, I can’t. But I do have a choice. I alone ultimately have the choice to live or die. And I think it’s time I start choosing to live."

-I’ve been dead for three whole years but now is my chance to live for seventy more (via abilifys)

5 years ago with 4,132 notes