I Chose to Live — and So Can You

I’ll never forget the text message that stopped me on the brink of suicide. But ultimately, it was my inner strength and my decision to fight that truly saved my life.

Depression is terrifying sometimes. It can invade our brains with such ferocity that thoughts of suicide stir up in response.

Preventing ourselves from taking that final step is a brutal internal fight — one that not all of us win. But we can all work together to ensure that fewer of us cross that point of no return, instead choosing to remain earthside to see our worlds get a little brighter each day.

In honor of National Suicide Prevention Month, I want to share how I won that battle so that, hopefully, a lot more of us can win, too.

It’s not an easy journey, and it takes continual work to maintain my mental health, but I’m proud to be here, alive and well.

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Spiralling downward

My spiral into the most crushing depression of my life started at the beginning of 2020.

I’d struggled with my mental health for years before the fall, battling numerous chronic health conditions and attempting to fend off the insidious impacts of complex PTSD and depression.

To return to a somewhat healthy place, I moved out of London in 2019 and quit my full-time job to go freelance and remote to protect my physical health. For the most part, it worked brilliantly.

It gave me space to breathe and focus on my health. I reentered therapy to start working through my long-standing complex PTSD and debilitating depression, but moving locations and jobs wasn’t curative by any means. Why? Because I was still suppressing my mental health woes beneath false smiles and hopes.

While I made some progress, I was also in an incredibly toxic relationship that eroded both of our well-beings. I stayed because I didn’t know where else to go. I clutched the fragile puzzle pieces of my life, desperately trying to hold everything together — I needed it to stay whole to keep surviving.

Then, an unexpected dumping in the first days of 2020 shattered the illusion of stability. As the dust settled, I could finally see how broken all the pieces of my life were. The breakup broke the dam I’d built, allowing all the messiness to thrive in the light of day.

Living in survival mode clouded my judgment, tricking me into thinking everything was fine, but being “fine” isn’t really living at all. The crushing weight of this realization sent me toppling over the edge for what felt like the final time.

Feeling lost and alone at rock bottom

I tripped and fell way down to the very bottom of the darkest chasm in my brain. I gathered up all my trauma along the way and shrouded myself in all my forgotten aches and pains, conspiring with my present agony to form a patchwork blanket of misery.

I felt so lost and got so tied up in my depression that I didn’t even register the start of the pandemic. I had no idea what was going on for anyone else because my pain felt too monumental to consider anything else.

I could only see my agony. It felt inescapable like my whole life would follow this repetitive train of trauma. So, I started planning my escape from life.

I won’t go into too much detail about this part because I don’t think it’s good for anyone to hear how someone goes through the stages of planning to end their own life. We don’t need a how-to guide for that.

After spending 3 days locked inside my room, drinking copious amounts of wine, getting high, and writing letters to my loved ones, I felt ready to leave the world. The tears had stopped. Instead, calm determination settled over me.

I had my plan, I had written my goodbyes, and I felt ready to be free. I wanted to be gone, to relinquish my pain, and to be silent in tranquil darkness.

A lifesaving text message

Throughout my 3 days of self-pitying misery, my depressive cloud had kept all contact at bay. I ignored multiple calls from family and friends, who sensed something was off, and I started to unsend old messages — anything that felt incriminating. I was tidying up my life for those who would come to review it afterward.

With everything in place, I started to clean up my belongings. The last thing to go was my phone. I was ready to leave the house and end my life, but I didn’t want to take my phone with me. I knew somebody could track the GPS.

But just as I came to turn it off, a friend’s message popped up on WhatsApp. She was, and still is, one of my oldest friends. She’d guessed something was seriously wrong by my online behavior in the preceding days.

Her message pleaded with me to answer her and check in. My initial response encouraged me to swipe away the notification and turn the phone off as planned. But then another message came in, and another.

Initially, I just responded to avert her suspicion so I could continue with my plans. My friend saw straight through my attempts to assure her, “I was totally fine.” She gently pushed me to at least admit something was wrong before sensing the seriousness of the situation and calling my family to get more help.

It took a lot of work to get somewhere close to wellness again, and many people contributed to my recovery, but ultimately, that text saved my life. Those messages ultimately forced me to start the necessary work — to choose to live again instead of mindlessly following a path of self-destruction.

Choosing to fight for my life

When that message reached me, I’d taken all the steps except the last one. Those few words offered me a step, and then another, and another. It’s never too late to reach out to help someone.

But suicide prevention isn’t as simple as sending a couple of messages. It’s multifold. I worked with therapists, family, friends, and myself to haul myself out of the chasm. And I continue to work to avoid falling back.

And that’s the key thing, really. I chose to help myself. We can offer all the support in the world, but the suffering person must choose to fight. While the people around us can lift us, they can’t grasp life on our behalf.

The takeaway

My journey took months, which turned into years and has become a lifetime. Choosing to live is a choice I consciously make every day now. I always want to remember how close I came to making a different choice.

Preventing suicide is never a linear process because it looks different for every person.

If you’re looking to help someone, the key things to remember are these: Reach out, hold space, don’t judge, and allow them to lead their own to recovery.