I’m a college freshman, and this spring semseter has been really crummy. I’m getting kicked out of the honors program, I’m almost definately going to lose my cushy full ride scholarship which will be replaced by absolutely no scholarship, I’ve got to go to summer school, I’ve had a hell of a time securing housing for the summer, I’ve only made two real friends all year, and I spend my days wondering why I’m here at the University of Louisville instead of somewhere where the people aren’t idiots. (I don’t mean to sound snobbish, but no one here at UL is on the same intellectual level as I am. I’m just stating a fact.) I’ve grown depressed that I didn’t get into the school I wanted (MIT, Yale, or Caltech) and that I went to UL over Rose-Hulman because of the cushy scholarship.
I’ve resented UL since I got here. The classes I’ve had to take have been mundane and repetitive and frankly beneath me. As a result, I’ve resented doing the necessary work in them or waking up in the morning to hear idiot professors talking down to their idiot students, and my grades have suffered. And I recently realized that my grades would probably preclude my transferring to a better school, and that I’m stuck at UL. And for maybe two months, I grew more and more depressed, but I never thought of suicide.
And then one night about two weeks ago while I was laying in my bed, alone in my room, (my roommate having effectively moved out months ago) I heard the locked door open. And for whatever reason, I immediately thought, “What if that’s a crazy guy coming to kill me in my sleep.” And then I immediately thought, “That would be OK. I don’t think I’d have any regrets.” Of course, it was my roommate and not a killer. But I’d never really thought about dying, and the thought was oddly intriguing.
That got me started. I started thinking about suicide in a very clinical way. I considered methods, and implications. And last Tuesday, I wrote a suicide note. I wasn’t planning on actually killing myself just then, as I didn’t even have a real method to do it. But when I wrote the note, I felt like I was committed to doing it. After I wrote the note, I realized that the note would serve to make peace with my family and friends, but I hadn’t made my peace with God. So I went online to look up what the Bible says about suicide.
I never got that far. I typed “suicide” into Google and got this site. And I read it and cried. I cried for hours. Never in my life have I cried the way I cried that day. While I read, I listened to music. I put on “Everybody Hurts” and put it on repeat. For hours, I listened to that one song as loud as my headphones would allow. And I realized that I didn’t have to kill myself. All I have to do is find a way to look at all the bullshit in my life and say, “Well, fuck that. I’m not going to kill myself because I don’t like dealing with the jackasses in class [or whatever].” All the shit’s still in my life: I still have to find a way to pay for college without a scholarship, my peers are still trivially minded morons, etc. But now I know that I can deal with it. Now I can say that I’ve wrestled with my inner demons and defeated them once, so I think I’ll be able to do it in the future.
Thank you for reading this.