Dear you,

I’ve been there.

I don’t know if I ever would have done it, but I thought about it a lot. I know what it’s like to be at that point where you don’t see a reason to live, but you’re scared of dying. Some people tell you that you mean the world to them, and other people tell you to just end it already.

You don’t know who to believe, so you listen to the people who tell you that you don’t deserve to be here. Believing the negative seems safer than believing the positive because it validates how you already see yourself. It gives you that push you’ve been waiting for over the fence between life and death that you’ve been straddling for months or even years.

You walk around feeling so empty that you don’t even feel like yourself anymore; just a hollowed-out shell of who you used to be. Waking up each morning used to bring the promise of a new adventure, but now it only brings a reminder of everything you’re struggling with inside. You wish you could shut all the thoughts out, but no matter how hard you try, they stay in the front of your mind. Every day that you have to struggle with this pain is another day that you start to believe more and more that there’s only one way to escape.

But trust me - as someone who’s climbed their way out of rock bottom and re-emerged into the beautiful sunlight of life - when I say that there’s always another way out, and it doesn’t involve ending your life. It involves restarting it.

It took me years to start caring enough about myself to want to make positive changes in my life. I drifted along on that fence between life and death for a long time, never really sure which side of the fence I would end up on the next day… or even the next hour.

But see, our self-identities are shaped by our perspective, and our perspective is shaped by what we see through filters that we’ve developed over the course of our lives. Your filters are jaded by the pain of everything you’ve been through and the nagging sense of self-doubt that haunts you.

But I don’t have that filter when I look at you.

I see all of the beautiful aspects of you that you’ve lost the ability to see.

You don’t feel like anyone is there for you, but I’m here. Whether you want me to be or not, I’m here. I’m here for the moments when you’re on top of the world, and I’m here for the moments you spend at rock bottom.

Let me tell you a story.

He was very sick and had been that way for months. He didn’t have any hope of getting better and didn’t want to keep bothering everyone around him with his presence. He didn’t see the point of staying or of even saying goodbye because he didn’t think anyone would care.

Yet there I was - there we all were - at his funeral, wondering how we were supposed to move on without him. He didn’t see all of the loved ones in his life who would’ve done anything to help, but we were there.

Just because you don’t see all of the people around you who care doesn’t mean they’re not there. It just means there’s something wrong with your vision.