“Well, if this doesn’t work out, I can always just kill myself.”
How many times have you heard this joke? How absurd. Suicide is for other people. Suicide is never the answer. Temporary problems; permanent solution. Cliché cliché cliché Blah blah blah. Surely nobody could be so casual about suicide. Sure, young people consider suicide more than any other age group, but the closest most of us ever get to suicidal thoughts are listening to side effects on Zoloft commercials. Right? Right?
In April of 2015, I took one of my first steps toward true adulthood and began paying down on my student loans. Watching my bank balance decrease by 60% at a time was actually satisfying. I was self-sufficient, and feeding off of that feeling would give me a smooth ride to debt freedom. I just knew that success was in my cards. I was invincible and it felt beautiful.
Then I missed a payment one month. Then another. Then I stopped paying them altogether. Then I spent my bill money on alcohol. Then I partied every night for a week. Two weeks. I became great friends with Benjamin from American Express, mostly because he called me twice a day, six days a week. Then eventually, I found myself thinking about veering off of an overpass. Skipping my vital medication. Slinging a belt over my overhead rafter.
I wasn’t depressed. I, like many of my peers, was apathetic. I was overwhelmed. Life was a boulder rolling down a mountain that I just wasn’t braced to catch, so I just sat on the ground and waited for it to squash me like Wile E. Coyote. What kind of life would give me so much responsibility right off the bat? I clearly wanted no part of that, so why not die, right?
Not right.
My life never wrapped itself up with a nice bow and washed all of my problems away. I have awful days. I have failures. As my bank statement reminds me, my student loans are ever present. The only difference between Casually Suicidal Jake and Halfway Functioning Adult Jake is the reaction to my own fear. I didn't have a moment of clarity. I won't win the lottery. Nobody will go to work for me. I own my hardship, but I also own my success.
I know that there are others like me. There's no father who left me and no guilt crushing me. There are only my problems and the fear I have of solving them. Adulthood is scary. Bills are scary. But scarier still is the prospect of never breaking out of the cowardly little box that I instinctively place myself in.
It's okay to be afraid. Just have the courage to swallow your fear and get to work. Anything is better than a belt over the rafter.
