This is a topic that I've seen all over my Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr since the show "13 Reasons Why" came onto Netflix. Hannah Baker left 13 reasons why she killed herself, so I'm going to give you a few reasons why not. After suffering from depression and suicidal ideation, I've heard almost all the reasons why not to and I think, in this day and age, people need to be told why not to, rather than be given reasons why.

The obvious reasons are always friends and family, whether you have any or not. Those are probably the first thing your therapist or psychiatrist might bring up if you mention suicide. But some people might not have friends to think about or even family that cares enough to ask if they’re okay. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t things in this world worth living for.

If you have a dog, a cat, a fish, even, they’re going to miss the hell out of you. That dog won’t get why you won’t move and come play fetch with them. Your cat will get mad because you’re not reacting to its pleas for food and attention, even if it scratched you every time you touched it. The single goldfish in a tiny fishbowl? Well it got used to your presence and might miss its routine and normality. Even that spider that might hate you and hides in its coconut all day, will begin to miss the person who was brave enough to open its cage and drop in a cricket or two every so often.

You’ll never get to go outside again. There’s a garden sitting outside your front door or on the window sill of your apartment that’s going to wither away because you forgot about how beautiful those flowers are. You won’t get to feel the sun burning away at your skin as you walk along the boardwalk of the closest or farthest beach and the sand will never feel warm between your toes again. The cold snow that everyone hates come winter, will never get to be made into a snowman or snowball again and you’ll never get to make another snow angel; no, you’ll become the angel.

There was a job you once dreamed off. Maybe it was writing for the Wall Street Journal or becoming the next Google-r to come up with the thousandth new messaging app. Or maybe your dream job was being a stay-at-home mom or dad. But you’ll never get to experience those from six feet under. That article that detailed the next up and coming stock won’t be written and that messaging app won’t get made. Those kids you dreamed of having and taking care of won’t be born – or they’ll grow up without a mother or father. You won’t get to hear them laugh or take their first steps or even hear them tell you that they hate you for the first time.

But maybe your life hasn’t even begun. You might be a sophomore in college wondering what it really matters to keep living if you’re unhappy and miserable, alone and rejected. You still don’t know what your dream is because you still haven’t chosen a major and it’s taking a toll on your life and relationships. You might think that the best way to cater to the demand of making choices and incredibly hard decisions might be to just end your life before it’s even begun. But you just can’t.

Think about that blanket sitting on your bed, the warm one that you love curling up to in the winter as you make hot chocolate and turn on your favorite Disney movie. You’ll never get to touch that again. You’ll never get to cuddle up to the T-Rex PillowPet anymore and it might just get thrown away because of the bad memory it’ll hold. All those clothes you couldn’t wait to wear once you bought them won’t get worn again, at least not by you.

Remember the time the 2016 Cubs won the World Series over a hundred years after the won their second one? Of course you do, because you were around to see it and hear about it. But what about all the other things you’ll miss if you kill yourself? The Pittsburgh Steelers winning their seventh Super Bowl? The United States finally beating Canada in ice hockey at the Winter Olympics? Or the first t-ball game for your son or daughter? Your daughter’s first cheerleading competition? Your son’s first cheerleading competition after you were told that letting him cheer would turn him gay?

You’ll also miss out on the hope. Hope isn’t something that depressed people have a lot of, but it is something that we latch onto. The people around us have hope. I lived off that hope for years during my depression and the feeling of realization when I was finally truly happy was amazing. It takes a long time, it took me years and one suicide attempt before I was able to step out from under my dark cloud and shoo away the demons that followed me around but it was the greatest feeling in the world.

That is a feeling to live for - the feeling of happiness - because it comes. It might take years and medicine and therapy and a whole lot of crying but it will come. You just have to stop, breathe for a while, and fake a smile every once in a while, but the happiness will come, I promise.