To myself, when I am suicidal:
I need you to do me a favor. I need you to think about being 7 years old. The world is glittering and you are unstoppable; there are so many books to read and so many cats to pet and so many words to say. You are simply magic. You were born with that magic running through your veins; it is inherent to your nature. It stands to reason that if that magic was such an integral part of you when you were 7, it must still be inside of you; you’re struggling to feel it, but it is there.
Now I need you to think about being 17 years old, in the summertime. You know danger now and you know pain, and yet still you smile and laugh and make wishes on dandelions. There is a lapse in your madness now, a time during which it is almost like you aren’t sick at all. This is the time of impossibility: you have insisted for three years that such a time would never come, and it did. And you feel magic again. You say that you will feel magic forever, and you really believe it.
Now think about being 18, when you decided you weren’t going to live any longer. You tried to die, and survived. I’m not going to feed you some line about how that’s because your body loved you too much to give up, because we both know it’s only because your method was faulty. But regardless of why you lived, do you remember what happened the summer after that? You were OK again. The sun rose one morning after a long winter and you started to feel like you could handle living for a few more months.
You are a fairy. You are a magical entity; you are more than this world. Do not let anybody tell you otherwise, not even that whisper in the back of your head that says you’d be better off dead. You are, on some level, still that sparkling 7-year-old, untouched by darkness and misery. There are still so many books to read. There are still so many cats to pet. There are things to learn and people to meet and mediocre jokes at which to laugh and people to love. And you deserve to be around to do these things.
And if you can’t survive for yourself, I’m asking you: please do it for me. I am still here—the version of you who believes in stability and survival and happily ever after. I want to live. I want to bring both of us to a beautiful life, and I can’t do that if you leave my body—our body—to be buried. I’m somewhere within you, struggling to help you go on, but loving you nonetheless. Give me a little bit longer. I’ll take over the fight soon.
