I want to die.

Except I don’t, not really, not all the time. Except I do, but the thought of actually dying is terrifying. I’m not exactly suicidal, but I’m not not suicidal. I’m what my friends and I call, passively suicidal. I want to die, but I’m probably not going to kill myself.

I have only ever been to the point where I was willing to take my own life once, in my freshman year of high school, but the only way I thought I could was with pills and I hated swallowing pills. I got two down before I decided it wasn’t worth it. After that point, I’ve never actively tried to kill myself, but I have gotten to the same point where I was when I tried and lower.

The problem with trying to kill myself is that I would rather take the evil I know over the mystery I don’t. I have no idea what happens after death, so I don’t know if it is better or worse than what I’m going through at any given moment. If the afterlife turns out to be eternal torture, I’d rather feel like a piece of shit here.

The moral of the story is, just because someone isn’t actively trying to kill themselves doesn’t mean they aren’t struggling. Just because you’re pretty confident they would never actually kill themselves, that they’re just passively suicidal, doesn’t mean you can put off helping them.

Without a solid support system, there will be a day where they’ll feel like whatever is on the other side has to be better than real life.