Unfiltered Story #246176

(When I was 15 I had a small journal I used purely to vent in. I was in a bad home situation as my step-dad was an abusive drunk to my mother, who ended up taking out her frustrations on me. I’d also recently been molested by a friend’s older boyfriend, and had lost my cousin to suicide the year before. In the journal I had mentioned several times how I thought I’d be better off dead and that my mom probably wouldn’t even care. After one of the girl’s in my class read a few pages in that journal, she wrote me this letter that I found again recently in an old storage box.)

(My Name),

I don’t know what your perception of the afterlife is, but I wanted to give you mind. Having read your personal thoughts it is evident that you have contemplated suicide. I don’t know if you would choose this or if it was just venting, but for what it’s worth—DON’T. I have learned some things as of late about the human condition, and the following has become clear to me: there are two kinds of pain, and one of them cannot be escaped in death. There is the obvious psychological pain that we can easily attribute to occurrences and our surroundings. This kind of pain is simply a chemical reaction in the brain. It is attached to our physical being and our circumstances, so we can escape it in death. But there is also another kind, which I think you have experienced, and which one can not be rid of so easily. This pain is not psychological- it is spiritual. It shakes us from the inside and follows us everywhere. Perhaps originally there are external contributors that caused it, but once bred, this pain becomes individual and separate from the rest of one’s life. Every other platform for reality is weak by contrast- time spent with family and friends is only half-appreciated, every good experience pales in comparison to the pain churning and spreading inside you. It is intangible, seemingly unchangeable, and inescapable through any means. You will not cast away that feeling by ending your life. Just the opposite- the physical body acts as a buffer between us and this kind of emotion. It is beyond human comprehension how this pain would manifest and destroy us without a body to act as a barrier. You are trying to escape something by leaving your body that has nothing to do with your body, and it won’t work.
Anyhow, that’s just what I believe in. It’s likely wrong, but I wanted to convey it anyhow.

(This letter is one of the things that saved my life. I’m 27 now, have a much better relationship with my mom who since left my former step-dad, and am about to start a family with the love of my life. All thanks to one 15 year old girl who was recovering from a suicide attempt of her own, saw I was in pain, and decided to do something about it.)