Just off the top of my head, I can think of three (younger) people I’ve known personally who have committed suicide, and many many others who have either attempted or fantasized about it. This week we lost two celebrities. Last year at this time it was a 10th grader at Skyline High School. He jumped off a bridge. It wasn’t a cry for help. He was decided. 

I’ve struggled with depression in an on again-off again sort of way. I understand why people commit suicide. I’ve contemplated it more times than I’m comfortable admitting. Here is what was going on for me and what I think must be going on for others when they do this. 

First of all, imagine a bucket of water with a smooth, unbroken surface. Then imagine immersing your fist in it. The fist is you and the water is your world. You’re in it and it surrounds you. Then imagine pulling the fist out. The waters surface is disturbed momentarily, but it closes over and returns to its original smoothness in short order. You can’t even tell that a fist was ever in it. 

When I’d get in my most dark space, I was convinced to the core of my being that if I took myself out of the game, it was be as if water were filling a space where something once was. Not necessarily that the world would be a better place without me, but that it simply wouldn’t matter one single bit that I had been there and now no longer was. 

I was also convinced that the existential pain I was experiencing would never end. That I’d be stuck in the sticky tar of depression forEVER.  Puppies didn’t matter. Neither did babies. Sunshine was an insult and people in love were deluded. 

So when you add those two things up  {my life doesn’t matter} + {my pain will never end}, the only logical solution is to end things? Why persist in great pain when no one will even notice when you’re gone?

Except those are lies, of course. My life DOES matter. And I didn’t stay stuck in depression forever. I am so grateful for the duty of the moment, for people who listen to and love me, and for my little brother, Michael, whose face I put on my flip phone many years ago when I was in the worst of it and needed to remind myself how much he loved me and how sad he’d be if I were no longer around. 

Friends, I don’t have any great wisdom. All I can say if you’re in the middle of this struggle with life and death is this: your life DOES matter. Things will shift and move and get better and maybe worse and maybe just different – but they won’t always be the same. Don’t do anything drastic today. Eat that pint of ice cream tonight if you need it. Go to bed early. Give it a try again tomorrow.