For a long time, I never thought I’d make it out of college. I didn’t even think I’d make it through all of college.
But here I am, about to start my last semester of college.
Why didn’t I think I’d make it this far? I thought I would have killed myself by now.
Sorry, I know that’s graphic. I really never imagined a future for myself beyond college.
Now that I am in a better place and I’m heading toward real adulthood, I’m starting to imagine a life for myself past school.
It’s weird to talk about. Because I’m sure if you asked me in the past, before I was better, I would have told you what I wanted to be. And while it may have been true I had that ambition, I never really thought I’d get there. I never imagined I could really have that job; I just thought it was a cool job.
Now I imagine working for CNN as a foreign correspondent who travels all over the world covering stories that are important.
For the first time in a long time, I actually feel hopeful for the future, like I do have something worth living for.
If you’ve never been suicidal, it’s probably hard for you to imagine not imagining your future. It is hard to explain because I can’t even really put it into words myself. It almost feels like for the longest time I knew my life would stop at a certain point, sooner rather than later, and I had been at peace with that. Now I don’t know exactly what the rest of my life will look like, but it feels brighter, like the dark path I’d been walking for the past few years was suddenly bathed in light.
I’ve started applying to post-grad jobs and internships. It’s surreal to know this is my last year of school. It’s also hard to talk about with friends. Of my roommates, two still have one year of undergraduate classes to complete and the other is applying to graduate schools.
Applying for jobs is scary. It might not seem that serious, but each application I send out, I am sending a piece of my hope with it. It’s like the college application process all over again and it’s hard not to get discouraged.
It’s also hard to find time to sit down and adequately apply for these jobs while taking 17 credits and having two internships.
As with everything in my life, I have to relate this to a song by The 1975.
“I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)” is the last song on their third album “A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships”. It discusses some of the hopelessness and isolation we can feel while living in the digital age. The lead singer, Matty Healy, wrote this song about his own struggles with depression, suicidal thoughts, and drug addiction. While I’ve never been addicted to any substances, I do know about the other two topics.
There are two lines from this song I want to point out because they help me restructure my view on life.
“But your death it won’t happen to you. It happens to your family and your friends.”
Obviously, you shouldn’t be living for others. You should be able to find purpose in your own life and want to live for that as well as for the relationships you have with meaningful people in your life. But when I do start to feel hopeless and unbearably exhausted every now and again, I think about my parents, brother, cousin, grandparents and friends and how if I wasn’t alive, I would be missing out on those relationships and connections.
“If you can’t survive, just try.”
This whole song, but this line in particular makes me feel seen. Living is something we all do every day, but no one really talks about how difficult just that simple act can be. This is where I try to practice just taking life day by day and doing my best to get by. I also know that I’ll probably never be fully rid of my suicidal thoughts; they have been a part of my thinking for so long. But now that I am in a better place, I know that there are other ways out of the mental hole I often dig myself into.