Note: The contents of this post may be sensitive for readers.
It isn't by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world...by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves." -- Ken Kesey, Kesey's Garage Sale
I have always wondered about my existence and why I was created. What could I give the world?
Growing up I never felt pretty or smart. I was always quiet and hardly had any friends. In my family where education was so important, I never got good grades. I was not pretty in the worldly sense and I hardly had any personality, so inside of me I felt like I was a failure. I felt like God created me incomplete and unfinished because I never seemed to do anything that was "perfect."
I remember a time when I was in 7th grade and I had just changed schools. In my old school I didn't have friends but at least I was familiar with the surroundings and I knew exactly which bully did what. In this new environment I was scared. It was a much bigger school with around 1,000 students. I already felt like a "nobody" in the old school, but here I was absolutely invisible. I could walk by groups and groups of girls but no one saw me. I was invisible in class and outside of class. The sad thing was that even the bullies didn't notice me.
So one day as I was dropped off to school, instead of going straight to class I went to the restroom. It was a big school with many restrooms. I went to the quietest one, and stood in the door way for a bit. I had no clue what I was doing my mind was like a robot, with no emotions at all. As I entered the stall I myself didn't know what I planned to do. As I closed the door of the stall my heart sank a bit. I had a pair of scissors in my bag. With trembling hands and a racing heart I took out the scissors, and held them up in the air. I slowly brought the scissors down towards my wrist and held it there for the next two hours.
During that time life around me went on, the school bell continued to ring at regular intervals, girls came and used the other stalls, I heard the sound of water gushing out from the tap. It felt like the flood of tears inside of me was coming out of the faucet. After the person turned the faucet off and left the restroom, the tears started to roll out from my eye. During the next two hours I sat on the toilet silently yet crying from inside. I suddenly woke up when someone slammed the door really loud. I put the scissors back in my bag and just sat there and thought. I thought if something happened to me no one would even notice, just like not a single person realized that I wasn't in class even though many girls saw me in the morning.
I stayed there till the end of the school day; I then quietly picked up my bag and walked to the pickup area. My car came and I went home. I did this for the next week until the school called my mom and asked me why I wasn't coming to school.
And after I got a lecture from my mother and the school principal (which I don't remember a word of) as I sat alone to contemplate my "wrong choices" I realized something; I was only as valuable as I made myself to be. If I lived my life locked up in a restroom ready to kill myself, of course the world wouldn't give a shit about me either. If I didn't value my existence why would anyone else. At that moment I realized that I would make the world know who I was and make my place on earth.
Life was given to all of us as a precious gift -- it is our choice to kill our existence or to celebrate it.
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Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-DONTCUT for the S.A.F.E. Alternatives hotline.
If you -- or someone you know -- need help, please call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. If you are outside of the U.S., please visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention for a database of international resources.