If You Ever Want to Die, Get a Cat

I've always had depression. I'd wonder as a child if life was supposed to be this bad. As a teenager, I told myself this was teen angst. My dad said this is what it's supposed to feel like, and as another human being in the midst of deep depression, an awful time in both of our lives, he was right. My mother was extremely sick and because of that, extremely abusive.

I'd done everything I was told I had to do to succeed. I graduated with a degree in my passion. I traveled internationally and took a job abroad making double the money I'd make back home with half of the hours.

I tried antidepressants once when I was in the midst of a breakup. They didn't help, so I'd given up.

At 25, I was happy. I lived in a huge city where I could watch the last trains from my bedside floor-to-ceiling window as I fell asleep. I had an unfathomably huge group of friends with whom I spent every weekend. I thought every day, "this is where I wanted to be by this age; I've made it."

At age 25 you assess your goals and you've done it. Then, for the first time, it all falls apart.

I'd always set seemingly impossible goals, and I'd always achieved them. I worked 16 hours or more days for six days a week for two years to go abroad for the first time, and living abroad with a luxurious job seemed so perfect. Coming from a Mississippi trailer park, it all seemed like a dream. A realized dream. It was all a vicious cycle of trying to be happy.

My visa expired. I came home.

I wasn't able to return as the visa troubles continued. I gained a tremendous amount of weight. I had no purpose and lived off of my savings for almost a year. It falls apart again and again and again. 

When I finally found a job, it was in a country I knew nothing about, had no passion for, no interest in.

To apply for my permanent visa, I had to do a health check. I weighed 134.4 kg. The highest I'd ever been in my life. I should have known when, for the first time, I'd had to use a seatbelt extender on my trip there. That was my lowest moment. The flight attendant was kind and understanding as my fat was forced under the armrest and pooled into the aisle. This was not the cause of my depression. It was the product of it, visible from every angle, at any time. My fat began to represent my hatred for myself.

I started working again in the rural island countryside that so graciously hosted me. People said it would be a good idea, that it would be one of the best experiences of my life.

Perhaps it was due to my lack of a support system, or perhaps being so rural. Perhaps it was just my illness finally finding a way to creep in and take over. As a teacher, my students will never know it, but they were my only reason for living and my only reason for waking each day.

In any case, at 27 I wanted to die every day. I turned back to alcoholism. I lost a little weight, but only from moving a little more. Two weeks before my birthday, a person I knew here had found an abandoned kitten. Its umbilical cord was still attached. They knew I'd wanted a cat, so they offered it to me, who found meaning in running home during my breaks at work to feed it.

I'm still 27, almost 28. I started taking medication for fearing my own life. I had dreams about suicide. I had fantasies about jumping from the roof.

When I started writing this, I was at the end of a cycle. I was on a dip that rapidly became a dive that barreled down to earth, and I had the idea that I would like to jump off the roof of my apartment building.

I kept considering it, and the weekend I stayed in bed, bound by my inability to conquer the depression enough to get up. I held my pee all morning, too lazy to eat or drink water. I told myself I'd like to go to the roof just to see what it's like.

I knew very well that I wasn't going to see what it's like. I was going to see if the edge would entice me enough to slip over.

One day, I texted my friend, "I'm thinking about going to the roof. Just to see what it's like."

I was going to the roof to see if I finally had the courage to jump. I never wanted to die, but I was so desperate for the sadness and pain to end. I was desperate for my chest to stop working so very hard just to breathe. Everything was heavy. Everything was exhausting.

It was as soon as my hand fell to my side and I started to rise that my cat crawled onto my chest. He purred, a rarity for him, and let me sob into his side.

His warmth and weight reminded me that there are people here who still need me. There's a cat here who still needs me. For that, I'm forever grateful. If the wind had been a little pleasant that day or the granite not too hot, the wall not too high, I'd have gone to the roof and known that I'd be invited to its edge. "Just to see what it's like," I'd say, plummeting down the dozen stories into concrete.

People always say it gets better. My advice is this: It gets better. It gets worse. It's something you will always and forever have to manage, adjusting medication and lifestyle as frequently as any other cycle. Get help, fall away, manage prescriptions: It's all endless.

I am alive for my favorite band. I am alive for my pet cat. I am alive for my family back home, but I don't want to tell them that. My sick grandmother doesn't need to know how I had a dream about blowing my brains out like a recent famous case from my hometown.

Suicidal thoughts, I've found, are way more common than we'd like to admit. It was only in being open about my status that I've realized that so many more hide it for fear of retaliation. Some people have been ugly, some people have been empathetic, and many more have been seen. For that, it never gets easier to talk about suicide, but I will do so for as long as it helps people realize that while it's not normal, it's common, and, above all, it's treatable. Manageable. That's all we can do: manage.

So, I'll admit. I haven't taken any great pictures of nature or gone on any impressive adventures this year, the hardest year of my life (and surely many other's), but I have my cat, and when I take a picture of him I see my buddy, a companion, and possibly the thing that saved my life that day. 

The day I almost died.