blog post about why I considered ending it and how I never actually wanted to (trigger warning)

@Celaeno Thanks for your kind words. Made my day <3

@goldenPalm71 Thanks for your support. We are so mch more than society tells us we are & we can't let these fake, unrealistic ideals society feeds us define us and win. Here's the post.

learning to want "right"

As a strong, sassy woman who knows shes beautiful it doesnt make sense that just a couple short years ago I wanted to die. I put wanted in quotes because it was never so much what I really wanted as what societys mixed messages had convinced me I should want.

Let me explain. Even as an autistic kid in special ed. I knew I had talent. I thought I was all that and I had reason to. I was partial to my strengths enough to breed passion and hold my own against the cool kids at least in my mind.

Then came the pressure to find a place in a world that clearly wasnt built for me. I found it alright, ironically just after convincing myself I didnt need to. I learned some life lessons in the wrong order and it seriously messed me up.

Yes, its noble to leave this world better than you found it. It just does not matter at all if youre there at 15 or 20 or even 50. I started analyzing whether my life was beneficial to society before even giving it a chance. Ruling out ventures that wouldnt produce results right away limited my potential and left me feeling even less worthy of this life.

I wanted to be an entrepreneur and activist but I felt I didnt deserve the opportunities. I felt hypocritical for investing in myself to get there when I could cut right to helping others by getting myself out of their way. I genuinely believed my family would have a better life without me, and since living up to my parents accomplishments seemed impossible based on my childhood struggles, I figured the best kind of kid I could be was one who didnt stay past their welcome.

Theres way too much pressure to prove yourself before your prime, to perform in the practice room, to treat the tutorial like the test. I wasnt born ready for this world so I thought the best thing I could do for it was die. I was convinced I didnt deserve a chance to live and learn, to try things my own way and see where it gets me.

Labeled as behind before I had the chance to label myself as creative or innovative, my life was a game of catch-up. The idea of helping others seemed comical when I felt like a charity case for being alive. I wanted to control my destiny and be someone who did as much good and as little bad as possible in this world.

As I learned more about how my way of being unintentionally hurt others I started seeing myself as an inherently evil person. It didnt help when that seed was explicitly planted in my mind by the outside world. As an allegedly evil person, I believed my interests couldnt be compatible with those of others so I had to go.

I never wanted to. I wanted to get rich, buy fancy cars, and travel the world but I abandoned these petty desires as I learned to want not whats best for me but whats best for humanity. Learning to see sacrifice as noble taught me to want to make the ultimate sacrifice, so maybe I could be a halfway good person, or at least a less bad one by staying less time and therefore taking less.

I was taught that my wants werent as important as things I wasnt ready to understand. Deprived of childhood clutches to hold me over before I had a decent base of experience to base my contemplations about the meaning of life on, I concluded that the meaning of life was larger than and incompatible with mine. I wasted precious time constructing plans to end my life rather than improve it, which landed me even farther behind.

I was ahead in some way though. I had a talent for understanding and getting through to others in similar situations. Thankfully, I made it long enough to see this and realize the world is better off with me here. At 18, Id saved lives. I officially didnt care how behind I was in other ways. I knew I needed and deserved to stay.

I got lucky. Id rather not think about how many times I almost cut this story short. You shouldnt have to save someone elses life to see yours as worth living. You shouldnt have to contribute something impressive to the world to feel good about experiencing what it has to offer. To be the best we can be, we need to see ourselves as ends in ourselves and we will automatically accomplish great things.

We need to dare and know we deserve to be ourselves. We need to feel free to learn, explore, and make mistakes for as long as we need to before putting on a show. We need to accept that worthwhile doesnt always look glamorous and that this world runs on beautiful imperfection. We need to understand that life is a gift we must take advantage of before we can prove we deserve it. If we want to keep the people we care about alive, we need to stop expecting them to have already lived fulfilling lives while theyre still in the process of building them.

@canadagranger6 Thanks for your kind words. You just made my day :)