Recently, I’ve done a lot of research on drowning. This is what I’ve learned: It takes the average person ten minutes to drown. Actually drowning, however, takes a lifetime. The act of dying is strangely similar to the performance of living. 

      At first, you struggle. You resist what you are told, and you pull away from what is expected. You don’t want to give in to the empty feeling in your chest, but soon you submit. You stop holding your breath, and by instinct, you inhale. The water burns, but it’s peaceful. You grow used to the feeling of your lungs gradually filling, and you stop fighting. In that small period of time between life and death, everything starts to come back. It doesn’t flash before your eyes in a stream of bright colors and vivid memories. Instead your life trickles by slowly, just like water filling your entire body. 

      I first hit the water in the middle of December. Slipping beneath the surface in subfreezing temperatures slows everything down: your thoughts, your heartbeat, your resistance. It’s downright deadly. It comes at you like a creeping mold and it continues to grow on you. Sure, you can cut it down and clean it up, but it never really goes away—to me, this is how I perceive suicide. The sadness and depression never completely fades away. We just choose to ignore it, and some of us ignore it better than others. But sometimes pain is the only thing people can focus on, and that overwhelming emotion is what encourages people to take their own lives. Life sucks. The world sucks. But we can try our best to make a good thing out of a bad situation; we can try our best to look at the bright side—as stupidly optimistic and unrealistic as it sounds—because we are desperate, foolish humans who hope and try. We’ll never get there, but we keep trying and keep trying, and that’s what’s so beautiful about humankind. It’s painful to be alive, but we’ll keep trying because sometimes, it’s the best we can do. 

      But the most important thing to learn is that you matter. You matter. You matter to your family, your friends, and to all the people that love you. You matter to the sun and the stars, the moon, and the galaxy. You matter to the ground beneath your feet and the air around you. You matter too much to be harming yourself. You matter too much to be thinking those thoughts. You matter. The pain that you’re feeling now is temporary. I know that it feels as if it will never go away. I’ve been in this position myself. But I promise you, this world will not be the same without you. You may feel useless, but you’re the farthest thing from it. You smile at strangers who cross your path and brighten their day. You make your friends laugh. You make your significant other feel loved and cared for. You make your family proud. A world without all that isn’t a good world. You are not alone in this. Talk to someone. Tell them how you’re feeling. No one’s going to make fun of you or ostracize you. They’re going to want to help. You don’t want to die, you just want to stop hurting.