Today, the 10th of September is recognized as the World Suicide Prevention Day. Suicide rates have been increasing at an alarming rate over the last couple of decades in almost every other country regardless of their development in Mental Health care. No professional help has yet reached every corner that it's supposed to reach and that is exactly why we as humans must look around us and see how our friends and acquaintances are doing in their lives and whether they need some help or just an ear which would hear them out; with zero judgment.
Discussing someone who had terrible episodes of wanting to quit and give up but later realized that they could hope for new dimensions in life plays a key role in helping people with similar struggles confide in people that they trust in. That is exactly what you're all going to read about today, about a friend of mine whose name is Julia. I asked her whether she wants to keep herself anonymous but she refused by emphasizing on how talking about this with no shame is important. The names of the other people involved in her experiences have been changed to respect their privacy.
Julia was about 18 when she entered College. Until then, she always had someone around her taking care of her so the environment where she had to manage everything by herself with a diverse group of people didn't go down well with her ever since the beginning. Watching films of every genre and picking things up from them because cinema did that to her, Julia started to think that she'd always been a messed up person whom nobody loved and whom her parents never understood. She started getting inclined towards a guy called Nathan by observing the striking similarities of how he used to care for her the same way that Victoria, her friend used to care for her. She dated Nathan for a while and things started to fall apart when Nathan hit the sensitive spots of her brain by pointing out her appearance and asking her to change the way that she looked. She felt helpless and triggered because that's how she's always looked and her complexion/weight was one of the reasons for which she used to be bullied in school as well. She had no love to give to herself ever since the beginning and when someone who she so dearly loved abandoned her saying that she wasn't attractive enough, she lost every little ray of hope that she had. She hated herself and walked the path of self-destruction. That was the first time that Julia had attempted suicide. But then, there were a couple of materialistic mistakes from her end which kept people at bay and they ended up not attending to her mental health issues.
A couple of months after all the chaos, Julia met a person called Neil who played the silver-lining in her life for a long time. She felt nice, comfortable, loved and at home. She was used to toxic love and was getting attracted to broken people out of the urge to heal them and feel better about herself. It was as though she believed that if there wasn't anything unusual happening in her life for a while, she would walk herself to the trouble and invite it. She ended up cheating on Neil with Varshith, it worsened things for her and Neil, Neil had to face a lot of trauma due to Julia and the relationship went down the drain. That was when she hated herself and her emotional oppression and exhaustion made her gulp down 44 pills. This was her second attempt. Soon, she realized that she was trying to kill herself every time that she was denied something that she hoped for. She figured that she had become too self-centered which made her immune to the trouble that she inflicted on people around her.
She took time out for herself and started figuring things out, getting serious about her future and looking for ways to live the life that she hopes to live, she got inked with a semi-colon and decided that she is not going to give up trying to be a better person for herself and for others in her life, both. She realized that she was going psychotic by wanting to know whether her death would reflect her pain onto people around her or not. All this self-evaluation and revelation happened through months altogether consisting of severe anxiety and depression. She got a hold on her impulses.
Julia grew more patient with her life and filled herself with a positive spectrum of emotions each time that she felt helpless. She achieved this with the help of the people around her who assured her that they love her and that she is not her past. She says that she met a person called Victor who made her realize that she needn't be so impulsive and reactive to everything that comes and hits her in life. He taught her that the will to hold on and become better is far greater than the will to die. After Neil's exit from her life, Julia had self-harmed a lot many times and one of those was when she used to burn herself with cigarettes. She used to sit with a knife in her hands for days altogether but then there is never an end if you don't want it to be one. Victor and Julia bonded over a story of Victor's friend who had committed suicide. That was why Julia believed in Victor to help her out of her situation and he never disappointed her. He never gave her love. He gave her positivity through which she started to learn how to love herself. For every question that Julia had about herself, Victor had a known experience or a story that made Julia have a better perspective about her life and the setbacks that she faced. She started becoming more self-aware than ever. She stopped being the victim.
She confesses that maybe the reason that so many people are as broken as she is that they do not have enough love or faith residing in themselves, everyone needs to understand how important it is to never leave the battleground mid-way. For Julia, her ray of hope came in the form of Cinema and Victor. She stopped wasting her time on unnecessary thoughts and controlled her energy from being drained. She started directing her love for Cinema in the right way and now writes for her own movie review page. She also started working at a firm to establish a serious routine that she lacked until now. She healed while she accepted herself and saw Victor accepting her for the way she is. People can sometimes think of you on such a high note that you actually put in efforts to better yourself and match up to their image of you, in a good way, a bright and a fueling way. Victor had helped Julia in doing that with herself and she's never felt this better before.
She's healing. She's not learned all about life and hope but she believes that it's okay and that there's more light as the days pass by. She will grow, live and learn. So will you, me and every one of us. Julia lived through 2 suicide attempts and myriad self-harm episodes but found people and reasons to hold onto. She started finding her own self which she first held onto and later spread her love and warmth around. Channelize your interests, work on yourself, be kind and loving with yourself and everyone around you. If you ever encounter any trouble- emotional/physical, try and talk to people around you. We all need to be a bit more human, aware and empathetic with each other.
"Don't give up now, chances are, your greatest day, your hardest laugh and your best kiss are yet to come."- this a quote by Atticus Poetry which I love and read often on days when life doesn't seem all bright and shiny.
She had her best friends Alex and Kevin helping her stay alive for over a span of 5 years. She confesses that she can never thank them enough for sticking by her side through every hurdle.
As long as we're alive, there's always hope.
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