My friend sent me an article today with the same title as this entry. The article originated from a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” thread openly asking those who had attempted suicide and survived it how they went about what they thought would be the last days of their lives.

The three that are showcased in this specific article are very hopeful in terms of what they left that experience with. They all ended their stories by thinking in their “final” moments, “No, I do want to live. I don’t want to die. Please don’t let me die and give me one more chance to live.” Some even go into professions to help others who are struggling themselves, and it’s very admirable.

All of this sounds great, doesn’t it? It sounds hopeful, very “happily-ever-after.” It makes me really sad and teary to read accounts of people who have attempted. But the truth is that many stories are not this hopeful. Many people who attempt suicide are not doing it for the very first time; they have done it multiple times, and a lot of them really want to die, even in their very final moments. Ed attempted suicide just a couple months shy of his 18th birthday, when I was just 11 years old. I was about to start middle school; he was about to begin college. He popped too many pills and he thought he was going to die because he wanted to. But in what he thought would be his “final” moments, he said to me that he got scared and realized he didn’t want to die.

Then 16 years later, he attempts suicide again. And this time, he succeeded. And I truly believe he wanted to succeed this time.

I don’t think that’s what he thought in the second before he jumped off the bridge over two years ago, though. I mean, the witnesses said he paced back and forth for over 45 minutes. I’m sure he just wanted to get it done and over with. He probably wasn’t thinking he still wanted to live. He had given up. He had settled in his mind that it was better if he had never been born, as he had written me a few weeks before, and that God gave him a mental illness for a reason. No note, no last words, no nothing.

These are the stories you don’t get to see in weepy Upvoted or Reddit articles. There’s no happy ending here — just a sad, painful one.