I Wrote This Letter While Battling Severe Depressing And I Need You To Read It

Hello, my name is Louise. I wrote this letter before hurting myself. I ended up not doing it. I thought I'd share my deepest, darkest thoughts.

April 2017, i wrote this, during the night, hopeless. The fact that if I killed myself would leave my cat alone with my dead body, without food or water for days is the only thing i kept me from doing it for about 2 years.

Here's the Letter that i had written to my mum, 10 months ago. I never sent it.

" If you read this, I’m either dead or stuck in a horrifying dead-end that doesn’t allow me to hide my feelings anymore.

I don’t feel like myself, I can’t feel like myself. To be fair, there are many things I cannot feel anymore. Happiness is one of those.

I am stuck inside a cage, floating, amongst every possible bad thing in the world, or so I think. My only escape would be if I closed my eyes and pretended everything is fine.

You were a young adult at an early age, you left very early your home to live your life, you knew what you wanted and you fought for it. I’m not you. I thought I were, but I’m not. I have pretended to be, and it seriously needs to stop, otherwise I might end up hurting myself. For I have thought about it.

This is where I’ll start.

You were not thrust into the world without a backup.

You were like an astronaut in a spaceship. You were launched into space after years of mathematics and physics researches and then proceeded to discover our galaxy attached to your rocket by a thread, a heavy, solid, metallic thread. You left very early, floating in our brave new world but you knew you always had something to come back to. Wherever you would leave, you knew you always had a harbor to come back to. I have nothing. I have you. And you are not even there. You haven’t been for a while. You’re a draught. I’m not finished, I’m an uncooked bread. I have a burned crust that fools everyone into thinking I’m perfectly baked even though my flesh is raw.

I am nothing, I come from nowhere, I don’t live anywhere, the amount of stuff that represent me is either in a box stocked in a house that I know nothing of, or here, with me, contained in 11 squared meters. I was a backpack on your shoulders and I loved it. It made me acceptant of anything, broad-minded, as you, English teachers like to say.

I can never thank you enough for giving me the possibility to travel. And yet, I feel inexistent.

I’m alone everywhere I go and the crowd swirling around me keeps reminding me that you are only a voice on a social app or a thunderstorm on a few weekends. You don’t even know me anymore. The last time I gave you a hint that I needed serious help, you told me it would pass. I tried to believe you. You told me I should just get out, take a few breaths, take walks and that everything would be fine. I thought it would too. I guess it didn’t. everyone has an anchor. I don’t. When grandma dies, I will be left with a vague memory of steadiness.

I feel young and yet very old. This world is supposed to be my oyster and it feels like a very overrated blockbuster that I would be watching in imax- 3D in an uncomfortable theater with people loudly eating stinking popcorn around me. I’m uncomfortable in everything I do, in everything I am.

I suppose I need help.

You have no idea, or maybe you do, what it’s like to wake up every single morning and to have to make a list of reasons why life would be worth living. And trust me, every day ending makes the list shorter.

Funnily, the first one to come to mind is always “who’s going to take care of the cat if I’m gone”

I guess that’s proof of how small the string of my strength is.

I need help

I’m tired of walking up and wanting to go back to sleep

Everyone suffers, I get that, everyone is afraid. But this is is different. This is wrong. It’s sucking the life out of me

If I start letting it go, it will be a never-ending flow of feelings. I have built myself a carapace and I can’t get out of it. I have spent so much time pretending I don’t even know how to be me anymore.

People keep repeating me that, to smile, you need to fake a smile. To laugh, you need to fake a laugh. They joyfully tell you that if you try to laugh, you’ll end up laughing. God knows I tried. I have been pretending to laugh for a while now. I won’t say I always do, sometimes I mean it, sometimes, I manage to get out of my head, I float for a while, I feel fine, I feel pretty, I feel like life is good, I feel like running, laughing. And then it stops. The locomotive punches me in the face, full speed. Everything comes back to me like a tsunami. A giant wave of emptiness and coldness and nausea and fear hits me in the brain.

I wish it would be physical pain, for that, I could handle. If you bleed, the complexity of the biological phenomenon in your body tickles your inquiringness and leaves you in a state of scientific curiosity, it makes you forget the mental pain, however painful the cut might be. But I can’t handle mental pain. It stops you from thinking, acting, from living. When I cut myself, it felt bearable. I could feel the blood pumping in my entire arm, my eyes were sore from the crying, my hand, aching. At least, I was in peace.

It felt like a relieve, like something could finally concentrate on, something other than my mental pain.

You might take me for a fool. You might give me this “stop acting stupid and study” look.

I tried

I can’t

I’m brain-dead.

Or maybe I’m just plain stupid.

I can’t tell the difference

After japan, you said you could sense something was wrong and in November when I tried to make a change in my life, you said you were relieved that it was because I wasn’t feeling ok in vet school, but did you try? Did you even try? Did you really try? Did you really try to understand what was wrong with your own daughter? Ask yourself that, ask yourself if you didn’t just shut the problem down really quickly and hoped for the best? You said I had to live my life. My mum is gone, only the teacher remains, the teacher that doesn’t really want to get involved in the student’s life, but still cares if the student looks happy or sad during class. I am not your student. I am your daughter. You created me, like Geppetto created Pinocchio and I am a broken puppet. Like Doctor Frankenstein created the monster and I am a deranged being. Like the ones in Miyasaki’s flying castle, I’m a malfunctioning rusty robot.

I can’t seem to recall what went wrong and when It went wrong. I don’t remember, it’s all a blur.

I remember being afraid of disappointing you, always, mostly at home. And then at the only place where I could have tried to be myself, at school, I was bullied. But you were there as well. So, I hid that too. Every day i heard i was fat, i was ugly, i was weird. Like any high schoolers I guess. I started to believe them, I had no value, I was good at nothing, I didn’t have a purpose. I would try to look for an alternative, an escape, but you were there, watching me from not-so afar. When home was supposed to be my refuge, it wasn’t. Because when there was supposed to be a clear separation between school and home, teachers and parents, hideaway and prison, there wasn’t. I was reminded every day that I was your daughter, I stopped living as a human being, and gradually, gently became the English teacher’s daughter. If I had a bad mark, you would know before me. If I were to have a test, you would know before me. You were at school AND at home. You were a teacher AND a parent. You were a father AND a mother. You were so many things and clearly not enough. You had so many responsibilities you couldn’t focus on understanding my brain. I can’t blame you. Maybe it wasn’t your job. I suppose it was mine after all.

I hated them, their putrid hypocrisy, their fetid jealousy, their competitivity, their habit of being fake friends. I hated this city that wouldn’t allow me to be safe outside, all the judging looks, the loathsome stare from men, the detestable evil eye from women. What’s a world when children can’t be safe when they want to be free?

I choose this city, that was the opposite of where I had just lived. I had had huge, I chose pocket-sized, I had had exposed I chose shielded, I had had hypocrisy, I chose truthfulness.

I thought I had an escape.

Consequently, after being unsafe and clustered in high school, I was impaled with loneliness. Choosing to ignore the asphyxiation that was slowly appearing, I went on with life. And I lost myself

Telling myself I was happy to study, and thinking I was.

The days where I couldn’t get out of bed became more and more frequent. Those were days when I would look at myself in a mirror and hate everything I would see. Sometimes, you still ask me what made me gain weight. This did. Hate. It still does, and I fight that. And then, when proudly, on those rare moments when I see you, I show you that I haven’t gotten any fatter, which is a victory for every day when I chose to run instead of stuffing my face with food while crying, you always have that same answer “oui c’est bien Louise, encore un petit effort et ce sera parfait”. Is makes everything single little personal victory fracture like a broken vase. I hate seeing my face, having my picture taken, I hate mirrors, they immortalize a body I hate, a puffy face, small eyes, yellow teeth, fat neck, fat shoulders, fat stomach, fat hips, white skin, reddish acne, all the little scars, all the imperfections. When I walk, I feel judged, I can’t help but stare at others, to see if their disfigurement and glitches are as obvious as mine. They never are.

You might think all of this is bullshit. The wild imagination of a lazy young adult

The memory doesn’t allow you to remember pain. You remember the theory of the feeling, but not the sensation in itself for if you did, you wouldn’t have the strength to keep on living. Imagine having a life where all the little pains you’ve ever felt had accumulated

There is something extremely unsettling in the feeling of uncapability. Realizing everyone is making their way forward whereas you’re stuck

Here’s a a thought you might have, “we could have talked”, but then think about this for a second. When? How?

The few weekends we saw each other were (and still are) always a marathon. I could have dropped hints but then talking about it would have taken hours, and we never took the time to do it.

It’s funny when it gives me peace for a few days. I suddenly wake up from a fuzzy dream, with a headache, like a hangover, with very few memories of the reasons why I couldn’t be alive

And then, when it decides to strike again, the faded tiggling of the bells, the bell that rings for the symptoms.

I recognize them in advance, so neutral, like a ghost watching from afar what used to be his body of flesh slowly rotting on the frigid morgue’s table.

I emerge from a heavy sleep with a tombstone on my heart, gasping for air as my lungs collapse.

The brain is an organ, like any other, sometimes, it fails. Mine is failing.

Ceci est l’histoire de ma chute,

ma chute progressive et imperceptible

vers un enfer soudain et carbonisant

Je vous implore

Abattez-moi de vos paroles assassines

Qui m’attaquent et me hurlent

les montagnes de ma peine,

ma douleur et ma haine,

la pitié dans vos yeux.

Détruisez-moi avec vos paroles brûlantes

et vos mains assassines

abattez vos lois abattues

et vos discours aboyés

Humiliez-vous et

ternissez-moi si les mœurs

vous le dictent

mais mon âme abrupte et sensible s’accrochera à sa joie pensive et maladroite

ma joie et mon âme,

enroulées comme une liane,

me crèvent le cœur à coup de pieu

le monstre de mon encéphale,

lacérant ma morale,

ma raison et mes sens,

me laisse vide et incapable de moindre émotion,

elle n’est pas excuse à ma perte,

et me laissera partir sans regret,

abandonnant mes passions

comprenez que ma haine n’est pas neuve, elle dure, elle date, elle s’enracine sans se mourir…

Here is the rough translation of the last part

This is the story of my fall,
my gradual and imperceptible fall
to a sudden and charring hell
I implore you
Shoot me with your murderous words
Who attack me and howl at me
the mountains of my sorrow,
my pain and my hate,
pity in your eyes.
Destroy me with your burning words
and your murderous hands
shoot me down with your slaughtered laws
and your barking speeches
Humble yourself and
tarnish me, if moral
dictates you
but my steep and sensitive soul will cling to his pensive and clumsy joy

my joy and my soul,
rolled up like a liana,
sting my heart at stake
the monster of my brain,
lacerating my morals,
my reason and my senses,
leave me empty and incapable of any emotion,
she is not excuse for my loss,
and let me go without regret,
abandoning my passions

understand that my hatred is not new, it lasts, it dates, it takes root without dying ...

A bit of History

20-something french girl, studying at uni while her mother, globetrotter and teacher lives in Africa. Struggling with weight, self-image, living in a very small room on campus most of the year, alone, except for a powerless boyfriend and a cat. I didn't have any real reasons. This added guilt, on top of everything, making me feel like a sorehead, spoiled, ungrateful, greedy, malcontent, unappeasable child. What a pleasant feeling! I certainly don't blame my mom. No one is to blame.

Please share, please write, please talk, please express yourself. We deserve it.

I didn't. I locked myself up because i couldn't talk, I didn't feel like I deserved to feel bad, i had no true reasons, I wasn't justified to feel bad. Some have it worse. But i then understood that it's not the way things work.

Here is all the love i can give you! Love yourself