Trigger warning: This article contains content referencing suicide. If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or you can text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741. You are never alone.
I feel like everyone knows someone who knows someone who has struggled with the idea of wanting to end their life. People who I have never thought would have struggled with mental illness or suicidal thoughts have come to me and told me they too have thought about not being here.
Depression can hit anyone, at any time in their life. It happens to college majors, moms, dads, sisters, brothers, best friends and family members.
It can attack the strongest of them all.
And sometimes, the pain gets to be so much to the point where not being here seems so much better or like a lot of people, you have this constant wish that some physical illness would just take over and give you a reason to die.
Many people have tried numerous ways to let go of living but found that in spite of their attempts, they are still here. Just so you know, this is in no way to mock you or ridicule your pain by mentioning this. It is, however, a way to point to the fact that even though the pain you have endured took you to those points, you are still here for a reason.
You are still here so that you can inspire others who struggle and show them that you can get through the unthinkable.
You are still here to experience the beauty that life has to offer each and every day.
You are still here because you haven’t yet found your purpose and believe me, when you do, you will be glad you stuck around to find out what it is.
You are still here to accomplish your dreams and go after your goals in life. To be a friend, a mother, a mentor or a leader perhaps.
Maybe God hasn’t put any of this on your life either but just wants you to know that at the end of the day, despite it all, you are still here. And that in itself, gives you something to think about knowing everything you have been through.
No one knows why they experience the pain that they do in this life and believe me sometimes you just want to escape it and wonder why you can’t. You blame God and everything and just say to yourself, fuck it, I must be cursed.
But maybe you being here, is a second chance at being, at living, and at realizing that you matter a whole fucking lot to a lot of people and most of all, you matter to yourself.
But you only realize all this after the storm, after the heartache.
You wanted to die.
But guess what?
You are still here. 
