You don’t consider yourself suicidal. You would never actively hurt yourself. You would never actually end your life. You would never take such drastic measures because you know the it gets better bullshit probably has some grain of truth in it.

But you’re tired. You could get eight hours of sleep and you’d still feel like you stayed up all night. You could do nothing all day long and still feel exhausted, like you’ve just ran a marathon.

You don’t want to die, but you’ve stopped looking both ways when you cross the street. You stopped wearing your seatbelt inside of your car. You stopped taking those basic precautions because you stopped caring about what would happen to you.

You don’t want to die, but you press against the razor a little too hard when you shave in the morning. You pick at your scabs until they bleed and press down hard on your bruises. You dig your nails deep into your skin whenever something bad happens, whenever you are upset, whenever you are angry, because it makes you feel better in a twisted way. You cause yourself pain and don’t think twice about it.

You don’t want to die, but you make the shower water so hot that your skin turns bright red. And when you straighten or curl your hair, you aren’t all that careful because you don’t care whether you end up accidentally burning your skin. You don’t care if you hurt yourself, because a part of you feels like you deserve it.

You don’t want to die, but you starve yourself for no reason. You drink until you black out. You take horrible care of your body because you aren’t happy with it, you aren’t happy with anything.

You don’t want to die, but you are tired of living. You are tired of caring. You are just plain tired.

Of course, you would never call yourself suicidal because you never think about swallowing pills or slitting your wrists (at least not in a serious way). You don’t consider yourself a self-harmer either because you never make yourself bleed — and if you do, it’s on accident. It’s never on purpose. It’s never intentional.

You feel like you’re okay because you never do anything drastic, you never do anything noticeable, but you keep hurting yourself in little ways — and it has to stop. Call a friend. Call a hotline. Call someone. Do something. Get help. Get yourself back on track. Get yourself into a healthier state of mind where you would never dream of hurting yourself. Where you take good care of yourself, because you value yourself. Because you know your life has meaning. Because you know that your bad days won’t last forever and this life will feel worth living again.

You can’t keep hurting your body like this, even in little ways, because you deserve better than that. You deserve to love yourself. You deserve to keep your hopes for the future high. You deserve to be treated kindly — especially by yourself.