Being Suicidal, Dealing With It, And Surving It

I have dealt with suicidal thoughts for a long time. 

My grandfather commited suicide when I was in 9th grade. He was a World War 2 veteran and had emphysema and took his own life so that his family could stop caring for him. 

I was bullied a lot in both middle school and high school. Mostly for my weight and for being poor. I was an outcast even to the other outcasts at times.

My father beat my mom and was verbally abusive towards me. I called the police on him the summer before 10th grade and that got him to stop physically abusing my mom but the emotional abuse didn't stop until he died in 2010.

I've always had problems getting dates, having girlfriends, and it did take a toll on me emotionally. Loneliness sucks.

Before the memes I was able to laugh at myself and partake of self depreciating humor. I believed it wasn't my looks that mattered but who I am that matters. 

Yet there were those who said I didn't love myself because I'm fat and wasn't trying to get thin. That ruined what self esteem and confidence I had at the time because it seemed they thought I was so unlovable they couldn't even fathom that even I loved myself.

I was able to realize nobody can tell me how to feel about myself except myself.

I had the ability to talk myself out of suicide. Once it was because I didn't want to miss the upcoming first Avengers movie. 

Sometimes my family needing me worked. 

Then there was the point that I'll never find someone if I'm dead. Can't be a corpse groom. 

Then there's the fact that if you kill yourself then your life will never be better than whatever it was up to that point. Living means life can get better. Sure, it can get worse, and that's not good either, but with life is opportunities to get better. It's not as finite as death.

The first time I called a suicide hotline the person tried getting me off the phone quickly. They asked me "What changed?". I replied "Nothing.". They said "If nothing changed why do you want to kill yourself now if nothing's changed?" and I realized they didn't get it. I talked myself out of suicide by saying things could change for the better...but it never did. Years of living through it the stagnation meant staying alive didn't get better. I was suicidal again because nothing had changed at all. 

Life got better though. It took years. In 2016 I was focusing on my health, getting back into my artwork again, pawned most my DVD collection to afford making prints, and taking care of my mom after her stroke in 2011 and severe back arthritis diagnosis in 2016. I was losing weight, my A1C was going down, I got myself down to one pizza a week, and life was good.

If I thought other people might think I'm ugly I could tell myself it's just in my head and move on. 

Then I found out about the memes in early 2017. I felt the most suicidal of my life. All hope was lost. 

My ugliness was no longer just in my head. I was bonafide physically undesirable to women. My face was being associated with the evilness I've seen in screenshots of texts on Facebook. People, women in particular, were associating my face to that behavior. 

I no longer had a clean slate in meeting anybody new. Meeting someone would be a defensive uphill battle trying to prove I'm not the kind of guy those memes portray. Finding love became impossible.

I realized when strangers recognized me in public the last few years it had to be from these memes. We ruled out schools and work places but they always were certain they'd seen me before.

I was afraid to leave my house. Afraid of going out in public and being recognized again. To this day I have anxiety just getting groceries and going to the laundromat.

Last year I began experiencing anhedonia which means I had lost the enjoyment of doing things I loved. Things that were routine enjoyment for me like watching new episodes of Walking Dead on Sundays I just stopped doing and it took months for me to catch up on the DVR. I still have little interest in reading books, even comics, now.

I get suicidal often. It feels so easy now to give in and give up and let it be over. 

Fighting it isn't easy. It gets even harder when friends whose support you used to have just abandon you completely. The people you used to reach out to for help just unfriend you and leave.

Then you find out people are still uploading the memes of you, and this time people are comparing you to a child murderer?

My face was made the face of creeps, misogynists, rapists, murderers, and all male douchebaggery and evilness. It was done so without my permission.

I can count on my hands how many strangers said this was wrong. 

There are thousands more with no problem about it and feeling happy to bully and mock my face, to laugh at my face, to defame my character.

And Facebook, after all this, decides not to take them down. 

THIS NEEDS TO BE CHANGED! 

I can't fight it if I'm dead though. You can't fight back either if you're dead. 

Don't kill yourself. Get help. Don't surrender to the evil that tries to bring you down. Rise up and battle that evil and vanquish it to make the world a better place for all humanity!

ONLINE BULLIES MUST NOT WIN!