I am well acquainted with the depths of despair; that place where words hurt in every way and never more than when they give the faintest glimmer of the only thing that could possibly be worse than despair:

Hope.

Hope makes you drag yourself through the hell you’re trapped in when you’re so broken it’s a miracle you can even move.

Hope makes you choke down the agony and anguish, and endure whatever punishment life heaps on top of it, for the unlikely and virtually impossible chance you will survive the pain long enough to discover what it’s like to be free of it.

To be honest, you need hope to suffer.

Things can be so bad, you believe there is no hope, but the fact that you’re suffering is evidence that you still have hope even if you no longer know what you hope for.

It’s still there, telling you that what’s happening to you is wrong.

Hope defies reason, and at some point reason rejects hope.

We reach a point where we become afraid of hope, the certainty that we can always suffer more, especially when our suffering never seems to ease.

We want it to end, so we call our hope foolish and blind. We try to deny that it exists, but we cannot bear the thought of a pointless, hopeless, miserable existence.

So, we reject existence; we reject ourselves.

We cling to the idea that we’re not worth our suffering. The irony is, when you try to confront Nothing, you end up confronting yourself.

When you stand there, truly believing that life is impossible, you overlook the obvious: You have to be alive to feel enough pain to think that way.

So, impossible or not, there it is.

Maybe it’s not as hard as you think, to do the impossible. If the only way to escape from hope is by escaping from your very existence, maybe you can finally understand that no one has hope.

The truth is, we are hope.

When you start to think about killing yourself, what’s really happening is that you’ve realized that even when your pain has become overwhelming, you can still endure worse-–but you don’t want to.

The pain you’re in has gotten completely in the way of living.

You’ve withdrawn so far into yourself, you’ve cut yourself off from the world, from the people and things you need to just get by.

Killing yourself seems like the only way to end your suffering. You cling to that hope, ignoring the fact that dying will involve unimaginable suffering, because you’re so desperate to stop hurting.

But consider, if you’re that desperate-–enough to brave death—can you be brave enough to admit you need help to cope with the problems you have?

Can you be brave enough to be honest-–first and foremost, with yourself, but ultimately—with others, to say you’re in too much pain to think?

The help you can get will have limits, but you have to be able to ask. Mostly, people will only be able to help you discover what you can do, but you will discover that you can do more than you thought you could, once you start doing things in spite of the pain.

Just hold onto what you learned in your darkest moments; you can endure more pain than you are in.

You are the one to decide, but the only way to get out of Hell is by going through it. Your pain is the cost of your passage. It’s your burden to carry, and it’s up to you to shoulder enough to grow in strength and endurance, to increase the pace of your progress.

There’s no need to kill yourself, taking on more than you can handle. There’s no good reason to lie helpless for longer than you need to collect yourself for another attempt.

You never have to give up on yourself, even if everyone else does. Respect your limits, but don’t be afraid to push them. After all, that’s what your hope has always challenged you to do.

The frustration you feel with yourself is simply a reflection of what you truly believe yourself capable of.

Don’t be disappointed or mad at yourself. It’s hard to figure things out when you’re not consciously making an effort.

Above all, don’t cheat yourself by looking for the easy way out.

If it looks easy, it will cost you more-–in pain and suffering—in the end.

Accept that there is a price to pay; it’s part of the value of being you.