It's like a gray fog that rises in the morning, coating every inch of glass in your house, making it impossible to see outside. The mist isn't permanent ... just temporary. I won't say it's a universal impulse— it can't be. There are too many people on the Earth for it to be possible for everyone to flirt with the idea of ending their existence.
But everyone has felt unhappiness, and everyone has felt hope.
I think that these two things are universal, no matter what.
I have never had anyone close to me die yet.
I hope that I never do, but I know that at some point, I will have to accept the reality of it and fully embrace my memory of that person. Sometimes, I desperately hope that the embodiment of consciousness in a human being aren't just a pre-programmed delivery system for genetic information.
The windows are always covered by mist in the summer mornings. It's not cold: the temperature is soft, the air is still. There's no view outside. You may feel that you're not seeing the forest because of the trees.
But what you're doing is breaking information down into manageable chunks and thinking them over, hoping that you can find a logical answer to what amounts to an emotional problem. It's not that the theory or the method is wrong, it's the long cycle of discovering that the time you spent depressed and numb was not wasted but was another step in growing up. I have news for you: you can still have "growing up" to do even when you're forty or eighty years old.
There's always a piece of them left inside you ... you might find it bitter, you might find it sweet. But don't deny that it's there at all. Killing yourself is not the answer to death. Death does not seek out death intelligently but meanders around dumbly—a blind man in an empty room with no frame of reference—but life is always attracted to life.
I implore you: live. Continue.
The dawn will slice away the mist and leave your sight clear one day. The suicidal is just a concept. Stop whispering to it and poking it, and it will ignore you if you ignore it.