I would like to start this by apologizing for the overextended period of silence. Truth is I have been around, but also not at the same time.

I pondered for months the correct way to approach this, but alas time does not make it any easier or clearer. I was never really good at sharing what I’m feeling, but it seems there’s a need for more transparency in my life. I owe it to some you.

In a way I always made a point of keeping my personal life separate from my online presence, and in many ways hidden even from those I know, or used to, in real life. Much of what I go through gets bottled up or processed before it actively affects those around me, and for quite a while I thought that was one of the things that made me strong. I’m not so sure anymore.

Last year I tried taking my own life. It wasn’t the first time, but it still felt different in its own way. After the initial drama that happened around it I thought that, in a way, I could overcome it like I did the previous times. I was mistaken. For those that sent messages to me during the crisis, I’m sorry I didn’t have the strength to address them, and by the time I realized what I had to do it was already too late, and it all had fallen in silence.

I wish I could say I lived through it, or even survived, but It’s been so long now, and yet it feels like yesterday at the same time. The passage of time just doesn’t seem to affect me anymore. Days feels the same and have no connection to each one that passed. I spend most of them in bed or doing anything I can to numb my head. Games, reading, sleeping or whatever is available at the time. But there’s no pleasure or reflection behind it. I don’t function and I dissociate from everything and everyone around me, even when I’m trying my best to just smile and pretend things can go back to the way they were, or even improve. It doesn’t feel like being alive, but it doesn’t quite feel like being dead either. And having felt like this for so long made me realize that, perhaps it’s just how it’s meant to be.

I have always glorified stories and fictions with bittersweet endings, as they felt closer to how I perceived life in general. What comes with this, however, is the pressure to embrace the fact that a perfect balance can only be attained if one recognizes the extremes beforehand. Some stories carry upbringing tales, of redemption and a due justice for trials and tribulations, but others are reminders that a time constraint can bring forth premature endings, never given the chance to be corrected and forgiven. It would be bold of me to assume the final result, and yet I cannot fathom how it could ever have turned out any different.

Perhaps I am weak after all, or too cowardice to take control of whatever’s left of myself, and at this point I couldn’t know if I were born broken or made this way. I don’t think it even matters anymore.

Often I find myself returning to the words of Shelley, in Adonais. The harsh truth of the fragility of life and the ode bestowed upon the remains of what is no longer a person, but the reminiscence of their presence, tells much more about the impression they left than who they were in essence, and I find comfort at the thought that what I am, was or will be is past the sheer ignorance and corruption of my or anyone else’s senses, and that the conception and significance of my own being lies further within, unattainable even by my own self or those once dearest to me. Perhaps we are all undeserving, in the end.

It took me too long to realize that I was never meant to have a future. My permanence in this world was never meant to have lasted so long. And I must finally accept that I must come to terms with this. Alas, I do not possess the courage to attempt against my own life again. All previous attempts have only further prolonged and amplified whatever it is I’m feeling. I’m not even sure it’s pain or suffering anymore, as there are days I just cannot feel anything at all. From all of this I have become a husk with a crippled body and an even more broken mind.

I am taken away from things I used to love, buried in debts I cannot repay, a burden to those around me and lost in an existence that promises nothing but misery. I lost friends, family and the ability to feel the sorrow of it all. Tiredness and exhaustion consume me every second of the day, and I know I will not rise again from this. But still I pity the person I used to be much more than what is left of me today. Blind hope is only a time-bomb when reality comes crashing down.

My attempts always felt a way to spare myself from whatever was ahead of me, but I realize now that I do not get to make my choice. So I remain, and remain I shall until my time has come. My mistake in all this was my arrogance, to think that rest could be taken and not earned through persistence. The price of it never once crossed my mind, but I suppose we don’t always get to choose what we owe.

For my commissioners, let’s just get this out of the way: You’ll get what you paid for, I was never a scammer nor will I become one. To everyone else, just know that I will return to my routine as a necessity, and that will be the end of it. Someday, not today and not tomorrow, I will have completed all I have promised, and then I’ll be gone.

And that will be alright.

-          Nicolas