Authenticity

Trigger Warning: Suicide

I love my guitar. I’ve played soccer since I could walk. I’m sarcastic, I love indie rock and One Direction, and I’m an anatomy enthusiast. At the same time, I'm a teenager who was taught from a young age that her worth is defined by her grades. I’m a queer social activist who decided later that ideas of self worth being based on outward forces was a product of systematic oppression. I'm a mentally ill teenage girl who is about to decide, for the most part, what shape her future will take after such a turmoiled past. I don't see the point in hiding any of that.

May 6, 2015. I look fixedly at the tiny plastic bags in front of me, organizing their contents. I go between staring at them and closing my eyes until finally, one by one, they are gone. No one thought I'd survive such a lethal mixture of opiates and barbiturates. I did. Years of overwhelming anxiety, unstable moods and intense frustration finally caught up with me. I tried to kill myself. I should have died. I didn't.

Leading up to my attempt, everything was dull. Everything was repetitive. Just a copy of a copy of a copy. Nothing meant anything. Everything I loved was rationalized away, until there was nothing left but my nihilistic thoughts. Now, that's starting to change.

My brother is one of the very few people I’ve ever genuinely cherished. But as I fell deeper into my depression, closer to my attempt, my love for him faded like everything else. Every emotion fell flat. Everything I had once felt, no matter the intensity, turned gray. His constant presence, once a blaring alarm, transformed into a soft humming; always there, but never given any thought. Driving around in his Jetta, him making fun of me for almost anything as I laugh and subconsciously egg him on; that's something I lost before. But as I get farther away from the night of May 6, the soft hum grows to a persistent tapping. Figuratively in my memories, literally in Michigan, he’s helping me gain my sense of purpose.

I steal his phone to play DJ as we drive to Ted Drewes or the driving range or Five Guys or wherever, debate whether or not I'm willing to get smacked for playing One Direction, then opt for the more appropriate Black Keys. I start to sing, he joins in purposely off tune. Ignoring the 3000 pound car he’s operating, he dances furiously and shakes his head to the beat way harder than the song calls for. I laugh at him and with him, enjoying his presence for a short while until he goes back to school. In that moment, I am truly happy. The persistent tapping grows into an incessant buzzing.

Why should I care how intensely that sound plays? As a concept, life is meaningless. Emotions are only neurotransmitters pulsing through the body, actions are the mixture of knowledge and impulse, and people are self-righteous, floating molecules that think the universe is somehow able to acknowledge their existence. Life is meaningless. But, do I need innate meaning to live, to enjoy? Do all my feelings and actions disappear if I recognize where they come from? No. I still want that buzzing to turn back into the blaring alarm it once was. I want to have more moments with my brother, be it in his Jetta when he's home or under the Christmas Tree where we're kids again. And I want to realize that life being meaningless doesn't mean everything in it is. I can still take part in the fight for justice, still play my guitar and listen to One Direction, still give my own meaning to the void. I'm creating my own bubble within the nothingness; that's enough.