So here is my disclaimer: I am human. And humans are bad at surviving pressure. We improvise. We lie to ourselves. We call endurance strength when it’s actually just fear. So here is my effort at being honest. 2025 was hell, and I attempted suicide. There. I said it. I tried to leave my own life behind because I couldn’t carry it anymore. By the time this is published I’ll still be breathing, apparently “doing better,” at least that’s what I hope. My name is Rin and I write this for two kinds of people: the ones who are quietly trying not to kill themselves, and the ones who think nobody around them ever would. If you’re the second kind, you’re probably wrong.

I used to think I was strong. Twenty years of swallowing pain, simply calling breakdowns “bad days,” and locking myself in rooms until the shaking stopped. I mistook my endurance for resilience. I thought as long as I didn’t die, I was winning and that alone would have been enough. But 2025 didn’t just test me, which was very much unfortunate. It dismantled me. Everything started with university. Failing courses. Just numbers on a screen, just letters, just a maze of needless bureaucracy, except somehow those numbers became verdicts on my worth. I told myself I was being dramatic, that life was bigger than academia and grades or whatsoever, that I wasn’t a baby. That was true. But little did I know, it was just hollow reassurance, the first crack in a wall that would later cave in completely. Because nothing ever collapses alone. Everything waits until it can fall in a pile.

But before all that fully exploded, there was my sister. She was my safe place. The only person who loved me without expectations. She didn’t care if I succeeded at anything. She simply wanted me alive. She was my best friend. We talked every day for two months because everything else was already sliding out of my control. It was fun while it lasted. I had my comfort.

Then she had an accident. I borrowed more money than my father makes in months just to get a flight back home. The cheapest flight obviously was going to have endless layovers with 21 hours on the plane. I arrived exhausted, hollow, holding onto hope by the fingernails. She was already buried. I remember kneeling in wet red soil and thinking: so, this is it. This is how a human becomes a memory. One minute a voice in your ear, the next minute a mere name in stone.

That was the first death. After that, home stopped being home. It became a place that re-injured me every time I entered it. I have spent my entire life trying not to disappoint my parents and somehow perfecting the art of doing exactly that. No matter how much I tried, it was never enough. I could bleed myself dry for approval and still be told I wasn’t trying hard enough. My mother didn’t mean to crush me, and I was certain I knew that. That’s the worst part. Her disappointment, it sat in the room with us. It lived in her sighs, in the way her eyes scanned me like she was always measuring how far I had fallen short of the daughter she wanted.

And my father, he wasn’t always a monster. That’s the inconvenient truth. Once upon a time I loved him. Once upon a time he was the man who taught me how to ride a bike, the man whose approval I chased like oxygen. But this year he became someone else. He didn’t just yell. He became violent. Abusive. He slapped my mother. A terrible man. And I watched it happen and something inside me snapped clean in half. I screamed. My hands were shaking so badly I couldn’t even form fists. The man I had defended in my head for years turned into a stranger in a single motion. And the worst part? Nothing I did fixed it. You don’t undo abuse by shouting louder. You just get louder bruises. My parents’ arguments soaked into the walls. My father’s violence poisoned whatever respect I had left. I didn’t belong anywhere. Not abroad, not at home, not even inside my own head. Eventually they divorced. People talk about divorce like it’s some sort of liberation. It’s not, at least not for my mother. It left her alone with bills, shame, memories, and the unbearable weight of losing one daughter while watching the other unravel in real time. I hated her for leaning on me, but I hated myself more for resenting her. Both feelings lived in my chest and it sucked.

When I went back overseas, I didn’t go back to living. I went back to rotting. I ate the same ramen every day. I let trash pile up until my room smelled like something abandoned. I didn’t throw anything away because I couldn’t even throw myself away properly. People drift away when you become a closed door. They don’t slam it. They just stop knocking. And somewhere in that decay there was a boyfriend. Yes, he cheated. After that I went silent. Four months of ignoring messages and he disappeared. Since I’ve been hurt enough, this heartbreak barely registered compared to everything else. It was just the cherry on top. By October, I had no one left to cling to. I was tired of resisting suicidal thoughts that kept lining up politely. I was done giving 2025 permission to keep carving me open.

Then my phone rang. I almost didn’t answer. My body moved before my brain could sabotage me. I cried so hard I couldn’t even speak. It was Adeena. We weren’t friends. Barely even acquaintances. Certainly not someone I would’ve chosen to witness my collapse. She asked if I was okay and I didn’t lie. I was done performing wellness, so I just told her everything. She didn’t attempt to fix things with empty motivational rhetoric. I was glad she didn’t. She was just gentle and said the exact words I was starving for. I asked her why she called. Apparently my mother had contacted her. Because I had blocked my own mother for two months. I thought I was protecting her from my self-destruction. I unblocked her just to see one grey tick. She was already dead. She killed herself before I did. While I was hiding, she had been sending messages about how sorry she was, how she thought she had failed me. She killed herself believing she was the problem. Mom, you weren’t. I didn’t want you to stop loving me. I wanted you to stop carrying me. I wanted you to live, to smile without wondering which part of me was breaking today. Instead, I taught you silence, and I will carry that guilt for the rest of my life. Adeena stayed so I wouldn’t collapse completely. She made me promise not to hurt myself again. I promised. I’m still here. Not healed, just breathing out of regret instead of hope. It was out of guilt to my mum that I’m still alive. I’m living for her. There is a grim irony to it, isn’t there? The same regret that pushed me toward suicide is the only thing keeping me alive.

It’s been almost two months now and I am surviving. Thankfully. Sometimes I even smile. I don’t know if pain heals anyone. I only know it didn’t finish me. Or maybe I didn’t finish myself. So, if you’re reading this while quietly planning to survive one more night in this beautiful world, stop pretending that you are fine. It’s not a weakness to be vulnerable and to talk to someone about the pain that has been ignored for too long. And if you’re reading this while standing to someone who might be struggling, do know that your presence matters. People don’t die simply from sadness. They die from being unseen. From swallowing everything so it doesn’t make a mess for you. So show them that it is not a mess. Show them they can talk to you. Show them you do care. Reach out, say the awkward thing and ask questions you’re afraid of. Stay even when it’s uncomfortable.

Because I’m still breathing, not because I’m not sad anymore. In fact, I most definitely still am. It’s just that someone refused to mind her own business for once. And this world should not lose another bright, stubborn, unfinished life to silence. Not anymore. 

May 2026 be kind to all of us.