The Drafts

When the master sees that the Warrior is depressed, he says:

“You are not what you seem to be in these moments of sadness. You are better than that.

“Many have left-for reasons we will never understand-but you are still here. Why did God carry off all those amazing people and leave you?

“By now, millions of people will have given up. They don’t get angry, they don’t weep, they don’t do anything; they merely wait for time to pass. They have lost the ability to react.

“You, however, are sad. That proves that your soul is still alive.”

– Warrior of the Light, Paulo Coelho

If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know!  I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far;  but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. 

–Philippians 1:22-24

There have been three separate occasions in which I have begun writing a letter for my suicide: my junior year of high school, my senior year, and my freshman year of college. Thankfully, none of these drafts were ever finished or followed through with an attempt to take my life; the one attempt I made had no letter to go with it but was brought about by an intense need to release myself from the hardship and chaos of life going on around me that I had no hope to control. That is a story for another post.

The intention for this e-journal post (yes, in the year since I started this site, I still don’t like the word “blog”) is to fully and completely exorcise any and all feelings concerning the control the Thanatos (death instinct) has on me through memories and anxieties about a past I cannot change.

To qualify, I have no feelings of wishing to die right now. With the change of the seasons and the coming of colder winds and shorter lights, I have started feeling twinges of anxiety bubbling underneath. They are average bits of anxiety that people my age go through: feeling like I don’t look attractive; wondering if that person I want to see is actually busy; feeling that my degree and education are worthless; what’s really going on at home, etc.. I feel it is necessary to deal with those sparks before they go aflame and they take over my conscious thoughts, leaving me shaking and looking over my shoulder most of the day. After all, no anxiety is preferable to a little anxiety.

Regarding the “departing drafts,” they were all styled the same. With the popularity of the show 13 Reasons Why, which came out in my sophomore year of high school, my goal was to create a document that left no questions as to the “why” of my suicide. Becoming a writing and reading fanatic, I started out the drafts with a general introduction that included thoughts, insecurities, and struggles that have led to what I felt was an appropriate decision (the theme of irrational rationale once again reveals itself in my writing of my life). After each introduction, I would make a long list of names of the people in my life with whom I felt like I had to explain my decision. Family, friends, close acquaintances, and anybody that I felt could possibly be hurt by my parting.

Thankfully, this second part of my letter had a couple advantages to it. First, it was so, so damn long. If there are 75 people I’m writing to, and I’m writing 2-3 single-spaced pages for each person to ensure I get the message across of how much I loved them and what they meant to me, I was thankfully going to get out of my dark mental pit during that time. Suicide is never a logical choice; it is when the mind takes someone down a train of logical fallacies after the difficulty of life has made it to where they can’t stop, just take a break. They want to distract themselves, but their mind keeps racing. They can’t steady their breath, so they want to stop breathing. They feel ashamed to look at the people around them, so they want to never see anyone again. But there is no “break” to life. Kendrick Lamar says that “sleep is the cousin of death,” but even still, one has to wake up to the cruelty of sunlight (or in my case, for much of my high school career, a quacking duck alarm clock).

Second, I was literally writing to the people I had been living for, reminding myself of what it is I love about them, subsequently giving me a reason to keep pushing forward. Your commitment to death greatly diminishes upon writing to your parents about who they have been to you. Your sickness of life is treated a little bit as you write the letter to the girl you went on a date with telling her how pretty you think she is. Proverbs 17:17 says, “A friend loves at all times, and brother is born for a time of adversity.” Pretty hard to want to die when you remember good talks and laughter with brothers at arms.

Reflection is a gift to be taken carefully and with responsibility for one’s sake. Lessons can be learned and memories can fill a heart. However, the trials from those lessons can be haunting and memories can also be like knives that slowly twist throughout the heart and mind. One of the beliefs of Friedrich Nietzsche is that forgetting is one of life’s greatest gifts. It’s your mind’s way of expelling information that is no longer serving your life. As someone who has Athazagoraphobia, the fear of forgetting and being forgotten, is a terrifying lesson that I am trying to learn. My belief is that the greatest desire in life by people is to Know and to be Known–by Him above and those around. I also think that there is a real connection between our greatest desire and deepest fear, but that’s too much of a tangent. So accepting that perhaps it is God’s blessing that I didn’t remember to wish Happy Birthday to the girl I liked in youth group six years ago is sadly harder for me than most. The strength that God has given me to care for others and seek after them has the potential to become my weakness and chains that drag my life down, causing dissatisfaction and, eventually, despair.

That is why it is so important to understand that the search for meaning is often more important than the meaning one finds. I didn’t decide I wanted to become an author/teacher quickly. It took a long time of liking reading, then betraying it for math, then realizing that calculus sucks, to finally finding a passion and skill in writing and craft (which I am trying to get better at). And who knows, maybe God will further narrow down my niche. Maybe in 10-15 years, you’ll find Nicholas Nelson’s name in the romance section of Barnes and Noble writing the next generation’s Fifty Shades of Grey (I hope I’m writing something a bit more…appealing to the larger general readership, but who knows). Maybe I’ll be writing instruction manuals like my mom believes my major’s use was at one point (I might rather live in the Arctic).

The point that I’m trying to get across is you, the one who is lonely; the one feels lost; the one is drowning, suffocating, and gasping for breath; broken, bleeding, and bruised seemingly beyond repair; shame-filled, cast away, and lost with no home; you: write your heart. Express your hurt and bring it to where you can see it. Then express your love. It doesn’t have to be about people. Walt Whitman has some dope poetry about nature. Write about trees and moss, figs and pears, coffee and Kava, Cookout and Zaxby’s, bendy and swirly straws. Write about what you need to forget and leave it buried, to decompose over time as all things of the mind eventually will be.

For those who are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please get help. The number for the suicide prevention hotline is 988. If nothing I said helped, please call this before you do anything. Help is here and victory is on the way.

-Nic