So just going to share this here in case it helps someone, even if just a little bit.
I'm in my mid 30s now, but back in highschool (14 years old ish) I encountered a situation where I actively avoided a certain part of the school, going near that particular part resulted in feeling on edge, over time as I continued to avoid it, when I had no choice but to go there because of a class or another route being locked, the stress i would be in kept getting worse and worse, likewise the area in which the sense of dread and panic swept over me continued to grow.
The school I attended had two separate buildings, one for the first 3 years and another for the last 2 years, close to the end of the first 3 years the area that would trigger panic had grown to be pretty much the entire school outside of my home room, my grades suffered terribly and nobody would take me seriously, not my family doctor, not my family, not my friends.
Switching to the different building helped but by the time I had finished highschool most of the second building had become a danger zone too.
After finishing highschool i spent a year basically doing nothing of value, hit a local parks basketball court every other morning with one of the few friends i still had.
I didn't know it at the time but that first little area in my first school would go on to be a massive problem throughout my life.
I can't explain why but after that year of doing nothing of value, just wasting time ever day, I felt somewhat normal, normal enough in fact to spend 6 months living in Toronto, a completely different country, where I got into a relationship which lasted 5 years.
After those 6 months were up I went back home, with my new girlfriend, and more or less wasted my life for the remainder of our relationship, which ended in me dumping her in the midst of stress related to my father passing away.
I spent another few years wasting my life with the bubble around me getting smaller and smaller each day until I got to a point where i could barely leave my room without feeling insanely uncomfortable, and leaving the house was an impossibility, the stupid thing is the sensations i felt were physically debilitating, heart palpitations, headaches, fuzzy vision, complete loss of the ability to process calmly the world around me.
Eventually it broke the barrier of my bedroom walls in the form of being conscious of basic bodily functions such as swallowing food or liquid, i'd run to the bathroom and drink tap water randomly just to prove to myself that i could still swallow water, then id be so worked up about doing it that my heart would be pounding as i go to drink, or i'd cup the water poorly and it'd be too shallow and i'd miss-swallow and recoil from the basin, shaking with fear, i couldnt even eat normal foods because i'd focus on it and i'd struggle to get anything thicker than rice pudding down, i went from a massive 220lb (stuck in bedroom all day every day, gets you fat, in highschool i was slim!) all the way down to 170lb just from inability to swallow, while not such much a problem anymore, even to this very day i will occasionally struggle to swallow liquid or food, and have to pull myself to one side and get myself to chill out, i'll bring a bottle to my lips to drink and feel my heartbeat start pounding, then just hold it there, ready to start drinking and wait for my heart to stop fucking around and chill out so i can drink normally.
Then one day I bought a round trip ticket to Japan after watching a documentary on the suicide forest, using money I had earned from doing some crappy web design jobs.
The flight there I was clutching the seat in front of me the entire time fighting off the panic attacks and insanely powerful effects of my condition, after about 6 hours fighting it I passed out in exhaustion and didn't wake up until most of the passengers had already left and one of the stewardesses poked me to wake me up, i felt like utter shit, but after 12+ years of it, feeling like shit was so familiar I had lost sight of how it ever felt to be normal.
At immigration I damn nearly got denied entry because of my inability to not fidget, raising red flags with my profuse sweating and nail biting, I only scraped past by saying I felt sick because i'm not good at flying.
I then went and spent 2 hours sat in a toilet cubicle biting my arm with my eyes tightly shut and headphones on to drown out the realization of where I was.
I don't remember much between being sat in that toilet cubicle and arriving at the car park of the forest beyond vomiting in the coach toilet so badly that my dry heaving caused the driver to pull over and offer to call an ambulance.
I don't really want to go into what happened after that beyond saying that when you see sense and decide suicide isn't the answer, try not to be in the middle of a forest as the sun is setting, I managed to find a road the next afternoon and walk back to where the coach parking was, after my entire left foot had become a nike-air-blister.
I took a few random trains and ended up in a town called Isehara, tried finding a hotel and was told I should take a few more stops to Atsugi as it had more hotels, I even fucked that up and got off at a stop called Hon-Atsugi (not the same one), but found a hotel there anyway, spent all day inside under the covers, pillows over my face, and all night, from around 1am to people started to appear on streets at 5am just sat on the sidewalk trying to figure our what the answer was if suicide wasnt.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't just see the light and say "well no, ive decided not to take my life", a failed attempt and a shitload of pain however made me too scared to try again.
by about the 4th or 5th night, I noticed the same faces going by at the same sort of times, by the second week the feeling of panic was starting to subside and the situation felt so surreal I would just tell myself I was dreaming and the mere suggestion would push the panics aside.
One night a Japanese girl sat next to me to relax a bit, noticed I was alone and asked If i spoke English, I said yeah and we talked a little about nothing too important, and for the next few nights she would stop by and talk for a bit before going on her way, then one night she sat down and had clearly been crying, makeup down her face and such, turns out her boyfriend had been an asshole to her and they had split up, so we just sort of sat there and chilled until the streets were starting to get busy, we ended up in a Yaoiken having breakfast, the first time i had eaten something that wasnt out of the hotel vending machines.
Several years on and I still live here, with her, in a house, with a mortgage, my own car, awesome internet, all the luxuries I could ask for and a panic disorder that while not gone completely, is far enough in the back of my mind that It doesnt pose much of a problem.
I'm on antidepressants because last weekend I was in kumamoto helping local police rescue the trapped, many of the people I found were already dead, so it's played hell with my dreams and messed up my sleeping pattern.
I'm sharing this with you guys because I was once in a place where I felt death was the easy option, that anything (even death) would be better than living one more day, I even went to the trouble of concocting an extensive lie to family and friends that I was going to Australia for work and wouldn't be back for several years, then went to Japan with the hopes that i'd be able to end it in a way that nobody would feel shitty if they found me, and family would just assume I had settled into a new life and lost touch, my death would (i thought) have hurt nobody but myself.
I was in that position and yet I managed to end up here, and that's what i feel is important to share, no matter how shitty your life feels, no matter how much you feel like death is the answer to your problems, you will never know if you take that option, had i picked a stronger branch I'd likely have ended up in part of VICE's documentary, or at least my skeleton would have.
I'm still not happy in life, I doubt I will ever be, but that doesn't mean life isn't worth living, if you're ever at that point where suicide is the most appealing option, all I can say is, things can change, even if you're unable to imagine a way of how, things CAN change, so long as you don't take the suicide option.
So if someone currently living in Japan (or elsewhere) is at a point where they feel that's their only option, PM me and let me talk to you, even if you're only going to delay it a few extra days, talk to me.
If I can help a single one of you in improving your lives, even just a little bit, then I will, if in Japan I'll be more than happy to meet up and shoot the crap with you and talk it out, maybe it'll help, maybe it won't, but there's really no harm in trying right?
Sorry for the stupidly long post.
I'm very glad you liked it.
