I don’t want to be here anymore, but I’m too afraid to die.

I typed this into Google a year ago, my hands shaking as I questioned what I meant. I didn’t want to be alive or exist anymore. But at the same time, I didn’t quite want to die.

I felt selfish as I typed it, thinking about all of the people who had been suicidal, worrying that I was being disrespectful to those who had actually lost their lives that way. I also wondered whether I was just being dramatic.

But I pressed enter anyway, desperate to find an answer for what I was feeling. To my surprise, I was met with search after search of the exact same question.

“I don’t want to die, I just don’t want to exist,” read one.

“I’m suicidal but I don’t want to die,” read another.

And then I realized: I’m not being silly. I’m not being stupid or melodramatic or attention-seeking. There were so many other people feeling the exact same way. And for the first time, I didn’t feel quite so alone.

But I still felt what I felt. I felt distant from the world and from myself; my life felt almost as though it were on autopilot.

I was aware of my existence, but I wasn’t really experiencing it. It felt like I had become separate from my own self, as though a part of me was just watching my body go through the motions. Daily routines like getting up, making the bed, and working the day I away felt almost mechanical. I was in a toxic relationship and heavily depressed.

My life had become repetitive and, in many ways, unbearable.