Defending her memory
One year ago today I tried to take my own life.
I jumped into a dam, hoping that I would get swept into it.
The moment it jumped, I regretted it.
I thought to myself in that moment that I wanted to live, but I knew that I was dead.
As my body plunged into the water, I remember foolishly grasping above my head but I couldn't tell what way was up nor could I swim against the current.
What felt like minutes was probably a few seconds. Pleasant memories started flooding my mind. Things from childhood, Simple days where I was walking around and just in a good mood.
People that I loved.
People I felt like a burden to.
All of a sudden my body slammed against flat plateau of rocks and the current swept me onto a giant flat Rock that was just barely under the surface of the water.
Somehow I got lucky.
I got up and went to the Tim Hortons a few blocks away and sat in the washroom for what felt like hours, hand drying my clothes in sections while being butt naked.
I was embarrassed.
I never told anyone this other than a group of friends I met online a while back.
3 years ago someone that I met in college who I was in love with for over 10 years died under ambiguous circumstances, her friends urged me to contact police suspecting the ex- boyfriend being the cause.
I had violent voicemails that were left on my phone both by him and her crying while being abused by him.
There is more to it than that, but that's all you need to know.
I ignored those messages when they came, I didn't want to be caught up in her relationship drama.
A couple months later I found out she was dead through a college roommate on Facebook.
Her ex had blocked me.
Her friends urged me to contact police, there was an investigation and I provided my statement and evidence.
Friends told me that they believed he was the cause.
My brain shut down, I published six books in 3 years, created multiple social media accounts, taught myself, web development and relentlessly pushed my body to the point where I now have a chronic health condition.
Every night I thought I was going to have a heart attack.
I legitimately thought I would not be here tomorrow.
Either that or I had nightmares where he would be beating the crap out of her and I would be trying to pull him off but my hands would pass through.
To this day I don't know if it was suicide, if he played a role in it, or it was just organ failure.
I needed a simple story in order to cope Because a few months before she died, she had expressed suicidal ideation in me and my biggest fear was that both him and I were responsible. The last thing I said to her was that I never loved her and I would rather date women my own age because at least they don't look like an old purse.
When she told me that she was feeling suicidal, I said "do it then" And then I hung up and would not answer her calls.
Her friend told me that he was abusive and I said that that sounds like a her problem.
After 10 years of a back and forth relationship, toxicodependency and daily communication I had had my heart broken so many times that I just wanted to move on. I was starting to become successful online, I was an author.
So for the next couple years, I used social media and content creation as a crutch. I got maybe three to 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep a night and the rest of the time I was on my phone or computer.
I had to keep producing because if I stopped for a moment to think I would be faced with the thought that if she committed suicide then I am at least in part responsible.
She may have still been here if I had of answered those calls.
If I had have been kinder...
On April 29th, 2025, I tried to take my life for the third time, albeit this one was the most graphic. After the Canadian election, content creation stopped functioning as an adequate distraction.
It scared the shit out of me and I will never try again.
Shortly after I met a group of friends that made me feel seen and like I held value.
They made me feel like living again.
Until a few months later, I hit my head, I was injured and vulnerable and despite me repeatedly asking one friend not to call me a tiny man, she kept doing it and then when I told her that it was bothering me she started calling me a massive man.
Even though I am a tall and big man, in that vulnerable state it took me back to when I was raped in college.
One thing I could never say at the time was that that friend reminded me of the woman that raped me.
How do you say that kind of thing?
I lashed out and said leave me alone or I'll block you and then immediately apologized but by then the damage was done.
They went looking to construct a narrative to label me as dangerous and manipulative based on their own trauma and fear responses.
They accused me of lying about this ex's death, accused me of being a drug trafficker because I don't have a driver's license and told me that I was unfit for human connection.
Those words would have been a death sentence if not for two things.
I know what it's like to live with survivors guilt and the last time I tried to kill myself, it scared the hell out of me.
They told the man that has hated himself for years and felt like he was unsafe that he was unsafe and used his platform to manipulate women.
They collapsed a demisexual man into an allosexual frame.
Connection is very important to me but I also fear it.
I absolutely did not act perfectly.
However, they told a man, that has spent the last 3 years posting feminist content because he felt like he failed the most important person in his life.
His best friend
They told the man who thought the world would be better off without him that he should avoid connection.
They demanded access to his trauma despite only knowing him for a few months.
They resurfaced all of it without his consent.
Over the last year I've thought many times about taking my life.
I don't think I ever really left that dark space.
I have been in therapy for a while now, but these wounds don't disappear overnight.
I think what they did hurt more than the death itself
They confirmed my worst fears, maybe people are better off without me in their life.
When the first group of people you trusted and valued in years after living in isolation, tells you the exact thing you've been thinking for years, that screws with you mentally.
I cover feminist content because it's the only thing I actually care about anymore.
It was my purpose, the way to feel still connected to her and like I could make up for what I did, for ignoring her when she needed me.
For 10 years every time she called I came running and the one time I didn't...
I'm safe, I'm no danger to myself and never will be again.
I Will never forget that feeling of regret and fear. But I fake Joy on camera.
I mask for other people so that they're comfortable but I'm hollow.
I felt Joy briefly, so I do know it's possible.
But this was a hard thing to deal with.
I spent years listening to the experiences of other women correcting my behavior and trying to undo patriarchal bias that existed within myself But the one thing I never addressed was how to actually express my emotions because society taught me that doing so was a weakness.
It took me 2 and 1/2 years to actually cry.
I will say however, as much as what that old friend group did to me, I did deal with the stuff that cptsd was preventing my brain from accessing. It gave me my memories back.
Yes, the horrible ones, but also the good ones. The good ones that could only come out when a topic brought the memory to the surface.
I don't remember half of my twenties, timelines are screwed up in my head.
I have achieved a lot over the last few years, I've published 10 books in 5 years, taught myself how to code, monetized multiple social media platforms.
And then I deleted my YouTube.
Unpublished all 10 of my books and deleted my KDP account.
I'm proud of everything I've accomplished, but it was also accomplished through disassociation and trauma.
I no longer feel safe online because of those friends, I no longer feel like I have the ability to grieve. I grieved sideways because I didn't know how else to do it. I never wanted to put this on anybody else, so I kept it inside.
The only people that knew the full extent of what I went through were my mother and sister.
How do you tell people all of this?
How do you tell people that you hate yourself? That every time you look in the mirror and your body recoils?
Especially when you lived most of your days in complete silence feeling like if you got close again, other people would see you the way you see yourself.
The stakes were high, the friendships were important.
They felt like a lifeline and maybe that's unfair. Things ended and I was hurt.
Now I find myself one year later reflecting on the last few years, finally able to see things clearly and not like I'm watching my life from the outside.
I don't think I will ever fully recover from this, these are scars that I will carry with me the rest of my life.
However I am healing, even slowly.
I no longer have to perform Joy, even to myself. It comes in moments, but the little things like a good cup of tea, the birds in the food forest chirping, my cat etc. I'm tired, I have carpal tunnel, a neck injury and myofascial pain syndrome.
My nervous system has been activated for so long, I don't even remember what it's like for it not to be. My sleep has started to stabilize a bit, sporadically and non-linear, but the nightmares seem to be far less frequent.
I have three amazing friends in my real life, amazing women that would do anything for me but I think for years I didn't want to be a burden, didn't want them to leave because if they left I would have been truly alone.
This post was hard to write, part of me felt like I didn't have the right to.
But I've kept this in for long enough, keeping it inside is what has been eating me alive.
Even if it makes people uncomfortable, I have a right to tell my story on my terms.
I want to be a good man.
I may fail at it sometimes, especially when it comes to emotional vulnerability, but I refuse to ever be that person again. I will never again, be the man that ignores a cry for help from someone that he loves.
I'm an insecure man.
I destroyed my body rather than face things.
I delayed the cost because I knew if I had to face it, I might go back to that dam.
Within the span of 3 months, my mother's partner of 14 years died, a close friend from high school committed suicide, and then my ex.
I literally couldn't cope.
I lost my best friend, even if our relationship was toxic.
She was a daily presence in my life from 19 until 30. I miss her, every day.
I hate myself a little bit less now, but I would be lying if I said she wasn't the first and last thought of my day.
Today it's been 3 years since her death, 3 years since I spoke to police, 2 years since I tried to take my own life, one year since I tried for the last time. I experienced something this last week that has me feeling both relief and uncomfortable.
I felt genuine joy that wasn't contingent on anything.
I was just happy.
I made concrete plans about the future, not just dreaming, but took actual steps towards a future goal.
Life is beautiful, it's amazing and existence is weird.
I haven't seen all that I want to see yet, so why should I cut it short?
I think through all of this, all I wanted was to be held. A little boy that needed a hug.
I have self-sabotaged for years because I didn't think that I deserved anything good.
I did all of this to myself, maybe it was a penance of sorts.
But therapy has been going well and I feel like me again for the first time in a long time.
It's obviously going to take some time, but at least I'm serious about it.
I will get better, but I think most of the grief came from the fact that I had to wear a mask.
Between grief, trauma and ADHD, I've spent the majority of my life masking for the comfort of others.
Add in the gender Dynamics of having to be the strong and stoic unfeeling man, I've never shown anybody the real me.
I'm not sure I even know who he is anymore.
But at least that's something to look forward to, I hope he's a good guy.
I hope he also likes bubblegum ice cream.
I'm not wearing a mask anymore, I'm not keeping these things bottled up inside. I'm letting it out even if it's not clean.
I have no desire to hurt anybody, so why am I hurting myself?
This post was long and heavy, I apologize for the trauma dump.
But this has been the hardest year of my life.
And I'm no longer pretending that I'm okay. I'm hurt and I'm sad.
That's okay.
At least I have nice elbows.
The truth is that there is no such thing as happiness or unhappiness in this world, there is only the comparison of one state with another.
It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.
Everyone says love hurts, but that is not true
Loneliness hurts
Rejection hurts
Losing someone hurts
Envy hurts
Everybody confuses these things with love, but in reality, Love is the only thing that covers up all pain and make somebody feel wonderful again.
Love is the only thing in this world that does not hurt.
So I choose to end it with that.
This might make me look foolish but to those old friends:
Thank you and I'm sorry.
I wish you all the best
"Responsibility is a practice, not a story"