I Never Expected to Make it to 40
Between my physical health and my mental health, I’m still surprised I’m alive at 41.
Content warning: This pieces touches on severe depression and suicidal ideation, although mostly it was passively wanting to die rather than actively wanting to take my life.
I turned 41 almost 6 months ago, and I’m still trying to process the fact that I even made it to 40. I genuinely didn’t expect to live this long, so it’s been difficult to picture living into my 40s, 50s, or maybe even beyond.
There are two reasons I didn’t expect to make it to 40: my recurring depression and my obesity.
Depression
I was about 12 years old when my depression started. I think it might have been after a bad rollover car accident I had been in on a school trip. I distinctly remember laying in bed at night, staring at the red light on my smoke detector and wishing that the house would burn up with me inside. I didn’t actively want to kill myself, but I definitely wanted to die.
However, I didn’t share those dark thoughts with anybody at that time. I’m not entirely certain why. Maybe because there was a whole ethos in the 90s of “Life sucks and then you die.” Maybe because I just assumed everybody felt that way all the time…
