Happiness Isn’t Just An Outside Thing
HAPPINESS ISN’T JUST AN OUTSIDE THING
Disclaimer: Below is a post detailing my existing struggle with suicidal thoughts and doesn’t hold back. If you worry this may trigger any buried suicidal feelings of your own instead of providing comfort or insight to my personal experience, then please play it safe and skip this. If you’re currently struggling with the idea of suicide and need to reach out to someone please go see someone you trust and/or hit up the Suicide Prevention Lifeline and stay on the line until you can trust yourself to not act on these feelings. If one operator isn’t making you feel better, hang up and call again until you speak to someone who helps you find the value in yourself. The number is 1-800-273-8255.
If you’ve met me before or follow me online your takeaway is probably along the lines of how happy I am and not how suicidal I am. I’ve struggled with suicidal feelings for many years now and this is the first year I’ve been speaking more openly about this. When I was twenty-one I stood on the roof of my first apartment building and a call with MIRACULOUS timing from my best friend got me to step down, a fact I’m pretty sure he wasn’t aware of until this year. In January 2014, one month after getting my first book deal, I was ready to kill myself again, and just like the first time, a call from my other best friend in a different time zone saved my life. About two weeks ago I was ready to commit suicide and this time around it took a gang of best friends scattered across the map, my incredible publishing team, and two calls to the Suicide Prevention Lifeline to save my life.
I have a tattoo on my collarbone: HGO, which stands for Happiness Goes On. I was on an afternoon date a few years ago and immediately lost interest in the guy so I lied about having a tattoo appointment so I wouldn’t have to stay out too long. But then I felt bad about lying and had time to spare before a birthday party so I got a tattoo. I wanted this tattoo to serve as a reminder that twice in my life I was ready to quit, and even though it took many months and even years to get over the pain and worthlessness, I endured, survived, and happiness came again. And I’m not bullshitting you here, but that tattoo was pretty invisible during the scariest week of my life. I don’t remember seeing it once and I don’t remember believing in what it represented at that time.
This post may surprise people because, on paper, I’ve had a good year. Next year is looking good, too. 2017 is shaping up to be even better. And things are falling into place for 2018. But these good things are only the measurements in the book arena of my life. Trust me that it is 100,000% unhealthy for anyone to measure their worth by sales and starred reviews and author tours and national marketing campaigns. I’m reducing my time on all social media because these things have all added to my recent anxiety and panic attacks, which exist independently from all dark thoughts. There’s a history of mental illness on my father’s side of the family—schizophrenia, dissociative disorder, and yes, uncles who’ve committed suicide.—so I want to note that I also suffer from pretty bad OCD. The combination of anxiety and OCD have resulted in my fingerprints all over every rung of my career—possibly more so than other authors—until things are RIGHT in my eyes and CLICK in my head, and I’ll spare you all the details on what I mean by this. The point is that it’s taken this really bad week for me to finally relinquish control on things that were only stressing me out further to create a healthier headspace for myself and so I can focus on my personal life, both appreciating and extending it.
My best friend Luis said many life-saving things to me that week, and onwards, and one of my favorites is when he recognized my need to become “Adam Silvera, human who writes, and not writer who humans.” Publishing a book has always been my dream, but once that dream came true it didn’t arrive with the infinite happiness I swore it would; I wasn’t untouchable to unhappiness. I don’t blame publishing, by the way. I just hate my warped perspective on publishing and hope that I can correct this moving forward so I can truly appreciate all the victories, big and small.
When it comes to talking to others about my problems it might be hard for them to take me seriously because I will VERY RARELY speak to anyone when I’m knee-deep in my latest funk. Instead I wait until I’m in somewhat better spirits, have had enough time to review why I’m feeling a certain way, and will then express it in a joking ha-ha manner that no one could possibly be at fault for dismissing entirely. I’m guessing I’ve done this subconsciously because I don’t value my own issues enough to believe anyone could possibly care about this. In the very recent past I made an unforgivable joke where I said “Ugh, life is too long.” It’s pretty disgusting because I’m fully aware how many people wish they were privileged with another day or better health and here I am wishing my time away. (If I ever made this joke around you and you were too kind to tell me to shut the fuck up please know I’m really sorry and wish I wasn’t such an inconsiderate idiot.) Even though it’s my worst insensitive joke ever I do have to confess the sentiment is genuine. Two days after hitting the New York Times bestseller list, one of the book’s biggest wins ON PAPER, I was chilling with authors in Chicago and we were talking about upcoming projects in 2017 and I sank. David Arnold, one of my best buddies who’s very familiar with my suicidal history, noticed my drop in energy, but I played it off because I didn’t want to talk about how the thought of being around in 2017 exhausted and depressed me. I called my best friend when I got to my hotel room that night and expressed this to him because talking about these feelings has proven to be a way better outlet than absorbing all the pain by myself. It sucks though that talking about our problems isn’t like a surefire magical spell that cleanses us of all our depression and pain, but instead actually only relieves us temporarily and leaves behind smudges everywhere.
It’s not uncommon for me to sink when good things are happening in my life, and I’m sure others experience this as well. It’s a high and you’re only left wanting more and then “More” doesn’t show up for work and you’re left super disappointed. Maybe that’s just me, but dozens of these moments eventually avalanched and left me feeling worthless and hopeless and crushed and alone despite having some of the greatest friends ever.
This is where it gets maybe a little too dark, but for a couple of weeks before this crash I’d been planning a solo trip where I was basically going to figure out how I would kill myself because I was tired of the worthlessness and hopelessness and loneliness I’d been feeling tenfold. I knew—or, if we’re being brutally honest, half-believed—deep down I didn’t want this for myself but because the thought kept returning I immediately messaged some of my best friends (my #1 homie Luis, Corey Whaley, David Arnold, Becky Albertalli, Jasmine Warga) so they would understand why I was taking a break from social media and to basically keep an eye on me as I felt things worsening.
That same night I was coming apart. I had no appetite, I couldn’t sleep, my chest was very tight, and my heart was pounding so hard around 2:00AM that I thought I was having a heart attack, and the force of it didn’t go away until 6PM the next day. The next morning I hit up my agent Brooks and caught him up on everything and asked him to pass along all of this info to my publisher Soho, and I was dropped from all our email interactions to reduce my anxiety and focus on myself. I emailed mentor/friend Lauren Oliver about all this too and she came back with the toughest love that finally got me to reach out to a Suicide Prevention Lifeline for the first time in my life.
I can remember my first suicidal thought when I was sixteen so it really struck me that at age twenty-five I was finally adding the Suicide Prevention Lifeline into my phone’s contacts list. It took me hours to finally work up the nerve to call and I didn’t feel very justified because I wasn’t in immediate danger to myself. But as Lauren told me, I was still indeed at risk during these very charged days and it was important that I start building relationships and having conversations with professionals instead of carrying this around by myself. I also didn’t want to call because I felt as if my reasons—which I’ll keep to myself—were stupid and would earn me several eye-rolls, but I really hope anyone reading this understands that if your “stupid” reason is eating you alive then it’s far from stupid and I hope we can all be smarter about this in the future.
I went for a walk when I made the call. I played a cheery song (playing depressing songs while depressed wasn’t making me less depressed) and when the song ended, I forced myself to call the lifeline. My chest is tightening thinking about how fucking bizarre that all was. When the operator picked up (she was the loveliest, seriously) I didn’t even know what to say initially, but within forty minutes I told her so much: how I’ve cried in the shower with my face planted on the cold tiles of the wall; how I appreciated my trusted friends checking in on me, and how I hated that I was this broken thing they needed to check in on; how uncomfortable it made me that everyone was learning how to recalibrate their conversations with me, like I needed to be handled with kiddie gloves; how interrupting everyone’s (seemingly) happy lives with my own unhappiness only made me regret sharing all this with them in the first place; how becoming an author has changed my life, but how it hasn’t magically healed all wounds or spread its happiness into the other arenas of my life; how I’m apartment hunting in a city I’m not sure I want to stay in; how everything felt lose-lose, and so much more. She never rushed me off the phone once and when I was ready to hang up, she gave me multiple resources that could better assist me locally and reminded me that I could still call this number anytime.
That evening led to more talks with friends and I was so drained by the entire thing that I didn’t call any of the resource centers the next day. After a night with four long back-to-back talks I needed some distance from all this. But two days after the first call to the Suicide Prevention Lifeline, my best friend took me up to Bear Mountain where we climbed to the very top and drank fresh water from this spring and just had an overall dope day, and when we got back to city that night I crashed even harder than the first time that week. I was really convinced this was going to be the night where I committed suicide and I felt ready, and I felt terrified. I cried in the shower, I cried in the streets, I cried on the steps of a church, and I cried in the streets some more. When I considered throwing myself into a street as a car approached and was about to research painless ways to commit suicide, I got my shit together and called the Suicide Prevention Lifeline again.
This operator wasn’t as great as the first and I even considered hanging up on her to find someone else to talk to, and that’s something I absolutely suggest if you speak to someone you’re not connecting with. But she said something that made me call the resource centers I’d been avoiding. I can’t tell you what she said because I don’t remember and it also doesn’t necessarily matter anymore because it got me to finally make that call to the place with the weird waiting music that had me on hold for a while because “all counselors were currently assisting other callers.” But I was okay and I was trying to live so I waited. I spoke with a lovely woman and she gave me numbers for local psychiatrists and therapists, and then I went back to my friend’s house.
I told him how everything flipped and how exhausted I was and I broke down so hard I learned the sound of my cry—not the little sobs from the shower that I thought was crying, but instead an agonized cry with stuttered breaths and howling as if I lost all my favorite people in the universe. I have a tattoo that’s a secret code for words of wisdom I’ve tried to live my life by, and only my mom knew the meaning just in case something ever happened to me, but that night I wrote them down for my best friend too just in case things continued diving south. That move alone made me feel like I still have one foot hovering over the edge, no matter how much I calmed down hours later.
By comparison, things have been easier since this nightmare. I now better understand the power of my depression—its strength will make me feel lonely even when I’m being hugged, and it’s a sneaky motherfucker that will drag me down when I’m sure it’s gone. I’m working on making therapy a major part of my life, and am looking into medication. I’ve made so many calls already to try and lock down sessions and it’s been really frustrating, but I’m not going to pretend I don’t need it, even if I’m able to trust myself again currently. It sucks, but I know the time will come again where I’ll feel like this, or God forbid worse, and I’ll want psychiatric help available to me.
I’m taking more time for myself to live beyond my art that’s now become my career, and I’m getting better at removing myself from situations that make me uncomfortable to avoid more panic attacks and ugly thoughts. My outlook on the future is already improving and I can talk about next week without freaking out. I’m getting better at appreciating what I DO have, including the book community, because even though my shitty perspective on publishing added to my distress I wouldn’t have been exposed to the incredible human beings who were there for me during a surprising, dark week.
Writing has been my outlet since I was eleven or twelve. Whether I was exploring an idea or seeking therapy it’s what I’ve always done—and will likely continue to do—whenever I needed to relieve myself of whatever is weighing me down. But this time it’s also a lengthy status update of how I’m still very much a work-in-progress when it comes to dealing with all this. I don’t have all the answers because I haven’t fully emerged from the other side just yet. But the process of rebirth is just as important as the finish line where you’re reborn. No matter how young or old we are we’re all constantly reinventing ourselves. New trials appear we have to learn how to overcome, and we also wise up to old ways no longer benefitting us and have to discover what does.
I’ve maybe only mentioned this to one or two people before, but for years I’ve thought that if I were to ever commit suicide it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. But as I’ve confessed a lot of these thoughts very recently to my mom and childhood friends to learn they were surprised I was ever hurting in the first place, I’ve realized everyone would be surprised because on the outside I’m happy. I only show you all a very happy Adam Silvera. Online and in-person I share the parts of my life where I’m winning and where I’m laughing, but I’m not nearly open enough about how hard happiness has always been, and continues to be, in my life; I know it’s the same for countless others, too. I’m often happy for others and deeply unhappy for myself. But I’m hoping to turn this around and to surprise MYSELF now by living, and by finding the strength to do whatever it takes to be happy with the happiness I’m pretty damn sure exists deep within me.
SUICIDE PREVENTION LIFELINE: 1-800-273-8255.
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