…I almost killed myself
I put on my sunglasses, to hide my swollen eyes, over my tears. I cried all my makeup off. Went inside to have a milkshake. I don’t know why. I wanted something to drink as I figured out what I would do. I got a soda and a milkshake. Medium. The cashier looked at me and with a line around the corner of the counter he rushed away from the counter “Hold on “ he yelled to a coworker.
I filled my soda and went back and saw him looking all over. I go up and he gets close and says “I made it a large”.
That was seriously enough for me not to do it. His kindness. Someone went out of their way and as I went back in my car to cry I realized I could muster through a few other days. A few more weeks. Then I came down from that panicky high of anxiety, depression, and pain. I finished my shake. And it was enough time to let me feel better. I… I’m alive. I’ll make it through.
Try and be nice today. Tomorrow. Something as much as a smile. It helped so much.
Thank you man at McDonalds.
The milkshake saved my life
I hope you all can read this and remember to be kind
The smallest of gestures can save a life. My Mum answered her phone when I called and I am alive today because of that.
I’m glad you’re here.
It’s a phone call, a milkshake, a friend.
I feel like I shouldn’t keep reblogging this but when I do more people see what kindness can do…. I don’t know. Love everyone as yourself.
Nah, keep rebloging it. It gives hope.
walked sobbing around a city once wearing a summer dress in mid-september thunder and rain. basically dragged myself into LUSH as the smell of the store always made me smile. the shop was empty and dead due to the weather, just this blonde short woman behind the counter who smiled at me. i stared at her feet and asked ‘do you have anything for people who are scared a lot?’ (i was so out of it i had no clue). she showed me two bath bombs, one pink and one blue, and said both were good – i chose the pink, paid for it and left. i then sat at a bus stop clutching the LUSH bag in one arm and my prescription meds in the other – i’d lied and ordered a refill so i could just drift away with sleeping pills. when the bus arrived and i was out of the rain, i decided to have another look at my bath bomb, smell it and what not. opened my bag and saw she’d put the blue one in there for me as well and written on the receipt ‘feel better soon 🙂 hope you like x’.
no one had ever been so selflessly kind to me before, i didn’t know what to do with it except hang around long enough to use the other bath bomb.
Actually I’m going to reblog this again because of the truth of the inverse: think of any time you have been casually cruel or petty to someone for humor or because you weren’t in a great mood.
The power of small gestures goes both ways.
this was a kind and lovely post right up until that last message, and i’m actually rather disappointed it’s from someone as prominent as @maggie-stiefvater.
as someone who has been suicidal, who has on the smallest gestures put it off, do not ever try and reverse that, and make other people responsible through their petty, thoughtlessly mean moments in a bad mood, for my or any other person’s decision to end their life. that is a horrible thing to put on other people out of something so universal as “i was in a bad mood, and i was an asshole, and i regret it, but it happened.”
don’t do that. don’t put that on other people. don’t make people put that horror and guilt bomb into their guts and think back over every time they thoughtlessly snapped at someone because they were having a terrible day. what if someone they know does take their own life? and you’re trying to put it on them to sit there and think, believe, “oh my god, i didn’t know they were hurting. i was such a dick that day. i had a headache and everything was going wrong but i didn’t have to be such a dick and now they’re gone, and it’s my fault.”
i know that’s not your intention. you’re just trying to get people to think more carefully about their small interactions with others. and that’s an important thing for people to do.
but suggesting that they’ll be responsible for pushing someone over the edge into taking their own life, that it was up to them to either save this person’s life and be kind, or be unkind and be responsible for them ending it all, that’s the most possible wrong way to say what you mean.
we are responsible for these choices, these actions, when we are contemplating taking our own lives. i’m not talking about a situation in which someone may be bullied or harassed into feeling suicide is the only option, but in a situation where we’re thinking about it, we’re right on the cusp of action, we’re responsible for the final moment decision. not the last person we talk to, and whether they are kind to us, indifferent, or mean.
those small kindnesses can be lifesaving because they give us something to hold onto, remind us that not everything is pain. they are beautiful, often inadvertent gifts. they are powerful, and it’s good people know there can be such power in those little gestures. but the power is what the person receiving puts into it. that person i’m interacting with doesn’t have the power to end or save my life. they are just giving to me something i have the power to interpret as a reason to keep going, or not.
don’t put it on others to be terrified their slightest thoughtless word or ungraceful, brief failure of human compassion is the reason someone may take their life.
that is a cruelty, and it’s a terrifyingly, damagingly easy thought to internalize.
that’s not helping.
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