“Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray, The Lord, my soul to keep
And guide me safely through the night
And wake me with the morning light.”

Every night I’d say this prayer before going to sleep. I always resented the last part: wake me with the morning light? Why?

Secretly I’d only say the first half over and over again. I’d pray that God took my soul in the night and I’d die so I never had to wake up again. I started this when I was very young, maybe 5-6 I started and by the time I was 8 it was my nightly ritual.

Every night I can’t wait to go to sleep. I keep telling myself that if I really believe and pray hard enough I’ll make myself die.

I heard a story of a girl in her 20’s who lay down for a nap and a few hours later her parents discovered she died: internal bleeding from a burst cyst on the ovaries.

“Please! Pleasepleasepleaseplease! Pleeeaaaassssseee let me go next!”

I don’t want pain. I just want peace.

I wish I could just phase out of my body and watch the world go by. Listen and laugh to the people and their conversations, without fear of judgement.

You think I’m being melodramatic? You think I don’t deserve to feel like I want to die?

I never said I had the worst life in the world. I know many people reading this have experienced real physical and sexual abuses that I was spared.

I never had a tragic life. I had a net-zero life. Someone told me the opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference. That’s how life has treated me: with indifference.