Win a Whistle (excerpt)

Depression is such a dangerous, insidious thing. I have been so deep in despair, so self-involved and alone, even while surrounded by people who loved me, that hardly a day would go by when I didn’t at least think of the drugs I had on hand, and often would find myself standing at the kitchen counter counting them in a blue-gray funk, ensuring that I had enough on hand to put my lights out should I decide that day that it was finally time to stop my mind, kill once and for all the terrible, unbearable malaise in thought and feelings that had turned the world around me so terribly dark and colourless and, ultimately, empty, a void from which hope, that single most important element necessary for the continuation of life, had been washed away. While I cleaned my military issue 9 millimetre after going to the range to pop a few off, shitty thoughts of just reloading the thing and eating it would come fully formed in my mind, leaving me shaking and gasping for breath. I understand suicide, because I know despair so intimately. According to my dictionary despair is defined as the "loss of all hope."
When hope is gone, everything is gone. And a lot of us finally turn full circle, and realize that it’s gone, and decide that it won’t come back. And to go on without hope is like wandering lost in the woods in wintertime, watching it getting dark and cold and realizing you only have jeans and a light sweater on, and finally sitting under a tree and going to sleep, knowing with a certainty that even if you do wake up in the morning, you’re still going to be lost and that it’s only a matter of time until you die. Survivors are the ones who still have hope, and hold onto it, and live despite all odds. Those who die are the ones without hope.
In conversation I’ve often called those who commit suicide cowards or fools, but it’s not that simple at all. I consider myself neither, yet I tried once. Despair and loss of hope pushed me, and I finally, simply, couldn’t push back. Such a terrible, dark thing, and, my God, so unbearably sad. Because ninety-nine percent of the time, we all come back to hope, we all find it again, if only we can hang on.