If you find this post in the middle of the night, Googling at 2am about reasons to keep going when you don’t think you can, I hope this post reaches you and even one reason from the forty listed feels like the fuel you need to just get to the next day.

I also want to remind you, too, that you can call or text 988 for 24/7 confidential support. Please use this if you feel suicidal right now. They’re an amazing resource.

May one of these forty reasons speak to you. 

1. Because suicide is a very permanent solution to a temporary problem. It’s literally the most permanent, irreversible thing you can do. Few problems are permanent – nor are the emotions that go with problems that are permanent. But killing yourself is permanent.
2. Because you mean too much to someone else to hurt yourself. You may not know this and you may have stories you believe about how others would be better off without you but you don’t know that. You’re not inside their hearts and minds.
3. Because you deserve to feel afternoon sunshine streaming through green leaves on your face again. The peace that can come in an afternoon sliver, the kind that reminds you things are ok.
4. Because someday you will be able to look back at this hellish time and it won’t feel so hellish (even though that feels impossible to believe now). Your brain just can’t imagine that now. 
5. Because you harming yourself might break someone’s heart. Your mom’s. Your dad’s. Your partner’s. Your little sibling’s. Your best friend’s. You may never ever know just how much you mean to someone, including people you’ve never met who simply know of you and take heart and hope from you.
6. Because there are, even in the worst of times, still good things you enjoy in life. Like hot baths, great new limited-release streaming shows, dark chocolate bonbons, sushi, and weighted cozy blankets.
7. Because there is still safety, support, and okayness in this moment, even if you can’t see it now. Right now, in this one singular moment, you’re okay.
8. Because the utter hell of your anxiety and the crush of your depression isn’t permanent. Really. It feels this way now because your prefrontal cortex is hijacked, your brain chemistry is imbalanced, and you are in flight and fight mode. From inside this place, you don’t have perspective and you must grasp that fact and what it means about bad decision-making right now.