I’ve survived several attempts, I have a date in November, and part of me is begging someone to stop me

[u/bestmanintheworld1]

I’m an 18-year-old guy. Almost nobody in my life knows what I’m about to write, and I’m exhausted from acting normal.
I’ve been suicidal for years. I’ve survived several attempts. One of them was bad enough that I lay alone for a very long time before anyone found me, and I was left with PTSD, flashbacks and panic attacks that still show up in my body. I won’t go into details, because I don’t think they help anyone, but I want you to understand that this isn’t a phase and I’m not being dramatic. I’m tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix.
I’ve tried to get help. I’ve seen a psychiatrist and a psychologist, tried antidepressants, taken time off from everything, called crisis lines. Some of it felt like talking to a call center, and none of it was enough. I stopped believing anything could work. I’m also really good at acting fine, so my parents, my brothers, and almost everyone around me think I’m a cheerful, disciplined guy with a bright future.
For a long time I stayed alive because of one person. I’ve known her since I was a kid. She’s the only one who knew everything: the attempts, the blood, the nights I couldn’t sleep. She stayed through all of it. More than once she physically stopped me. I built my whole life around her, and she did around me. We talked about a future together, and I believed it was real.
A few weeks ago she told me, kindly but clearly, that she cares about me but never felt romantic love, that it was always a very close friendship, and that we “never really had a relationship.” She said she was tired and needed a break from everyone. Since then she’s pulled away. She answers other people quickly, but with me it’s short replies or silence, and sometimes anger. I understand that carrying my secret alone is too heavy for anyone. But losing her felt like losing the only person who actually knew me, and the only reason I had left.
That’s when the date appeared. I have a date in November. I’ve written goodbye notes to the people I love, each one personalized. I told myself I’d “say goodbye properly” first. I even told her, partly because I wanted her to know and partly, I think, because I wanted someone to stop me.
A long time ago I made myself a promise: wait until I’m 30, give things a chance to change. I’ve broken it many times. Every year I’ve thought it couldn’t get worse, and every year it did.
Here’s something that surprised me. A few weeks ago I told a friend the truth, not everything, but enough. I braced for him to pull away. Instead he told me I’d made him think about whether I was okay, shared his own story about being left, and told me he’s here whenever I need him, that he’d never tell anyone, and that I’m a good person. I told him that talking to him is the only reason I wasn’t going to go through with it in November. And then I felt exposed and regretted it, which is stupid, because it was probably the best thing I’ve done in months.
Right now I’m in my first year at a demanding technical university. I’m doing fine academically, I eat, I train, I go to class. At night, when nothing is distracting me, everything collapses. My head is loudest then.
Here’s the contradiction I can’t solve: part of me wants it to just stop, and part of me keeps reaching out. I keep telling myself I’m not allowed to ask for help, that nobody wants this weight, and that everyone else is struggling more than I am. But I’m writing this, so some part of me wants to be heard.
I don’t know exactly what I’m asking for. Maybe someone who’s been here and is still around. What kept you here when your reasons ran out? What helped on the nights when nothing did? And how did you start to tell the people who love you?

Oh and the last thing: how do u seek love after this? Like, almost a third of my life people saw me with this girl, and we both were everything to each other, it was this utopian type of life, and the only other example of this I’ve seen is my parents, and now it’s gone and idk if I’ll ever find another love, and if I do it almost 100% won’t be even close to this.

[u/Vast_Bookkeeper_5991]

Addiction kept me alive for a long time. I don't recommend obviously but I have to admit it helped me through the years where I could not make sense of anything. After getting sober, making myself an exciting breakfast every day got me out of bed and was The Thing in my life that I looked forward to. It was years of "one step at a time". Learning to be okay with not knowing the hell I was alive for and being with the little things, both good and bad. Now in my thirties and finally mentally and emotionally stable enough to actually process what made me feel so suicidal in the first place. Never thought I'd make it past 20. I never got to express all of the pain to the people I loved. Maybe I will someday, but for me part of allowing myself to move forward was letting go of my expectations from specific people. I need to be heard and understood and loved and all of the things but it doesn't have to come from anyone in specific, it's just needs that need to be met somehow. Recognizing that when others can't give me what I need, it doesn't mean more that that, however much it hurts. I wish you all the best.