Micah Zarin's Blog

let’s begin with a simple premise: i do not think you should kill yourself. this is, admittedly, not the most groundbreaking position, but i felt it ought to be stated plainly, without euphemism or semantic gymnastics. i am not here to speak in hushed tones about “mental health awareness” or to gently imply that you should “reach out to someone.” i am here to say, clearly and without reservation, that suicide is a bad idea. i mean it in the most precise, personal, selfish, existentially inconvenient way possible: you should not kill yourself because you are already here. and now, unfortunately, you’re going to have to deal with it.

people want a reason. a cause. a cure. they want to be told that life is beautiful, that things will get better, that everything happens for a reason. and perhaps that’s true. but i am not here to say any of that. i am not here to lie to you.

life is, in many ways, deeply stupid. you are born into a world without your consent, shoved into a series of institutions designed to sand down your spirit into something polite and productive, and then expected to act grateful for the opportunity. you are given a body that betrays you, emotions that destabilize you, and a mind that will, if left unsupervised, spiral into a recursive loop of self-loathing and dread. and then you are told to smile. to be positive. to “go outside.”

it is a scam.

but here is the thing. the scam is already running. you are already in it. you have already been conned into existence. and given that, i would argue that staying alive—continuing to exist, despite the absurdity—is not giving in to despair. it is, in fact, an act of radical defiance.

staying alive is annoying. inconvenient. painful. often humiliating. and yet, there is something quietly magnificent about refusing to leave. about deciding, for no grand reason, to continue.

there are, of course, more tactical arguments. the people who love you would be devastated. your absence would echo. your story would end in a way that strips you of authorship. all true. but i am not appealing to guilt. i am appealing to something lower. pettier. meaner.

spite.

stay alive out of spite.

stay alive because there are people who underestimate you, who think they’ve figured you out. stay alive because the system wants to chew you up and turn you into someone who no longer asks big questions. stay alive because capitalism is rooting for your burnout. stay alive because someone told you high school would be the best years of your life, and you need to live long enough to prove them wrong. stay alive because you haven’t made your best joke yet. because someone, somewhere, will fall in love with the exact way you say something wildly specific and mildly inappropriate. because you might discover an album that makes you believe in god. because you have not yet eaten the best peach of your life.

you do not owe the world optimism. but you do owe yourself curiosity.

what happens next? what will you ruin? what will you fix? who will you become once you are no longer performing survival, but beginning to construct a self on your own terms?

you don’t have to love life to keep living. you don’t have to be grateful. you don’t have to be “better.” you just have to be here.

and yes, it will still be hard. you will still cry over things that do not make sense. you will still want to vanish sometimes. you will still feel like a burden, like a problem, like a cosmic mistake. but you are not. you are not a mistake. you are a statistical impossibility. a one-in-400-trillion event with access to caffeine and a spotify account.

do not give the universe the satisfaction of your silence.

stay. make noise. make art. make pasta. make people uncomfortable. make your therapist earn their copay. make a mess. make it count.

but do not make your exit.

you’re too interesting for that.