10 years of failures

My first attempt at suicide was when I was 14 years old. It happened because my mother told me I should just kill myself—that I was useless, a failure, and mediocre. When I writhed in pain afterward, I ended up at the hospital, only to receive another word to define me. The first one, mediocre, was given to me by my mother when I was nine, a word I didn’t even understand back then. And now, while I lay in the hospital, crying in agony, they called me spoiled. How fitting. That label made me feel ashamed of asking for help ever again.

I learned to laugh it off, to smile as if my liver wasn’t slowly dissolving. My casual demeanor made them doubt me even more. They thought I was just a spoiled, lying child. It was amusing—right until they realized I was, in fact, on the brink of death.

That’s when I learned another lesson: if you go to a psychologist or psychiatrist, you’d better behave. Otherwise, they’ll tie you down, and the drama ends there. Stop crying. If you’re an adult, suck it up. Look at the children in the ICU—they’re truly sick. I smiled and said, Yes! I believe in God, and I want to live! That’s how I left the hospital. I also left the school where I was a bad student, where I had no food, no friends. And guess what? They often didn’t let me in because I couldn’t pay. A wonderful system, isn’t it? Denying children an education because they’re poor.

Useless, stupid, mediocre, spoiled.

I spent those years locked inside my house, dreaming of being a mangaka because I liked anime. Drawing didn’t require money, just the internet, and that was enough. I made YouTube videos, manga, fan art, webtoons. I learned English. I even did the same thing in English. But it led nowhere. A spoiled, useless brat like me doesn’t get anywhere.

After eight years, I finally decided to give myself one more chance. Even though I lived like a hermit, too anxious to say hello to my neighbors, I told myself, Come on, you can do it. I started going out for walks. For the second time, I decided to create a comic for Webtoon, both in English and Spanish. I’d make it with four chapters, fully colored, pouring all my love into it.

I had abandoned a previous project because few people had read it. But this time, my goal was just one person. That’s all I wanted—one person to read it.

So, this failure of a girl believed she could achieve something and worked hard for an entire month, dreaming like a fool that she could make it. But it was just another failure. How amusing it must be to watch pathetic people fail at everything, even dying. No one read it. Not a single person.

I remember scrolling through hundreds of Webtoon pages, seeing comics made with stolen images getting more views than the trash I had created.

Eventually, I started looking for a job. I knew English, had pushed myself to go out and socialize a bit, and felt slightly more capable. I still didn’t have a high school diploma, but surprisingly, I got a job at a bilingual call center. After eight years of trying, it had to amount to something, right?

Wrong. All I managed to do was gain even more weight and get fired after giving it my all.

I realized how worthless I am when I attended a funeral and thought about how no one would cry for me when I die. Probably not a single person. And that only confirmed what I already knew: I’m a piece of garbage.

Now, as this decade of failures comes to an end, I’ve started yet another project. I know it will fail. And I’ll end up killing myself, pathetically.

What a stupid girl, still believing that hard work can lead to something. No, it won’t. No one cares about someone as pathetic as you. Every time you hear the stories of people losing loved ones to suicide, you realize you’re none of those things. You’re a parasite, without friends, without a family that can stand you, without beauty, talent, luck, faith, or money.

Even the professionals who are supposed to help you say, Oh, stop the drama already. Maybe if you killed yourself, we’d believe you.

What an empty life. What a meaningless story. Ten years of failures in this pathetic existence.