I set a date. I had a list of things I needed to finish by then. I destroyed most of the memories and notes from my youth, burned them. I wrote a will. I didn't have the strength to write a farewell letter. I also chose the method. I didn't tell anyone. I was thinking about how to minimize the suffering of my loved ones, as much as possible. All the while, I wanted to stop being a burden to them, and all the while, I was crushed by feelings of guilt and shame. For months, I didn't have a single night of even remotely normal sleep. Psychologists and psychiatrists later told me that these phases represent entering the "red zone" of suicide danger, where realization becomes a very possible outcome. The question remains: WHY DIDN'T I KILL MYSELF?

I guess because I was lucky, which, unfortunately, many like me were not.

And what is "luck"? Can we quantify my "luck," break it down into factors?

Relevant statistical research says that the chance of committing suicide is five times higher if you, like me, belong to the LGBT population.

Research also says that the chance of committing suicide is 20 times higher if you suffer from untreated depression, meaning that 60% of people who took their own lives had depression.

Let's say I didn't have statistics on my side, on both fronts. Those would be "people like me."

I had a great dilemma about whether to write this text because, by deleting social networks a few months ago, I almost completely withdrew from public life, whatever "public life" means in today's Serbia. I don't think either side lost much with that imperceptible act, but I say "almost completely" because I realized that I would still have to write something so that my brain wouldn't turn into pulp. The closest place to a (dysfunctional) writer's home for me has been Peščanik since I can remember, so after that virtual Sepukku, I decided to offer my texts only to them, so that there wouldn't be too many texts, and my focus would be on socio-political events in which I was a protagonist and witness, or which are personally very important to me. I didn't articulate those motives and that decision quite as well to the editors, but obviously, we "understand each other in silence" a bit, to paraphrase that monstrous letter from Koštunica to Aca Tomić.

So why this confession, and why now, as Irvin Yalom says?

Because a gay young man who wasn't even 30 hanged himself in his apartment? Because the tabloids had dragged him before that, and he wasn't a public figure and begged them for privacy? Because my partner superficially knew him from social networks, and that today gives a false impression that you really knew someone? Because even my partner, who has never had depression, also had a phase when he thought about taking his own life? Because I realized that I actually don't know many people in Serbia who are members of this minority and who haven't, at least at some point, thought about "ending their suffering"? Because… I don't know. All together?

Because there are still people who think being gay is a "choice" and that depression is "just a bad mood." Yes, actually – because of all of that together.

I didn't kill myself because I was lucky to overcome the feeling of shame, inadequacy, the feeling of being defective and unnecessary to society at the right time and admit to myself that I am gay. And "luck" in my case meant that I had a wonderful family, full of love, which (after some time, with a lot of effort from all sides) accepted that. That I had a circle of friends, to whom I will be forever grateful, wherever life takes us and whatever our relationships are like tomorrow. Luck was having the internet, so I could educate myself and start to understand what it means to be gay, which is a luxury that many people, just a little older than me, didn't have.

But where did these feelings of shame come from in me? Not from the family. None of us is born with them.

Every society only creates them and only makes those mental cages for others and the different. Some societies are more cruel and brutal in this than others. If I had been born in Iran, the chances are that I wouldn't have had "luck." If I had been born in France, maybe the chances would have been higher that my sexuality would have remained a passing comment for the family table. I don't know, nor can I know. I only know that a large part of our society is really trying to show how unwelcome we are in Serbia, even though we were born here, just like you. Even though our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers died for this country, just like some of yours, and our grandmothers heroically won pieces of freedom for themselves and futures for their daughters, just like some of yours. From these marriages, from those heterosexual couples, rainbow children come. Just that the rainbow here is a little more – scabies.

And now, if you have an ounce of empathy, imagine what it's like to grow up with those ideas: "you're not normal," "sickness," "it would be better if you didn't exist," or, to shorten it – "fags in blenders"? Just imagine a segment of life or circumstance in which you are that "other" or that "different," and then imagine living in that circumstance your whole life? Imagine that the state does not recognize you as an equal citizen, that the church or mosque sees you as an enemy, that you have to hide and, at the very least, be careful about what, when, and to whom you talk, your whole life? Imagine that your humanity is reduced by the majority only to the sexual component, without the possibility of elementary socialization, open stories about first loves, first outings, about who you dream of going to prom with? Imagine that you can't say at work, over morning coffee: "Yesterday I was at the movies with my girlfriend," or "my wife and I…," which is, roughly, the content of 90% of casual conversations we have?

And then honestly tell me whether you think that kind of pressure increases or decreases the chances that someone might think about taking their own life? The question is rhetorical.

I fought for the right to exist in the public sphere as a three-dimensional human being, who is, well, gay. But how did I fight? After how many decades? After what kind of foundations that I had to build and cement? Why did I eventually withdraw? Everyone probably knows a few gay people. But do you know how many openly gay people there are in the public life of Serbia? Probably they can be counted on the fingers of one crippled hand. Why is that so, at the end of the summer of the year of our Lord 2023? What do you think? And while we're at it, why is this public announcement, this "outing," so important and so prominent in all relevant studies on the mental health of LGBT people, and how is it connected to all the above? Think about it. It's not difficult.

Someone might ask the question I've asked myself countless times – would I have had that episode in my life and suicidal thoughts if I weren't gay, just because I suffered from depression? It's quite possible, but statistics say the chances would be five times lower. Which is far from insignificant. What's important is the separation of depression as an illness from accepting one's own sexuality and the social stigmas associated with it, which is still the central theme of this text.

Depression is an important and difficult part of my story, but much more educated and smarter people have written about it much better than I could, so read them. All I can advise anyone who thinks they have depression is to go to a psychiatrist as soon as possible, start therapy, there are medications, it takes time to find and "calibrate" the dose, but pharmacotherapy works, and then, after that, psychotherapy works. No matter how impossible it may sound to you now, and no matter how hopeless the situation may seem, please don't give up. Talk to your loved ones, find doctors who suit you, engage in sports, there is a way out. It's hard and requires a lot of work when you think you don't have the strength for even an inch further, but you will have it. I can't guarantee it, but – try, please. Fight.

And how do we fight against a society that puts us in a cage of homophobia and autohomophobia?

What can LGBT community members do to change this? I can't say "publicly declare yourselves" because it's not that simple. For starters, understand the history of the fight for all human rights, which is also your history. Read. Talk. Make broad circles of people around you, don't just hang out with similar people. Learn to listen. Don't reduce yourself to a stereotype. Don't be ashamed of your sexuality. Don't be ashamed of sex. But, never ever just reduce yourself to your sexuality. That's a trap, of homophobic societies, but also of capitalism itself. Reduced to sexuality, to a drawer, to a letter in the LGBTQIA+ sequence, you become a "target group," positioned by the algorithms of social networks against other target groups, in an eternal war for generating clicks. Don't fall into that trap. Use your brains, stay away from clichés. Don't copy the tropes of American popular culture and don't fight in their internet wars.

Perhaps most importantly, what can members of the heterosexual majority community do to make this society a more decent place to live, a society where fewer LGBT youths want to end their lives? Don't hate before you meet and understand, although it's hard to believe that someone who currently hates will understand this. Still, don't write them off, if their souls aren't already completely black. Don't treat us like court jesters with pink feathers, nor like episodic characters in bad TV series. Don't treat us as worse than you, but not as more privileged than you either. Just see us as your equals. As complex human beings, who are different from you only as much as we are all different from each other. And yet, part of the same whole. Talk to people, help them, or direct them to seek professional help.

Hug them and tell them you love them, if you do.

Peščanik.net, December 28, 2023.