How I Avoided Getting Killed and Killing Myself
A story about getting out of despair and learning to love life
Apologies for the potentially disturbing title. But it’s true.
I recently celebrated a 3rd anniversary of the day my new life began.
On January 23rd, 2022, I landed in Sri Lanka, 7091 kilometers (4406 miles) from my home in Montenegro and anyone I knew.
Little did I know that rebuilding my life and my relationship with it will require me to fall apart first.
For almost two years up until that day, the greatest threat I was facing was being killed. From that day onwards, the greatest threat I was facing was taking my own life.
Three years later, I’m still here. No one has killed me, and I love my life, and life as a whole, way too much to even think about hurting myself.
But allow me to first lay some foundations before I tell this story.
How I’m writing cannot be separated from what I’m writing about and why I’m writing it.
The subject I’m dealing with is a matter of life and death or life and an empty existence. You decide what’s a more serious contrast.
I’m writing this because I believe with all my being that the reason I stayed alive is to convince people that life is always worth living. At the same time, merely passing through life and biologically existing doesn’t count as living—it’s rather an insult to life.
That’s why I want to do the unconventional and almost unthinkable in the world of writing, especially online writing, and give you the payoff right away.
I will first let you know the point of my story, and you can decide later whether you want to join me on the journey of exploring it further.
As much faith as I have in human potential for greatness, I am equally aware that too many people nowadays struggle to focus for more than a few minutes. I’ve already lost some of you at this point in the text.
Also, I know that someone who doesn’t want to wake up tomorrow might be reading this, so there's no time to play games.
Let’s get straight to the point of the story I would like to share.
This is a story about how stagnation breeds despair, and the only cure is movement.
By stagnation, I don't mean failing to level up in the superficial self-improvement game being sold to us in this materialistic, hyper-competitive, always-comparing-ourselves-to-others digital age.
By movement, I don't mean physical movement or constant movement towards new and higher goals, even though there is great value in both.
I mean stagnation and movement in the existential sense.
Stagnation of the soul by refusing to engage in life out of fear, versus jumping into life’s fulness and moving through it by accepting both the freedom and responsibility to be the creator of your story. That's what I'm talking about.
This is a story about how life must be lived the only way a human can fully engage in it - through decision, commitment, and action.
Understanding that human is a choosin, acting, and creating creature, a creature in motion, saved my life and helped me fall in love with it right as I was about to give up on it.
But this is not a story about me. It’s about paying the gift of love for life forward. For years, I've been trying to conceal it through writing that relied on referencing other great thinkers. Both out of being ashamed to talk about my personal experiences and out of concern for my family's privacy. While still having the latter in mind, it's time to share this gift in a more authentic way.
In addition to my regular writing, I will start sharing one essay per week reflecting on the lessons from my journey that directly or indirectly led me to the point I shared earlier.
Allow me to share a brief outline of the period I will be writing about so you can know what to expect in the upcoming weeks.
December 2019: I start writing online under the pen name Recovering Overthinker. Working as an air traffic controller in Montenegro.
Externally living a pretty normal life, but never felt quite at home in this world. Sussectible to anxiety and going down the rabbit holes of my mind since I was a kid.
March 2020: My brother gets himself in the midst of one of the bloodiest drug cartel conflicts in Europe and becomes an international fugitive.
This also means that my life was in danger since taking revenge on someone by killing their closest male relative is still common Montenegro. I start living with a bulletproof vest and going outside only to go to work.
The rest of 2020: I find my escape in reading, writing, and training on my rooftop. Still, I start thinking about suicide every day, multiple times per day. Not because of the new challenge I'm facing, but because of the conclusion of my philosophical inquiries about the meaning and worth of life.
January 2021: I decline a promotion that I’ve been working towards for years. It would solve all my financial questions for life before I’m 30, but it would also make me unable to leave my company and country for the next 6 years. The first fully independent decision of my life.
October 2021: I get informed by the police that my life is in danger. This time, I know there are people who have been tracking my movement and getting ready to take me out.
October 2021 (again): I decide to leave everything behind despite having no plan. I can't get an air traffic controller job in another country, so I lie to my mother that I’ve been making money from my instagram page and that it can replace my salary.
November 2021: I take a medical leave from work and decide to start preparing. I have no idea where to go, but I give myself a deadline to depart before the end of January. I have a weak passport and limited funds, and I need to go as far away as possible due to the reach of people who want to hurt me.
December 2021: I decide to go to Sri Lanka. Why? It’s the only place I can go. It’s the one country whose visa I can get online, which doesn’t have COVID entry restrictions, and where I can survive with less than $1000 per month.
December 2021: During one of my occasional attempts at self-medication, I experience a cannabis-induced psychosis that leaves me afraid of my own mind. A couple of days later, I have a panic attack and start questioning how I can go to another side of the world where no one knows me if I’m in danger of losing my mind at any moment.
January 2022: I leave Montenegro and all my loved ones behind. After the initial enthusiasm of being physically free to live like a normal human being, existential stagnation ensues. I start descending into despair.
What follows is the most challenging, exhausting, and terrifying year of my life. Still, it is also by far the most important and, in many ways, beautiful.
In the first essay, I will discuss how, in 2021, I made the first fully independent and, at the same time, biggest decision(s) of my life after being a timid, insecure, and overthinking person up until that point.
Thank you for reading.
I hope you join me.
Stay strong, love life, and never feel sorry for yourself.
Fellow human, it's always a pleasure to read your writings here. I felt through this post a great sense of authenticity, even greater than the normal post of yours (which already feels particularly authentic) I look forward to your essay for a peek into your deeper authentic self. As a long-time lurker, proud to see your confidence in taking this step!
ever since i first discovered your content and you mentioned how you had left your home country i always wondered why, especially being always so impressed by your work. now that you’re open to sharing a part of your story with us, i feel extremely grateful that you’re willing to do it. i know vulnerability is difficult, and the myriad of personal fibers you’re touching here doesn’t go unnoticed. so thank you for sharing your story with us, for wanting to gift us value and love for life from your experience. and thank you for staying alive; you’ve significantly improved my life all these years i’ve been consuming your content on instagram. thank you, and looking forward to reading the rest of the essays.