Diagnosed with MDD. Struggled with suicidal thoughts since I was 14. When my mom got diagnosed with terminal cancer 4 years ago, they subsided because having to see the person who loved me most not have a choice over their own mortality made me feel like life was too precious to be weighed down by these kinds of feelings.

She died at the beginning of the pandemic. In her final months, I was her main caretaker along with my dad who is emotionally abusive. He complained the entire time he was taking care of her while I didn't. He took his anger out on me every night when our home nurse left, threatening to call the police over stupid arguments, and generally just ruining the last moments I had with her. I'm happy I got time with her, but it was not the time I deserved. The weight of watching her fade away while being abused has left me internally unstable.

I'm the oldest to 3 other siblings. They don't care about me nor defended me when i was being abused. One of them moved in with me this last year and has repeatedly taken advantage of my personal boundaries and refused to change. The others are emotionally abusive. In the wake of losing our mom, I felt like I had an obligation as the oldest to actively reach out to them to make sure they were doing ok. In hindsight, I see all our conversations as one-sided. Often times I would just be their therapist or talk to them exclusively about what they wanted to talk about, but when it came to my own interests or struggles, there was little to no reciprocation. I rationalized to myself that - being the oldest - I shouldn't expect that from them and that I needed to be the strong one, but increasingly, it's left me feeling weak and exhausted. And when we've gotten into disagreements that turned toxic, they've initiated it. One vaguely threatened that they would either harm themselves or publicly vilify me online, which made me have panic attacks for over a month. Another told me that I did very little to help them despite telling me on my birthday this year that I've always been there for them. And the sibling who moved in with me has laughed in my face on more than one occasion when I've expressed how their selfish behavior has impacted my home life.

My friendships are mostly superficial now if not non-existent. At the beginning of my mom's diagnosis, I had about 5 friends that I thought were in my corner. They've all let me down in various ways. One who was my previous roommate said that I was like a brother to them and that they would come back to our apartment to hang out. The last time I saw them was over a year ago when I went to his new apartment, but he has never come back. Another mailed me a handwritten letter about the day that my mom died that was essentially a bizarre short story about her going to a graveyard when she found out the news. The only mention of me or my loss was in the opening paragraph. All of them have really not made meaningful efforts to talk to me about my struggles, and I have begun to emotionally shut down.

I'm at the point where the thoughts of just ending it are too frequent for me to keep pushing back against them. It's sad because I've made some progress in my life. I feel happier with my physical appearance than I ever have since I started to actively work out and put more effort into my appearance. But that feels like the only thing that's going right for me in my life these days, and it's superficial. Mentally I feel volatile. The most social interaction I have is with people at work, many of whom are subtly insulting. I try to treat everyone with a basic level of respect, but often times I feel like blowing up or being aggressive towards the people that subtly try to put me down. I feel unstable and may just end it because I have no one that really cares.