I WANT TO DIE: But I Still Want to Live A Depression Memoir and Recovery Guide

Let’s get one thing straight from the outset. I am not writing this book from the top of a mountain, having conquered the beast of depression with a single, triumphant sword stroke. I am not writing this as a guru who has found the secret to eternal sunshine. I am writing this from the middle of the battlefield. I am writing this with mud on my boots and a weary respect for the enemy that lives inside my own head.

The title of this book, I Want to Die but I Still Want to Live, is not a riddle to be solved. It is a statement of fact. It is the living paradox of an illness that makes you despise your own existence while simultaneously clinging to the sheer bloody miracle of being conscious. It’s waking up on a Tuesday morning, staring at the ceiling, and feeling the weight of an invisible anchor pressing down on your chest. It’s the rational part of your brain screaming, "Get up, you’re fine, this is silly," while the rest of your consciousness is a black hole, sucking all the light out of the room.

This is a memoir, yes, but it is also a guide. Not a guide to happiness—I can't give you that. I don't trust people who promise happiness. But it is a guide to survival. It is a map of the terrain I have traversed, complete with the pot-holes, the dead ends, and the places where the road simply seems to vanish into mist. I have walked this path, and I want to show you where I found the stepping stones.

I remember the exact moment I realised I wasn’t just "sad." It was a Friday. I was sitting in a café on the South Bank in London. It was a perfectly pleasant day. The sun was out, making the Thames glitter like a wrinkled sheet of aluminium foil. There were people laughing, children running, tourists taking photographs. I was holding a flat white, my favourite, and I looked at it. It was the perfect temperature, the perfect crema. And I remember thinking, I don’t care. I didn't care about the coffee. I didn’t care about the sun. I didn’t care about the people.

It wasn't a dramatic, swooning faint. It was a gradual, creeping numbness that had been corroding my soul for months. I felt like a ghost watching a film of my own life. I felt like I had been unplugged from the mains.

The "Wanting to Die" part is the loudest, isn’t it? It’s the voice that tells you that the world would be better off without you, that you are a burden, a drain on the resources of the planet. It’s the voice that whispers that the only peace you will ever find is in the great silence. It’s seductive in its logic. It offers a solution to a problem that feels endless.

But the "Still Want to Live" part... that's the trickier one. That's the mouse scratching in the wall. It’s the part of you that, when you are at your absolute lowest, looks at a patch of sunlight on the carpet and feels a flicker of something. It’s the part that makes you reach for the kettle in the morning, even though you don’t know why. It’s the part that drove me to write this book.

I am going to take you through the geography of this illness. I am going to talk about the broken relationships, the physical decay, the awkward conversations with therapists, and the terrifying, uncertain road to medication.

I am going to be brutally honest. I will tell you about the times I have failed. I will tell you about the times I wanted to throw in the towel. But I will also tell you about the strange, unexpected moments of grace. The friend who didn't try to fix me, but simply sat with me in the silence. The day I finally managed to take a shower without feeling like I had run a marathon. The first time I laughed, and I realised it wasn’t a lie.

I am going to write this in a way that makes you feel like you are sitting across the table from me. I am not above you, nor am I below you. We are equals in this struggle. I am just a few steps further along the road, and I am looking back, shining a torch so you can see the path a little more clearly.

This is not a story of a miracle cure. It is a story of endurance. It is the story of how we learn to live with the black dog that follows us, not by killing it, but by teaching it to walk on a lead.

If you are reading this, I know you are the "Wanter." You are the part of yourself that is still fighting, even if you don't know it. You wouldn't have picked up this book if you weren't.

So, let's get started.

Hollis Parr Enderby

London, 2026