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Dear reader,

Every year, around 730 thousand people across the world die by suicide. Of those, it is estimated that physical health problems are involved in roughly one in five cases.[1] But to speak of statistics alone is to miss the true weight of it. Each number was a human being. Each number was a person loved by somebody, a place at the dinner table that will never again be filled, a treasured voice that will never again be heard. These are not just abstract figures. Each of them holds heartbreaking stories of suffering, of lives that mattered, and of grief that has left a path of destruction through families, friendships, and communities.
Your purchase of this novella helps support efforts to prevent suicide, to better understand it, and to care for the people it leaves behind. (Through donations to 113 Nederland and the American Ankylosing Spondylitis Association)  
It may also, in some small way, help you understand this subject more deeply.  But be warned: this is a dark and unsettling work, precisely because it is real in ways that should never be real. At its core, this is not a story written for those who have lived through it, but for those who have not.  

Forever yours,

Oscar

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‍ ‍What is the Novella about:

‍ ‍Through Broken Dreams and Worn-Out Bones, I’m Forever Yours tells the life story of Daniel, a chronically ill young man, through a haunting collection of suicide letters written over the course of his life. Each letter is paired with an artwork revealing another side of his story

Daniel’s future had once looked bright. He was on track to become a professional athlete, until life began to strip everything away. First came the death of his father, sending him into a deep depression. Then came the injury that destroyed his greatest dream, only to reveal itself as something far worse: Ankylosing Spondylitis, a chronic autoimmune disease affecting the spine, the same illness that haunted his father before him.

With his body failing him and his future collapsing, Daniel is forced to confront a life he never wanted. Yet in the middle of that suffering, he falls in love with Emma, the girl of his dreams, making everything more beautiful, and more painful, than ever before.

This novella explores the slow destruction of self through illness, the shame of dependence, the ache of love, the silence of God, and the inheritance of suffering across generations. Daniel’s letters wrestle with impossible questions: what makes a life worth enduring, what makes a man worthy of love, and whether choosing death can ever seem more merciful than choosing to stay.