Everything I would have missed…

!!!! Trigger Warning !!!!

At nineteen years old, I sat in my childhood bedroom, tears and sadness all consuming. The last 365 had taken the life and drained it from my eyes, turning me into dust.

I couldn’t understand how I had gotten to this place and I couldn’t make out what it was I did to deserve feeling like this. But I did deserve to feel this way, right? I had made mistakes in life, I had treated people poorly. I certainly had lied, stolen and cheated, so this must be God’s way of saying, “I told you so.”

I had been in this slump for a while. Since being put in therapy a few years prior, it was obvious that something was very wrong with me. I had dropped out of college and knew “flipping pizzas for a living,” was not something my parents were proud of.  I was binge drinking every night, dabbling with other substances, my friendships and relationships were down the toilet, along with my dance career, which was once the only buoy I had at the time. I was making choices with no value for my life or others’. I felt alone.

They say when you self-harm, it is nothing more than a cry for help. Believe me, that could not be closer to the truth. I never imagined being a statistic, yet I found myself at a point where I physically could not tell someone what was happening in my mind. I remember a very specific moment when someone close to my heart asked me,

“Do you love yourself?”

The visceral reaction I had to that question was beyond comprehendible; my throat closed, feeling as if my heart had moved up through my chest and into my esophagus. I felt nauseous, frozen with shame, feeling padded room worthy. I could not speak, I could not see straight, and so I just sat there, in silence, unable to articulate how I felt one way or another.

But the answer at the time was no. I did not love myself. I was a runaway train headed straight into a category 5 hurricane, destroying just about everything in my track.

Things were dark. I had been self-harming for a bit and had not received the concern I was hoping to gain from. I did not receive the love I was needing at the time and nobody was telling me everything would be ok or that they had my back. The loneliness had only intensified, as a result. I sat in my bedroom with my plan circulating my brain and I thought leaving this all behind was the only way left to relieve the pain.

I remember that night vividly. Staring at my door hoping someone would barge in and stop me. Hoping my phone would ring and I’d snap out of this frame of mind and live to see another day.

The truth is, I didn’t REALLY want to die. But living the way I was, was no life at all. I felt so hopeless, and in a last-ditch effort, I texted my brother whose bedroom was only across the hall.

“Are you awake?”

Nothing.

I sent a second text, “Tim?”

I told myself, if he texted me back, I’d abandon my plans and not go through with it. The minutes passed by, and he never answered.

When I finally realized, he wasn’t going to text me back, the image of him finding me cold and blue on my bedroom floor surged through my brain. I knew the second he saw my text in the morning, he would know that something was wrong and come darting across the hall. I couldn’t let HIM be the one to find me that way; I couldn’t let him carry the trauma and push my personal pain onward because I chose to include him in my misery.

I balled my supplies up in a t-shirt and shoved it in my closet for another day, wiped my tears and went to bed.

To be honest, I don’t know why I never tried again – as morbid as that sounds. What I mean is that my pain didn’t disappear overnight. I woke up the next day feeling just as lousy and moved through many, many more difficult nights such as that, but I never did attempt again.

I don’t have a day where it all changed or a moment where it all clicked, but I know as the following days passed – the YEARS passed, things did eventually turn around and I was thankful I chose not to give into my thoughts that evening.

I sit here now, 12 years later with my husband who loves me at my core. Who has taken the time to not only know me, but understand me. Our children whom bring so much laughter, light and joy into our home, in which we’ve built together. I think about just how many amazing things I would have missed out on had I let my thoughts win at nineteen.

The places I have traveled. The milestones I have reached. Living through my 20’s to see 30 and then some. My pets, my career. The friendships I made only a few years later that have blossomed into deep, soul-sister connections. The beautiful ways I have learned to turn my struggles into a superpower, touching the edges of healing and becoming someone solid in this lifetime.

Had I taken the bait twelve years ago, I’d have never known the true value of living. The quiet mornings, the moon-lit nights. The comfort of bird watching on a warm summer night and the joy on my kid’s faces on Christmas morning. While it is one part of my story that I sometimes struggle to find peace in, it is not the whole story.

If you or someone you know is finding themselves in a position, ready to close the book, PLEASE KEEP WRITING.

For me. For future you.

I love you even if you don’t love you, right now.

***Suicide and Crisis Hotline, call OR text 988***