Content Warning: suicide, sexual assault, intimate partner violence, choking

A decade ago, I attempted suicide for the first time. I felt like I was “stuck” in a life I wasn’t happy with filled with superficial relationships that kept me feeling alone. The pain I was stuck in after being sexually assaulted the year before felt isolating and gave me PTSD. Feeling “stuck” in that pain felt unbearable to me. I saw suicide as the only way to find peace from my pain. I did not understand that the pain, although unbearable, was temporary. I knew I was loved, but I felt utterly alone and like a burden on those who loved me. Living felt hopeless and I felt helpless after returning to the same neighborhood, only block away from where I had been sexually assaulted a year before.  

I was stuck in a trauma response- freeze. I isolated myself from the friends I had been living with by locking myself into my room for extended periods of time. I would stay up late searching for anything that would keep me alive or give me a glimpse of hope. On most nights, I did not find hope. I think something people who have never been depressed or suicidal can never understand is the feeling of being unable to access “hope.” That feeling of never really finding hope, but suspending faith as you conceptualize hope and try to rationalize a reason to hold on that day. One night I found the Mary Anne Rachmader quote: “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.”’” and hand wrote it on scrap paper, lived by it, and taped it to my wall. After that, I read it every night before bed.

My friends staged an intervention and made an appointment on my behalf for counseling services. I remember the feeling of shame. That I was going through something that they felt like was beyond their capacity to support me through. It felt like I couldn’t trust anyone. I was diagnosed with Bipolar I Disorder and began taking medication. I stopped going to my classes, feeling like I was different from my classmates. I felt like everyone was there to learn and have fun, while I was attempting to survive. That’s something that people who aren’t suicidal don’t understand, that for you to get to the point of attempting suicide, you’ve already been attempting to survive for too long. I had to drop out of college when I was hospitalized for the first time for a depressive episode. I fell behind, but reenrolled on academic probation.

It took time, but I finally accepted help and went from being on academic probation to dean’s list. I was silent about the assault I was healing from. I met with a dean about transferring campuses. He asked me “what difference would transferring make? You’ll have the same problems.” Hearing that made me collapse on the inside. I felt my chest cave in. I sat there, silently and frozen until he spoke again. In the silence, the way men treated me flashed before my eyes. I felt the emptiness. I felt the fear of walking past where I had been assaulted. I remembered the pain of running into people who dehumanized me.

I transferred and everything changed. I started to excel, although my hardships weren’t over. I attended graduate school for my master’s in social work after a undergraduate graduation I didn’t attend. Near the end of graduate school, I found myself “stuck” in an abusive relationship that I didn’t know how to escape. I stopped taking my medication. At the worst point in my relationship, I thought I was going to be killed and my only regret was not writing the book ideas I had for nearly two decades. I finally left that relationship with help from the people in my life. After this, I had a mental health relapse.

I became suicidal again and was in and out of hospitals for about a year. Some of the doctors who treated me didn’t believe I could function without the care of professionals in an institutional setting. I felt stigmatized and it was hard for me to find hope. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia multiple times, but in the end those diagnoses were taken back. I began stigmatizing myself- an unbearable torture. I lost many friends during this time, and I decided I needed to start to hold myself accountable as a writer and overcome my only regret.

  I created a poetry platform and committed to writing a poem a week for a year in November 2019. I began featuring poet and advocate interviews on my websites. At a certain point, my only purpose of living felt like publishing and reading that interview each week. During this time, I worked on my first book “Periwinkle Wishes” and published it in June 2020. I published my second book of poetry, “The Spirit Inside,” in November 2020. In holding myself accountable, I found healing, meaning, and purpose. At the end of 2020, I started creativity coaching to encourage the same accountability in others, reminding them that they are not alone.

  In April 2021, I choked on a piece of steak and had to be heimliched. While I couldn’t breathe, I had no regrets. I knew I lived my life in a way that served others and honored my dreams. I know how meaningful it is to know you did not hold back while living. I want that for everyone. I had went from feeling an unbearable pain to finding purpose in coaching creatives, interviewing them, and writing what was on my heart.

In June of 2021, I launched an online boutique of t-shirts that have uplifting messages on them. In January of last year, I started a podcast, Artistic Spirit, where I discuss artistry, guests’ stories, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way with the intention to uplift and inspire my audience. In February of 2022, I published my third book, “Redeeming Endless Possibility.” 

I work on a suicide prevention project with an amazing group of people. We host challenges in our discord community- like gratitude, self-love, kindness, and love your life a little more. Now, my suicide prevention messages reach my 24k followers on Twitter and beyond. Here’s your reminder that you are not “stuck” with anything in life. Your life has meaning and purpose. You can make your life a life you are happy with no matter where you are starting from or what you have been through. We are all meant to be here.