I always thought…

I always thought I’d be more afraid when I got to the point of welcoming death. I imagined it would be at the end of a very dark road I’d travelled down; a road laden with alcohol and drugs, void of friends, family, success, passions… And then I came home after a normal day at a good job, my phone full of texts from the friends and family surrounding me, and I thought about how I would kill myself.

Nothing has ever scared me as much as being completely lucid, fully aware of my thoughts, and wondering if pills or a jump off of a bridge is the best way to go. A rope was out of the question; my father killed himself with a noose and I had to find one way to set myself apart from him in the end. His alcoholism lights a dependent fire within me and his depression grinds my happiness to a halt.

Sometimes, you feel like the most selfish person in the world. It’s not that you don’t realize how many good things grace your life, it’s that they stop meaning anything to you. No matter how much you want to feel something for everything and anything that used to bring light into your life, you find yourself in complete darkness.

Sometimes, you feel like the most selfish person in the world.

I sit on my bed, overwhelmed with a sadness that I can’t articulate and I drag a razor blade through my thigh. My breathing, previously rapid and uncontrollable, slows down, my eyes shut and I tilt my head back with a deep breath. I can feel what I want to feel. I can control when I feel it. Things seemingly return to normal, but the sobs racking through my body broadcast that this physical pain is only a temporary distraction from the sickness running through my veins.

The scary thing about mental illness is that you think you’re okay until you’re not. You notice the darkness creep its way through your brain, but think, it’s just a bad day, tomorrow will be better. And then you struggle to wake up every day; struggle to find a purpose for getting out of bed; struggle to find a reason to go to bed with the intention of waking up the next morning. Often times, you don’t realize how sick your brain is until you’ve already hit rock bottom. And pulling yourself from this hell is often equivalent to battling through an ocean wave that has different plans for your fate.

You start to lead a life where you don’t just think you’re worthless, you believe it with every fiber of your body. You convince yourself that no one, not even the friends that have stood through everything with you, love you… because if you can’t love yourself, how can anyone else possibly love you? There came a point when I got into my car, bags packed, ready to escape. And then I realized I had nowhere to escape to because no matter how far I drove, my mind would still be my mind, and that’s what I was running from.

I went to my University convocation and didn’t feel an ounce of happiness as I walked across the stage to receive recognition for the work I’d just put in over the past four years; I go to work every day just hoping to make it through the day without a breakdown; I come home at night to an empty condo and I can’t open a wine bottle fast enough; I lay in bed for an entire day wondering if the wave will ever pass, or if today will be the day it wins and finally drowns me; I drive down the road wishing someone will run a red light so my fate isn’t in my own hands; I convince myself that I’m completely alone in this world.

The scary thing about mental illness is that you think you’re okay until you’re not.

I live a life that I don’t recognize.

Clearly I refuse to talk about my mental illness in a way that will protect the sensitive. I refuse to believe that anything someone with depression and anxiety goes through is his or her fault. I refuse to listen to the people who have never been in hell tell me that peace is within reach if I just tried a little harder. I refuse to believe that mental illness is a taboo subject that we should all stay silent about.

Until you’ve been confined to your bedroom, trapped in your own bed by a physical weight that one can’t see, but can certainly feel; trapped in a mind that is cheering for your death; trapped in a life that you’d rather give up than suffer through for one more day, you should never for one second judge someone suffering from mental illness.

As a society, and community, we need to refuse to stay silent about a sickness that affects so many of us. A sickness that makes us feel like the only ones in the world who have ever felt like strength is a lost cause. But believe me, if you’re struggling through mental illness and you’re still breathing, you are one of the strongest people in the entire world. You deserve each one of those breaths you’re taking, and you should never stop taking them. Though it’s difficult to fight death, I have to believe that at some point my sick mind will realize that this is a life worth living.

Don’t ever stop fighting because one of the hardest things to do in this life is learn to live in a mind that you can’t escape from.