The Other Side **Trigger Warning**
I’ve been mentally ill for 15 years, beginning when I was 10. This was when I wrote my first suicide note and the age my illness began to expose itself. When I was 11 I was sexually assaulted; an event that manifested in self-harm and promiscuous behavior. I constantly thought about suicide. I felt my parents would be better off. I was relentlessly bullied for an event I had zero responsibility for after my attacker had bragged to his friends about it. Older men contacted me for sex beginning when I was 12. I hid it all and I hid it well.
By the time I was 16 I had seen 2 therapists, been put on 3 medications and was diagnosed with chronic depression and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I felt like a zombie just moving through my so-called life. I was cutting myself daily to snap myself awake and actually feel something. I was disobeying my parents; sneaking out, getting caught at parties with alcohol, having sex with men 5+ years older than me. I didn’t care about any of it. It was September 2010 that years of suffering in silence boiled over. I stole a bottle of my best friend’s Hydrocodone at a football game and chugged the bottle with the intent to drive home and never wake up.
I spent 3 days on suicide watch in a child’s psych unit. I was more pissed that I had to be away from my phone than anything else, but looking back on it now, those 3 days saved my life.
I have been clean from cutting since the night of my suicide attempt 9 years ago. I still have depression and anxiety, but it doesn’t show nearly as bad as it use to. Today I am off all psychotropic medications and I haven’t seen the inside of a therapist’s office in years. Now, I am not naive to reoccurring symptoms. I’ve had to be put on meds several times and have seen 2 psychiatrists in the past 9 years, but the most important lesson I learned from that night in September is how and when to ask for help. I’ve become so in-touch with my mental illness that I know the signs of relapse right when they begin. I came out on the other side of my suicide attempt to a much healthier and joyful existence and I want nothing more than my story to show folks that it never truly is over, as much as you may feel like it is. You can wake up on the other side too. We can tackle mental illness. You are never alone.