National Suicide Prevention Month

Here’s the thing about recovery…you don’t get to determine when or where recovery will decide to take a decline. You don’t get to decide if your diseases will act up, causing you to feel helpless in an all too familiar process. You will feel like a failure, due to the fact you have been “okay” for so many days/weeks/years and suddenly, you are not okay. It is hard to not take a decline in your mental health, as a direct hit to your ego. You worked on yourself for years and out of the blue, depression and anxiety, fill your time and begin to unravel past traumas and issues, unwelcomed. 

You suddenly find energy hard to obtain, turning into a part of yourself, you pretend has been healed and forgotten but know will always remain a piece of your existence, forever. You find it hard to admit your mind is racing, causing you to cancel plans and want to be left alone. Loved ones begin to find annoyance, behind your all-too-common actions. You try to explain but what feels like a valid reason, is placed as an excuse once again. 

You are told to get over the feeling of drowning in your worrisome thoughts, as if it were easy. As if you could go to sleep, waking up a new person. You somehow create issues that don’t exist because you want to be internalized with pain and overthinking, racing throughout your veins. 

I didn’t ask for this. Don’t you think if I could shut my brain off, I would have done so, years ago? Don’t you think people who struggle, would decide to flip a switch and become aware of the issues surrounding them, choosing to calmly resolve each one, without pain in their chest and hearts racing, to find comfort in the decisions they make? 

Don’t patronize a mental disorder, you have no understanding about. You extend an olive branch, appearing to be sincere in your outreach, while immediately telling me to simply stop reacting dramatically, over thoughts I create out of boredom or attention. I choose my words carefully, feeling my heart beat increase with every emotion, I choose to share. And you belittled my vulnerability, by answering my thoughts, with an answer I didn’t ask for. 

The judgement raised within your response, is the reason the suicide rate ceases to decline. Responses like these, make humans who bleed for someone to hear their screams for help, return to a state of unworthiness, due to being unable to silence the voices in their heads and the present voices, telling them to their face, how crazy they are. 

Then you wonder why parents are left without children, friends without memories, families without peace. While parents, friends and families, are the ones who lead them to the edge. They guided them through a hole, spiraling downward into a darkness, too far to be saved, all because they couldn’t take the time to understand a stigmatized topic, they didn’t bother to learn about. They didn’t bother to be educated on issues surrounding most of the world, especially during this pandemic. 

Millions of people are silenced and when they find the courage to open up, reaching out for help, they are met with the turning of a blind eye, from the very community they believed would protect them. They believed would come together when help was asked for and lead them to recovery. Although everyone’s story is different, help will always be needed. 

As a human, who has suffered her fair share of mental disorders, I continue to deal with many ups and downs, within my recovery. Life is challenging but it is important to have reliable help, when needed. I encourage everyone who loves someone with a mental disorder, to check on them once and a while. Ask them if they need anything, if they are okay? Life is too short to dismiss someone, simply because you don’t resonate or understand the issues they are faced with. We could all use someone to help us be heard, this person could even be you. Be kind to one another.