In The Past 6 Years — ( Tribute for Suicide Prevention Month )

 

Dear Universe,

2019. The year I was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 Mood Disorder with Severe Depression and Anxiety. It took me seven months to actually find the right combination of medication that would work for me. Taking it was actually the easier part — because it put me into a deep sleep, so deep that I didn’t even know what was happening around me. But once the medication wore off, I had to actually fight against my demons again.

Have you ever felt like seeing yourself hanging on the ceiling? Or seeing yourself on the bathroom floor with red liquid flooding around? Or sleeping so peacefully that you wouldn’t wake up the next time?

Those were the top three scenarios that I had to fight. My suicidal thoughts were so severe that it was brought up every session every two weeks with my doctor. I had a well-executed plan of how to do it — and we reached the impasse that my doctor was actually begging for me to value my life.

To be honest, I didn’t want to die. I just wanted the pain to stop. I felt like I was so alone in the process, that no one understood me, and everything around me was just temporary. It was hard for me to let go. I hated dark places but it comforted me, at the same time. Locking the door even made me ask — did I shut the world outside or I trapped myself inside?

The world would not stop if I had died. There’d be no big changes if I’d died. Yeah, mom would cry, the family would mourn for me, but everyone would eventually move on and would continue living their best life. And where I was? Six feet under. The world would be the same as it was even after I’d died. And wouldn’t that be the best rest in the world? 

Some said that dying was a mission accomplished. Wouldn’t it be nice to have my mission done and be whoever or wherever I would go after? Something to be proud of, didn’t it?

Then my cousin died in 2020. I didn’t know how to feel. It was actually weird that I felt envious that he would be resting forever and didn’t have to suffer anymore, but I saw how his family mourned, and I felt a pain in my chest. Pain that was different from being left, but a pain like, more of a disappointment, like a part of me was sent off somewhere. It was more of — “Okay, you’re gone, but how about the pain?” kind of pain.

And that moment, the weirdness I felt, I knew how to call it. It was like a lesson for me. A mirror of this would be what it looked like when I died. A God’s way of telling me that this would be the picture of what I was actually wanting.

Did I want it? To just leave everyone in surprise because I died? I died and would be remembered as what? My cousin was six feet under but the pain he caused everyone was still lingering in the family. Sure it did that everyone moved on, but it caused more pain. The pain of living, or just merely breathing, shouldn’t pass another pain to the people the dead left behind.

And I told myself, this wasn’t the death that I wanted. This wasn’t how I wanted my mom to remember me.

Just then, my world turned. Suddenly, I found my will to live again. Somehow his death felt like a rebirth of me. I wanted to serve a purpose. I wanted to have a legacy. Don’t get me wrong, I still like, feel that living 5 years ago, a mistake, but I see every hardship as a challenge for me.

I don’t want to die petty. I want to die, that everyone around will be grateful that I touch their lives, that someone meeting me is more of a blessing than a curse.

I still have my dark days, my can’t-get-up-from-the-bed days. But things now have changed. I don’t just live for myself anymore. Now that I am a step away from being a mental health professional, I live to help others. I live to serve a purpose that when things get dark and can’t see your way out, it is because you are the light itself.

I never know that I will be here, I just keep on living. Feel it. Trust the process. Let it go. No matter what, breathe one moment at a time. Live and be the present. And who knows it will lead you to somewhere you never expected yourself to be. Keep on living, even if you can't. It gets better, trust me.

Love,

Zoey ♡