Hold On

My name is Amy and today I am going to do the unthinkable and share my experience with suicide. I hope that in sharing my own experience that it might possibly reach out and save a life. I am also sharing my experience because I feel that the more I can talk openly about it and humble myself to people that I myself can live a more prosperous and fulfilling life.   

Let me start by telling you that I suffer from mental health conditions that include major depressive disorder and attention deficit disorder. Three years ago I would never have said that I suffer from these disorders let alone even be really admitting I have a problem. For a majority of my adolescent life and my early twenties I was ashamed of myself for having these problems. There were many reasons why I was always ashamed of it, some stem from the people in my life not willing to admit I had a mental illness. It always got pushed to the side and I was always told I am the problem. I won’t get into detail about my life as I don’t think it is necessary for the topic we are on. Bottom line is that my entire life up to three years ago I was ashamed for having depression and ADD. But something happened in my life over 2 years ago that just sent me plunging down into a black hole of darkness where I stayed for nearly two years. 

I was driving home one night in May 2013, and up to that point in my life I had never felt the way I did that night. I felt as if I had no real meaning in life and that my entire existence was a huge flaw, an accident that God created by mistake. I felt the overwhelming feeling that me just breathing was a huge burden on everyone I loved, including my own daughter. So I knew at that moment in time that I wanted to die. I stopped and bought myself two bottles of wine, know that when I got home I had two full bottles of medication waiting for me. I just didn’t care anymore about living and all I wanted to do was get rid of all this pain I felt inside. That night I overdosed on my medication, I took over 100 pills. I remember nothing but a blurred vision of an EMT in the ambulance I was taken to the hospital in. They had to pump my stomach and put tubes down my throat to breath. I should be dead, but I’m not. 

From 2012 to 2014 my depression got worse and worse. In the summer of 2014 I slit my wrist in an attempt to end my life. Which I had to have stitches and now bare a scar to remember it by. My depression was so bad I don’t remember half of that year and all I did was lay in bed scared to even walk out of my door. 

So going through medication after medication my doctor and I finally found one that worked. It saved my life. Along with my medication and therapy I have climbed out of that deep dark depression and finally feel like I have a life worth living. I don’t care what people think about me because of my mental illness because it’s there and it’s always going to be there whether I like it or not.  I wouldn’t say I am “cured” but I am definitely becoming a happier and a better version of me each day I wake up. Some days can be a battle, but I fight a battle worth fighting. I don’t think me having depression makes me crazy, I think it makes me human which makes me real. 

We are all beautiful beings and deserve happiness to the fullest extent. We all deserve to live and we are all worth saving.