By Liz Hammond
Asst. Living and Arts Editor
In honor of National Suicide Prevention Week I’m going to dedicate this article to my own journey.
The journey of my road to sanity.
Every time I think about the long journey that I have taken within my own mind, it surprises me. How does one person go through so many obstacles without anyone knowing?
How did I get to the point of almost jumping out of a window my sophomore year of college?
The short answer is I don’t know. The long answer is that I had way too much going on in my own brain but, I was so tired of talking.
Going to therapy for years really does that to you as well as being on medication on top of that.
I was tired of being the girl who never had it together.
I wanted to make it seem like I knew what was going on and that I was in control. In hindsight, it was just me trying to convince myself that I was okay.
So when it all came crashing down, I was left feeling dizzy.
How did my feet get me to the edge of that windowsill? Honestly I will probably never know or be able to explain it because my memory won’t let me remember.
I have now come to terms with what happened to me then and with what being on that ledge did to me.
It is easy to romanticize your own mental illness and to think of it as this really dramatic movie.
I can still remember the cold wind hitting my face and somehow still feeling nothing.
How my bare feet were on the cold metal of the windowsill and yet somehow, I still felt so warm.
Leaving the home of your own toxicity is something that hurts at first.
But, in the end, it will only make you feel better by getting the chance to realize how much the toxicity was actually affecting you.
It can be so blinding, all it does is consume you, like a thick blanket that suffocates you. But still to this day, no one talks about it. It’s still a stigma.
Everyone encourages you to constantly reach out to people who you think are struggling. How can you tell someone is struggling? There is no set definition for that. There is no set protocol.
It’s all about just being a good person. Do not expect anyone to be okay because they seem like they have it all together.
I can not tell you how many times people come up to me and say that I always seem to be so put together. But, what does that even mean? What about me makes it seem like I have it all together?
Of course I do not have it all together, no one does.
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