One Year Since SAB

This time last year I was in a behavioral health hospital. I was working lackadaisically to get back to a healthy place mentally. I had struggled with suicidal thoughts and decided to seek help by being admitted to a facility where I could be monitored safely by caring professionals free of judgement and pity.
Surrounded by other mentally broken people, I knew that I made the right decision. I had to swallow my pride to make that call to my mother to drive me to the facility. I had to put aside my compulsive need to put the needs of my kids ahead of my own. I missed Halloween. I missed trick-or-treating. They didn’t even carve their jack-o-lanterns last year. Their huge carving pumpkins sat and rotted until they had to be thrown away.
But that’s okay.
I gained myself again in that hospital. Unbelievably, I found smiling faces of people I trusted in places far away and long ago. A leader from the amazing non-profit group NAMI. A youth from an ancient youth group I once helped lead.
In that safe space of unstable humans, I remembered that I could make others smile. I remembered that I am more than the labels and judgements pushed upon me by those in disagreement with my life decisions. I remembered that I had an intelligence I hardly ever tapped any more. I found that I was still ‘me.’
I had forgotten all the good things that He placed inside of me. They had been shoved down under the surface by stress and prying eyes. They’d been hidden and calloused over by the words thrown at me in a frenzy to win me over to a side of thinking that I’d outgrown long ago. They’d been calloused over by my compulsive need to gain the approval of those who had pushed me aside when my decisions to value myself over dying inside to myself blindsided them.
What happened: I wanted to die. I had wanted to hurt myself and the need to stop the negative thoughts had stopped being stronger than the negative thoughts themselves. I didn’t try to power through this time. I didn’t run to a friend and ask them to babysit me until the wave passed and the negative thoughts were drowned out in positivity. I ran to help. I put my life on hold to run to the place sick people go to find healing. It was as I sought this healing, that God met me. He met me in the kindness of the other patients. He met me in the encouraging and empowering words of the therapists. He met me in the passing of the cigarettes and the empathy of the aides in the smoky nook where I stared at the tops of trees.
He met me in the laughter we shared at Everybody Loves Raymond. He met me in the meals we shared in the cafeteria. He met me in the encouragement we shared with the “new ones” as we welcomed them into our dysfunctional fold.
In this 20-25 percent of the population that suffers mental health disorders, we found strength in understanding that we were not alone.
And in understanding, once again, that I was not alone and that my story reverberated with so many others, I found my will to fight again. I found my will to try again. I found some strength to get back up and make school my bitch again.
He met me in the times I’ve stepped forward to ask for prayer in the church I now call home; In the kind words of all the others that speak to me about the ways that they suffer mental health issues like me. The prayers of so many have carried me.
In the year since I humbled myself to the care of an enclosed space without shoelaces or wired bras, I have, indeed, made school my bitch. I have A’s in the three classes I’m currently taking, and I have chosen my major: psychology. I have a part-time job and I begin training for my first ever full-time job in two weeks. I have a relationship with my children, and I am seeking what is best for each of them. I am carrying on with my path for what I believe is in the best interests of myself and these amazing kids that I love so much. I am allowing those broken people around me enough grace for them to walk their walk without inhibiting mine.
I will still find a way out of this mess of a marriage and I will continue to try and learn all I can about why I failed and how to improve myself so that I don’t make the same mistakes again. I am trying to not blame others for my failures. I am learning to take responsibility for my past and my future and to keep within my grasp only the things that I have control over.
I take my medication religiously and I never do guilt over that. Medication and therapy saved my life and I am thankful for the professionals and the humans alongside me that fought so hard and worked and prayed with and laughed and cried alongside me on this journey. Their stories and their words stay with me and have become a well of strength that I stand upon. I continue to fight because I’m not alone.
And the past, and the pain, and the falling down, and falling apart are trophies of a life I’m fighting to live well. Those broken places allow the light to shine through in radiant glory.
 I turn them over like stones in my hands and look to learn everything I can from them.
May the next year be added as a gem.