Almost a year

Anniversaries are amazing things for the most part. The anniversary of your wedding day, the anniversary of when you started dating the love of your life or the anniversary of the day you met that person, these are all moments that are amazing and anniversaries worth remembering. The memories are happy, lots of love, fun and worth remembering. Unfortunately though there are anniversaries in life that are hard to deal with. The day a loved one left this world, the day your divorce was final, the day your parents split up or the day you thought your life was going to end by suicide.

In my world there are some amazing anniversaries that I love to remember, but there are also some very negative anniversaries that I wish my brain would just let me forget. It's hard to forget a moment when your life changed forever. When you are suicidal your mind goes into such a dark whole that it is hard to get out of it. It could take days, weeks and even months to fully feel like you have crawled out of the darkness.

As the anniversary of the day I tried to take my own life fast approaches my brain goes on high alert of everything around me. My brain goes from memories that are amazing and fun to think about through out the day and replaces it with memories of how I felt in the weeks prior to my suicide attempt, the emotions I was going through, the flash backs of the bad memories that made me consider suicide in the first place, the thoughts that I need to end my life because if I don't I will continue to damage my children. My brain reminds me that I have not moved forward since my suicide attempt. It reminds me that to this day I still consider suicide and still have those thoughts racing around my brain everyday. You always hope that after a traumatic event happens to you, you will end up in a better place by the time the anniversary of that tragedy comes around, and yet here I sit almost a year after my suicide attempt and I feel like I am in no better state then I was the day I tried to take my own life. It sucks to feel like I have not moved forward at all in my life. I have continuously quite doing activities I once loved, I have stopped talking to people in my life because I am sick of feeling like a disappointment to them and I have failed as a mother to my children because I can not be there for them like I should be because of the emotions I have to deal with. 

I thought after I got out of Pine Rest that I would be okay and I was for a while. I coped better with my emotions, I learned how to move on from the past and I stopped self-harming because I had better ways of dealing with the pain than to inflict pain onto myself, but now almost a year later I can't cope with anything. I feel like I've failed my family and having to admit that I started self-harming again to get rid of the emotional pain is the hardest thing in the world to do. To have to admit that in all complete honesty I should really be admitted into a mental facility again because I'm afraid of myself and what I might do if I am left alone is so hard to say out loud because admitting that to people feels like I am a failure. Having to look at the people you love and say you should be worried about me is hard because after I got released from the hospital the people I love the most made me feel like they were glad I got help, but also made it feel like they expected me to be okay again and never need to be admitted into the hospital again because I had the tools I needed to keep me safe and sane. I wish it was easy to tell people I need help again, I wish it didn't feel like telling them would cause them to feel like I am a disappointment and a failure. I wish that telling them was as easy as just talking to them in a normal conversation, but the truth is it's not that easy because the disappointment on their faces, in the tone of their voices that's what stops me from having those conversations and that's scary for me because I am afraid of myself a lot of the times lately and yet there's no one to turn to. 

I tried texting the suicide hotline one night, but that was honestly no help. The girl I got didn't really seem like she wanted to talk to me, didn't want to help me and hardly said anything. I was so disappointed because I have preached on here about texting them if you didn't want to call and yet when I finally did it for myself my experience was horrible. I do not want to discourage people from using this service because I am sure it has had amazing success with some, but for me it was a fail and was more hurtful than helpful. All I wanted was someone to help me through the darkness, someone who understands me and could help me figure out what the best option was for me and yet it made me drop deeper into my whole than I was before I texted it. 

The hardness of bad memories and anniversaries that are for horrible events is that unfortunately they don't go away. They are a part of your story and as hard as they are you are going to have to live through the emotions of that day every time the anniversary comes around. The thing about these situations are that they are unavoidable and the real question is when these anniversaries come around how are you going to cope with the emotions that come with the day, how are you going to handle everything that happens in the weeks prior to that day and how are you going to make sure when the day actually comes that you survive it? For me, to be completely honest I have no clue how I will make it through the next couple of weeks before the anniversary of my suicide attempt comes, I have no idea how I will make it through the whole day on October 26th which was the day I didn't plan to be alive any longer last year. All I do know is that I will be here, I will stay alive, I will work my ass off day in and day out to make sure that I see October 27 2018 because I am worth living for even on days when I don't think I am. My kids deserve me in their life and I deserve to live for them and for all of my dreams that I have not accomplished yet.
Always remember no matter what your mind is telling you, YOU are worth it and YOU are stronger than you ever believe you are!

With Love,

Brittany