First off, allow me to give a little background, in case you don’t know who I’m honoring here and why. The semicolon tattoo first started to become popular around the time of 2013 when a woman by the name of Amy Bleuel founded an organization known as Project Semicolon. The goal of the project is to help decrease the stigma surrounding mental health while at the same time raising awareness for the topic. Bleuel lost her father to suicide and struggled with several mental health issues herself throughout the course of her life, which sadly ended up leading to her own suicide on March 23, 2017.

The idea behind the symbol of a semicolon is fairly simple. As Bleuel herself explained in a post on her twitter account, “a semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life.” Naturally, as both a writer and someone who has suffered from debilitating depression and anxiety my entire life, this movement resonates with me on an extremely deep level.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had issues with anxiety. When I was younger, a lot of people attributed some of my behavior to me just being a shy kid. In reality, the thought of having a conversation with someone I didn’t know (even the cashier at a fast food restaurant, for example) absolutely terrified me. When I was in a large group of people like a school assembly or a crowded movie theater, my hands would start to tremble and I would immediately feel like I needed to get out of there.

I would often stress over everything and anything. Take homework for example. If I couldn't figure out a math problem, I would spend hours staring at it, trying as hard as I could to figure it out instead of just moving on. In my head, my train of thought spoke in run on sentences, and went something like this: Well, if I don’t get this question I might not get credit for the homework, if I don’t get credit for the homework then my grade will decrease, and if I can’t understand this now then I won’t on the test, so I’ll fail and my grade will decrease even more, then I won’t be able to get into a good college because my grades won’t be good enough, then I won’t be able to get a good job because I didn’t get a good education, then I won’t be able to make enough money to live off of without a good job, then I’ll be stuck living on the streets forever and my life will be ruined because I can’t figure out this damn question.

Yes, seriously, that is how I thought for most of my life.

As for depression, I’ve had that since I was about 10, which is extremely early onset for the most part. When I was 11, I was pulled out of school and sent for a psychological evaluation after making a suicidal comment to my teacher. From that point on, I was the crazy kid in school. I was deemed insane by my peers. I was the freak that nobody wanted to talk to because I was sent away to the psych ward for being mentally ill, which in their mind might as well have meant that I was Ted Bundy.

The stigma of my mental health issues followed me through the majority of my career in school.

Nobody understood that it was something I couldn’t control, that it didn’t make me violent, that it’s an illness like diabetes or anemia, or that I wasn’t going to shoot up the school like others whose mugshots my classmates had seen on the news during the only time the media ever spoke of mental health at all. Once I finally became medicated for my issues at age 16, I vowed to end this stigma and do everything I could to make sure nobody else ever had to go through the alienation I did, even when I was suicidal and tying blanket nooses in my closet.

Amy Bleuel understood me. She understood the struggles I had faced because she had faced them too. She gave me a voice, a way to let the world know that stigmatizing mental health issues is not okay and that I too am a survivor of the terrors within my own mind which are far greater than any physical threat the world could ever conjure up. As soon as I was 18 and had enough money in my pocket to spare, I got the tattoo for myself on my left wrist.

While Amy may have lost her battle with depression, in some ways her story will still never be over.

Her legacy is permanently imprinted in my heart and in my flesh. As long as I’m alive, as long as this ink stays under my skin, I will continue her fight, not only for myself or to honor her legacy but so that others will never have to face the stigma and the pain that she and I have both faced in our lives.

If you are reading this and you also struggle with mental health issues, know that you are never alone. Never give up fighting, never choose to end your story. It is never too late to get help and change that would be period in the book of your life to a beautiful semicolon. There is so much of your story that has yet to be written. We, the mental health advocacy community, are here for you. I am here for you.

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts and are in need of help, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-723-8255. They are available 24 hours a day and are here to help.