September is suicide awareness month and in recently being diagnosed with depression and anxiety, I would like to take this month to write more about my experiences in hopes that someone will relate and see that life gets better and to always seek out help. This is a letter to my former suicidal self.
Dear former self,
I'm writing to you at one of the best times of my life, and I know if you're reading this you're thinking that ending your life would be so much better. You won't believe me when I say that the word crazy won't haunt you anymore. That you came out and everything went fine, and that you're in an amazing relationship right now. I know you've thought about this for weeks, planned every intricate detail and felt guilty all along the way. You don't know whether you're being courageous or selfish, hell I don't know if you're being courageous or selfish still. The thing about this is it gets better. You'll meet so many amazing and inspiring people who will show you it gets better. And there will be people who fall with you, there will be people who fall all together and do not come back. And you won't be okay, but you will live. Because you're an optimist, and you just learned that's a good way to deal with stress... Be like Gatsby, always reaching for that green light, you WILL reach it someday! I know the ways in which you are susceptible to suicide. I know that you don't know what you are yet, I know you question your sexuality and that your friends who have come out gay are miserable and told you they wanted to die too. You keep it in, and I want you to know that you live through it. That being gay becomes more accepted, and that just last year same sex marriage was passed. I want you to know that being Latino and having a whiter complexion will give you a sense of no identity. I want you to know you will find it one day, that all of this will be your standing ground for everything you are. That your identity will always be Latino. I want you to know that being a woman in society is destroying you and I want you to know it gets better with an optimistic point of view. I want you to know there are good people out there, and not just the bad ones who think girls shouldn't go to school and should only look pretty. That not all barbie girls are blonde, skinny, and white one day. That the definition of beauty expands, into you. Please read this, please consider... that life gets better.
I love you.
-Alfa