I woke up today feeling more grateful than usual, grateful for the gift of life. The good and the bad, the chaos and the peace, the boring and the exciting, and all the other madness and wonders life entail.

I thought back to a gloomy day in January of 2016. The night before this day I had been admitted to the ER because my life got too dark to handle. My depression, bipolar, anxiety, PTSD, borderline personality disorder (whatever the psychiatrist on call wanted to label it) took control. I was spiraling and didn’t know how to bring myself out of it.

I woke up on this gloomy January morning to an EMT telling me to get in an ambulance because I was being taken to a psych ward and man, was that terrifying to hear. Within moments of being woken up, I was told I would be taken somewhere I never agreed to going.

Although this moment left me in sheer terror, I don’t remember this day for its dark scary moments or even why I ended up in the ER in the first place. I remember it for the love I felt from the people I was surrounded by. That morning my five best friends came to the ER and even though none of them were close to each other they came for me. That was mind-blowing. They came for ME.

I was only allowed to have one person in the room at a time, but they all sat in the waiting room taking turns coming to make me smile. To think that the night before I wanted to take my life away from not only myself but also these beautiful humans still shocks me. Since then they have been my best friends.

That morning I had to decide if I would take some time off of school and go to an inpatient unit or outpatient unit. I chose to stay in school and enter an outpatient program. Throughout my outpatient program, these five friends made sure I wasn’t alone, they kept me safe (even when I thought it was too overbearing). And even to this day, these girls gather together for ME.

After moving home, when I go to visit they come together because I am there. It’s crazy how people can love and care so deeply even if I was unable to accept that love and care at the time. The moment I let my best friend into my room I had locked myself in, I allowed her to enter my darkness and fear. I let her in and she sat with me, she helped me decide what to do. I left my room and entered the world I was terrified of, my best friend beside me, and admitted myself to the ER. I took a big leap towards recovery. I began to let people in, something I was previously so against.

The next morning when I woke up in the ER I started to see the love and care people have for me even if it has taken over two years to accept it. My life since has been far from sunshine and rainbows, but there has never been a day so gloomy as that day in January of 2016.