I'm going to preface this by saying this article is an adaptation of a Facebook post I made that garnered a decent-sized reaction. The number of direct messages I received in response to my post was eye-opening. But it's an important message that isn't just about me, and wasn't meant just to draw attention to my own struggles, but to cast a light on pain so many of us feel, and how important taking mental health seriously is. I feel, as I do with many taboo issues, that all the voices in the world could never be too loud when drawing awareness to such an important topic. This platform can reach more people than my Facebook page does, and while it's largely repeated information, it never hurts to talk about it again. And more often. And in as many iterations as are necessary. Because if even one more person can hear the message or read words like these and be impacted, that's worth the noise that may seem repetitive to others.

The news of another suicide has really stirred something in me.

As some of my friends know, I have struggled with severe bouts of depression off and on since I was a young teenager. My depression, unlike my anxiety, is undiagnosed, but it is a problem for which I have been planning to seek treatment, as these episodes have become more frequent, more penetrating, and the breaks between them have become shorter and shorter.

Depression, and mental illnesses in general are tricky in that way. When you have a period of time where you're feeling fine, you convince yourself the illness is fleeting and there's no need to seek treatment. And even when you're at your lowest point with your illness, your brain tricks you into thinking there's something wrong with you that no doctor could possibly help with, that you should just be able to figure it out on your own like a normal, functional adult.

This, of course, makes you ultimately feel worse, weaker, and more worthless. And the permeating thoughts of suicide are difficult to cope with.

I recently read an article entitled "When You're in the Gray Area of Being Suicidal" and it really resonated with me. It talks about what it's like to feel suicidal while also not wanting to die. And that's how I've been living my life for over a decade. Every day I have to distract myself, keeping myself busy in any way I can in order to prevent the thoughts from catching up and taking over. It's a relentless struggle.

It's exhausting.

The one bright side I've been able to find in situations like with Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell just recently is that seeing the outpouring of grief, but also appreciation and love, from millions of folks who cared about and felt a connection to these people reminds me just how hard it is for others when a person decides to take their own life. And while I'm not a person with millions of fans and friends, or even hundreds of friends, who hasn't made a positive impact on the population en masse, I do have people in my life who care about me and who would suffer immensely if I decided to take the same route that so many others have. It's something I know intrinsically. I've been fortunate, even in my lowest moments during the times when my brain tries to tell me that no one cares or my loved ones would even be better off without me, to be able to see that. And while I wish these men and so many others could have stood strong, it's not easy to talk yourself back from that ledge, and in the moment, logic and reason cannot make a dent when your illness has convinced you it's just not worth it anymore. In that way, it's not about being strong or being weak. Mental illness is like a cancer. You can throw the world's best medicine at it. You can fight it with all your might. But even the strongest fighters sometimes succumb to their illness.

A friend of mine shared a very eloquent explanation from David Foster Wallace of what depression can feel like:

"The so-called 'psychotically depressed' person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote 'hopelessness' or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's the terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling."

So I guess my message, which is just as much for me as it is for anyone reading this, would be this: Don't give up. If you are struggling and you feel like you're all alone, you aren't. You can talk to someone, anyone, even if it means calling a hotline and crying at a stranger. But more importantly, don't ignore the warning signs. If you're persistently depressed and trying to convince yourself that it'll pass, don't wait. Seek help. There's no shame in it. And your friends and family, whether they realize the severity of the problem or not, and whether or not they even know you sought help, will be grateful for it. Because they'll still have you in their lives.

And just in case you need it:

Suicide Prevention Hotline
1-800-273-8255