Life Sounds, Looks, and Feels Better With Her In It: The Looking Glass

Her Story:

Everyone wishes they had a crystal ball at one point or another. Something that would allow them to see their future, a looking glass of sorts if you will. An item like this is especially needed when you see your future being nothing more than your painfully dark and secluded present. What was learned through the following story is that sometimes that crystal ball, that fortune teller, that looking glass, doesn’t come until you have a glimpse of what has already come to pass, or in my case, what almost came to pass. Trigger warning: suicide, self harm, death.

March 29th, 2019 is a fiery date in my mind. It was tortuously long, marred by battle with family, with friends and eventually myself. You see, March 29th I spent the morning contemplating my suicide attempt as I had every day up to that point for over a year. On my birthday two days before, I spent an hour crying before my family party because the only thing I could think about was how sad I was that I was having a birthday in the first place. I did NOT want to live, let alone celebrate another miserable year of me wishing I was gone. So when March 29th rolled around and I spent the morning fighting with my mom, dad, and friend, I knew that after over a year of these fights, feeling empty, depressed, over medicated, poorly treated with therapy and all around lost…I was done. It started with the YouTube videos about suicide survivors and those who attempted and were permanently marred or didn’t survive. It led to the google search of how much Valium was needed to quietly overdose. Then I made a plan to go upstairs in my parents house, take my entire bottle of Valium, and slip into the sweet surrender of silence. I drafted a letter in my iPhone notes, grabbed the bottle, and sat. As I was about to down the pills, I decided against it….I thought, “I don’t want to make this mess here…I’ll go to my own house” which lay empty at the time. So I chickened out, but I didn’t realize at the time that’s what I did.

You see, I went downstairs to collect myself and upon doing so, my mom found me…crying in the music room of their house, and proceeded to moon me in an attempt to make me laugh. I did the opposite, I cried harder. She saw this, asked what was wrong, and in her eyes, I saw the sadness and exhaustion, the pure terror as she knew exactly what was about to happen. I showed her the note, she read it, she cried, I cried, we cried with my dad, my brother and after a few hours of talking, a hospital visit and a conversation about inpatient therapy, I found my looking glass.

My looking glass became 10 days of inpatient therapy, over a month of outpatient intensive therapy and my girlfriend who I met only 4 months after all of this. Well over a year later, I still cant believe the difference between then and now. I am successfully employed, I moved back into my own home which now has my girlfriend in it as well, I have a better relationship with my family, a sweet little four-legged friend named Lucius, I found the right therapist. I am properly and appropriately medicated and above all, I found my peace and happiness in all of that. It all became my looking glass. It all became what I needed to see on March 29th of 2019.

I’ve told my story to others, some understanding, some not so much, but my hope in telling it is that one lesson can be taken away from it. IT GETS BETTER. I know what it’s like to think it won’t. I have been there, but I also have come back from that and found that sometimes, the worse you feel, the easier it is for there to be improvement…as messed up as that sounds, it’s the truth. You can only go up…

For those of you who have struggled and found your “looking glass” congrats; for those of you still struggling, keep fighting, its worth it, I promise…

The Other Her Story:

She’s my looking glass. My mirror — my crystal ball — has always been clouded and foggy. I never prioritized myself. I was always out to prove myself to my mom, my coworkers, my friends, and whoever else entered my life. I wasn’t good enough in my mind. I had to show what I can do to be of value instead of just being valuable for being myself. I became a try-hard. I became a know-it-all. It was unappealing, and I sought unhealthy relationships to fill the voids. A servant to my mother. A bank for my siblings. An all too dependent friendship.

Insert her. Insert my first female match on Hinge. Insert dropping my phone in water and nearly missing the chance to talk to her because my phone was waterlogged and broken, and I thought she didn’t actually text me, but it was just my phone not working. The rest is history. She cleared the smoke from my path. There was light. There was rejuvenation.

She showed me how valuable I was. She showed me how I deserved better — out of my friends, out of work, out of myself, out of life. I shed my life of toxic relationships. I stopped trying so hard. I found a job that respected and wanted me to succeed and grow. I demanded more out of my relationship with my mother.

I had full intentions of spending my whole life in my mother’s basement taking care of her and my oldest brother, making minimum wage, and never tapping into my full potential. I was stuck. Can you imagine if she accomplished what she set out to do on the 29th? Can you imagine where I would be? Would I still be overworked and underpaid? Would I have never gotten my first dog? Would I have stuck around in a friendship where I was underappreciated and taken for granted? I fortunately haven’t had a moment where I have had to choose to stay, but I know I am thankful that she chose to stay.

I love watching her growth. She’s chosen to exercise her demons and go far away from those times. She has brought light to our lives. She has rekindled a broken relationship with her mother. She has really paved the way for me to continue to work through the smoke each and every day. She’s the definition of strength. She’s everything.