I Love You

It is with a heavy heart that I write this final piece. This final blog post of mine (it won’t be the last thing I write, just the last of this series; you can stay up to date with my writing on this website) is a rather hard and uncomfortable topic. It is a topic that makes many people feel useless and sad because looking from the outside, you always assume you could have done more.

This video that I included was made and produced by the now seniors of the high school I graduated from in 2018. They are brave enough to address the issues of mental illness in that school and even braver to speak with those who have felt the impacts of the two suicides our school had in the last two years. (Side note: It is hard to believe it will be two years since we lost Chad come June 12th this year. Like his father says in the video, “It never gets easier with time.”) It is hard to believe that two students felt the need to take their life, it leaves the rest of us wondering what we could have done. I am here to say that if you have experienced this loss, please don’t put this blame on yourself. It will lead to dark places. The only thing you can do is learn. Be a better friend, a kinder person to the next person you see or meet. Simple acts of kindness can lead to helping someone struggling with suicidal thoughts. Simple acts of kindness.

I am also here to be completely candid. I have struggled with suicidal thoughts for nearly two years now, as well. It began the summer going into my senior year, when I was grieving Chad, losing friends left and right, and overall evaluating myself as a person who, truly, was pretty horrible up until then. I realized how mean and rude I had been to my friends, my parents, and even my sister who I thought I had a pretty good relationship with. Once I realized really just how awful I was, I began to wonder if I should even be here on this earth, causing more hurt than happiness.

I slipped into a deep, dark hole of depression, though at the time I just thought I was perpetually sad. At night, I could not sleep. I simply laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, contemplating everything I had ever done wrong and why I should still be here. Eventually, I decided that I should no longer be here and made a suicide plan. Luckily, it never got farther than that. I am lucky enough to have amazing parents, who surrounded me in love, even after the hurt I had caused them for years.

It was a Sunday afternoon, after church—where I had tried to reach out to my best friend of five years and was shot down, told that she no longer wanted to be my friend—that I ran to my car, called my mom sobbing, explaining to her the grief I felt like I just couldn’t escape.

A different Sunday afternoon, I attended church with my family and began an argument with my mom, ending in tears and apologies where I finally admitted to her, “I need help.”

Her response was a tighter hug and simple words, “I know.” I now wonder if my mother was just awesome enough to believe in my strength to admit that I needed help, or if she just couldn’t bring herself to tell me what she was seeing in me.

Sitting in the doctor's office on that October afternoon waiting for my appointment, that day was filled with high levels of stress (which in a few minutes would be diagnosed as anxiety). I told my doctor what I had gone through in the past few months, explaining that I felt very alone and thought about ending my life. I could see the pain written on my mother’s face, but I remained calm, because at this point I was numb to the idea of it. My doctor diagnosed me with situational depression, meaning my circumstances in life can spin me into a cycle of depression, but I can avoid it with medication and other coping mechanisms (therapy, self care, exercise).

Returning to school after this diagnosis was strange. I felt like an outsider, walking around with this weird mental issue that girls get called “attention seekers” for having; so I kept it completely private, not letting anyone know what I was going through.

It wasn’t until two months later, December 4th, that I decided I could not go through with my plan. My close family friend, whom I considered a little brother (though we had become distant in the last months of his life), took his own life. That was a Monday. I had a great day at school, went to work, and came home to my parents looking pale and fragile, sitting on the couch. I sat down on the black comfy chair across from them with my backpack still on, lunch box in hand, work clothes still on. They asked me about my day, to which I candidly told them was great and I loved my job and I couldn’t wait for winter break.

Then my mother said, “We have something to tell you.” My initial thought was oh crap, I did something wrong and I don’t even know what it could be, but I quickly realized I wasn’t the issue. “[He] took his own life today,” my mother choked out. I looked at my dad, who had tears in his eyes and had been clearly crying before I got home. I looked at my mom, who was now crying and they both made their way over to me.

They kneeled in front of me and my dad wrapped his arms around me as I screamed, “NO!” I began wailing, screaming that this was a mistake, it’s impossible, that it didn’t happen. “I can’t go through this again, I’m not strong enough,” I told them; to which they assured me I was strong enough because I had to be, for their sake.

After many hours of shaking, screaming, and crying every ounce of water out of my body, my dad looked at me, holding my arms with a firm grip. He said to me, tears still in his eyes, “You can never do this to us. You have to promise me you will never do this to us. Sarah, do you hear me? You cannot make us go through this, we can not lose you. Promise me.”

“I promise,” I whispered back to him, meaning it because I had now seen what this hurt had done to my parents, and could only imagine the wreck they would be if they lost their own child—me.

Ever since that day, I have been learning to cope and grieve and learn. I feel it is my responsibility to be a kind human to those around me because you never know what a person is dealing with inside their head. My two friends I lost to suicide were some of the happiest, funniest people I have ever known. I have learned that it doesn’t matter where you come from or who you are, life is tough and lies can creep in to steal your sanity. Depression and other mental illnesses can lead a person to their breaking point which means society has a responsibility to provide access to resources that can help those who are hurting.

With all this being said, please learn from my story. And know that your story, though it may or may not be as extreme as mine, is just as valid and your feelings are 100 percent valid.

I have been there in that dark hole, thinking there is no escape. There is. There are people in your life who will help you, you have to let them.

Be kind. Be brave. And promise me, you will stay.

xoxo,

Sarah Cay