Why I Decided to Share My Story and Create RootingForMentalHealth

(This post has been sitting in my drafts for over a year. Along with about 20 other posts I’ve written, but never felt good enough to publish. Here’s to 2023 and working on my passion to spread awareness about mental health)

I think about this reason lot, because I often forget. My mind is like a wheel that doesn’t stop which is common for people with mood disorders. I need regular reminders of purpose and reasons to keep me going.

I know the exact thought that made me feel like sharing my story. I’ll just be frank because there’s no easy way to say this. After my suicide attempt in the summer of 2021, I realized that nothing really mattered anymore. Such as, hiding the fact that I have depression didn’t matter because once I’m gone, the truth comes out anyways. Or it doesn’t, but again, what does it matter?

When you have nothing to lose, you have nothing to hide.

This revelation didn’t happen right away and it wasn’t a lightbulb moment. Somehow it just appeared one day in January.

Before this newfound thought, struggling with mental health was the biggest secret of my life. Seriously. No one could know that I struggled. I had opened up to my friends about it within the past 5 years, but nothing on the level of how I am sharing now.

My career would be over if they knew how I really was

I believed that if my work places knew about my mental health struggles, I would be over. This was a valid thought because even today, there are too many work places that do not support mental health. (How can we change this?!??)

I actually had one of my work supervisors say to me ”You can’t predict a panic attack” when I asked to use one of my vacation days as a stress leave. Ok, maybe you can’t predict a panic attack, but I had been manic and knew my mental pot was about to boil over very soon.

Ok back to my focus – All I could think about after my suicide attempt was.. the truth is going to come out eventually, so what does it matter if I say it now if this is what I’m struggling with and I’m not able to live a regular every day life?

I want to say this thought came to mind easily, but it didn’t. It took months of therapy and discovering myself and then convincing myself to say something.

For Ella

The last reason, and probably one of the most important reasons, is for Ella, my niece. One evening while in heartbreak, sobbing myself to sleep, I had a thought. I hated how I felt, but I thought about my niece having these the exact thoughts I had in my head at the time and my heart broke in a way I didn’t know was possible. Now I often think, what if my niece felt this way? And man that hurts.

So I want to create a better world for her. I don’t want her to feel anything remotely close to the dark feelings I often feel, but if she does.. I need her to know she is not alone.