Road To Redemption: My Battle With Suicide.

Relief.

It’s what I use to believe anyone that struggles with anxiety/depression wants.

That’s why the perfect job, the healthy relationships, the money—never provides relief. Those things provide satisfaction. Not relief.

Statements like, “they had it all” “they looked so happy” and “ I never knew”, are common things we hear when we see the news of someone committing suicide.

For me, I thought we wanted relief from a place in our lives we haven’t been able to leave or love. Stuck points I believe are what they are referred to.

Some may have more points than others. The more points, the bigger the relief we seek.

For some, the only relief we’re certain will work is death.

No amount of anything seems like it will relieve us from the heaviness of trying to be okay.

My relationship with suicide, attempts, and ideation, has been complicated. I’m 31 years old and I’ve had a total of 3 attempts and a handful of ideations. I’ve struggled with thoughts of not being here, even when my life was going well. My first attempt was in middle school.

By my pre-teen years, it was extremely evident that I had never been emotionally supported. I had a very unhealthy detachment from everything. I kept friends, family, and even pets at bay. I saw so many pass away or leave, and no one comforted me in this time of loss. My solution was to not let anything get close to me.

My world was divided into people who I loved who have died, and people who I loved that hurt me. No one was allowed in.

By 14, I had experienced numerous sexual assaults by church members and molestation by family members, both male, and female. I was trying to understand my own sexuality while being an experiment or pedophilic addiction to others. In the midst of this, I entered a physically and emotionally abusive situation with a guy a few years older than me. I wanted to leave, but I stayed because my mom was so proud I had a boyfriend. I showed no interest in dating up until middle school. I wasn’t happy or safe, and when I told my mom, she dismissed me and told me there was something maybe I was doing wrong.

What starting off as cutting turned into my first suicide attempt. I sat on floor of the garage of the maybe the second house we moved to in NC, just crying. I just wanted some relief from everything and everyone. My mom walked in, looked at me, her daughter, holding a knife to her stomach, and said “if you’re stupid enough to do it, then do it.”, and walked away.

Up until that point, nothing that had physically hurt me more than hearing my mom say that to me. Her and I hadn’t had the best relationship, and I always felt she didn’t want me. She made that very evident in her speech and her emotional unavailability. That moment put the thought in my head that if the person who gave me life didn’t want me to live, why should I?

I became angry and wanted to use my life to spite hers. In that moment, two emotions latched onto my spirit that I’d come to battle daily with for the next 20 years. Resentment and depression.

I resented everyone and everything and refused to believe anyone or anything had good intentions. Trust became something I believed to be a myth. I believed it to be a myth so much so, that I didn’t even trust myself. I didn’t believe in myself. I didn’t love a single thing about myself.

Over the years, life became a devastating pattern of me smiling and laughing through the hardest moments of my life. I smiled in every photo and cried behind every closed door. By college I mastered silent tears so that I could cry at night with a roommate in the room.

I did not feel that my sadness was anyones problem so I chose to suffer alone, but in actuality, I just didn’t trust anyone with my feelings.

In college, I had convinced myself that sexual assault and advances were a part of “campus life”. I convinced myself I was “just having fun” even though I wasn’t. Most of my sexual encounters were just me knowing I need to get this over with. I was still kind to everyone who had no intentions to care about me. But I enjoyed the fake care. It was better then no care at all.

I battled cancer in college and surely thought I didn’t have much time left so I continued to smile in front of the light of the camera and cry in the darkness or rooms. My parents divorced, I lost my grandpa, my relationship with my siblings became estranged, I wasn’t doing the best academically and I was on a few people to-do list.

A part of me learned to breath underwater during this time, so it was easy to hide the fact that I was drowning. This underwater breathing technique followed me into my 20s.

By this time, I had mastered being a functional emotionally unstable contributing member of society.

There was a moment in college where I felt something I’ve never felt before after my second suicide attempt sophomore year with a pill overdose. My attempt failed and I couldn’t figure out why the hell I woke up.

To my surprise, I received news that I beat cancer and there where no more signs of it or the cells in my body. For the first time in my life it wasn’t relief I felt. It was something greater. It was redemption.

I started finding small pieces of me and started collecting them, but I was still afraid to put the pieces back together in fear of them scattering again. I figured if I had the pieces, that was better than not having them at all. I begin to maneuver my life in pieces, and that was okay for me.

This ultimately just made people love particular parts of me. My internal conversation would be this “this person likes this piece of me, so that’s the only piece I’ll show and they’ll see”. It seemed like an okay set up. I didn’t have to expose all of me just in case this friendship or relationship didn’t work. If only one piece of me was hurt, not all of me, this is a great set up. The math mathed for me. It seemed like an okay way of life until it wasn’t.

The person I was to everyone and everything was different. It became overwhelming, and then to add to the feelings of resentment, depression & suicide, anxiety came along for the ride. I later discovered anxiety had always been there, it was just masked under the gauze of people pleasing and poking fun at my pain by being the comic relief.

This came to be problematic in my first marriage and many friendships. I had moments where I thought a person was able to finally see all of my pieces, but they were not. This wasn’t all on this person, it was just as much on me. I had only chosen to share the pieces of myself that I knew people liked.

My optimism, cheer, kindness, spontaneity, compassion and consul. In this, I thought I was safe enough to share the other parts. My grief, uncertainty, anxiety, depression, and fearfulness. My silliness, free spirit, inter-dimensional complexity in conversation, creative pathways. There were so many avenues, and that’s not what that person signed up for.

There was a moment in time I was at a job I hated and I was with a person who I learned to hide myself from in fear of being too much. In that situation, whenever I began to show hints of being all of me, it caused problems. I struggled with suicide ideation many times but just found myself in an endless loop of panic attacks and manic crying episodes.

I don’t know why, but I chose to keep fighting. Maybe it was so that i could write about FUNCTIONING in the world as someone who has dealt or deals with being suicidal.

As I wrote this, I contemplated what is it that people who struggle and battle suicide ideation need. I found a lot of people are fixated on relief. Relief being the goal. But I found that it wasn't relief I wanted. Because the only relief I could think of was suicide. Relief is easy and temporary. As suicidal as I’ve been, a part of me has always wanted to live.

So this time, I didn’t ask myself what would relieve me —I asked myself '“what will redeem me?’

Redemption. Redemption is what will pull me out this time and for the last time.

I now have friendships, sisterships, community, and a powerful new relationship. These souls have seen all of my pieces and loved every single one. So much so that I had the courage to put the scattered pieces back together again. This has been my redemption. My Road to Redemption has been paved with the support and love of those who love me unconditionally. I felt comfortable enough to be all of me, and not just the light people want me to be. Room was held for my darkness, and that has made a huge difference. Suicide can sometimes look just like me, because it has been me. The people that love me never made me feel crazy for having suicidal thoughts, so I felt comfortable enough to share when I was feeling really low.

People who are on their journey, who experience suicidal thoughts need a place for their darkness to be supported. A place for us to be and feel redeemed.

It is to my belief, that redemption is how we fight suicide. So I’ll make that a part of my mission. To help people understand and fight to redeem themselves. To help people understand Gods powerfulness in purpose. Peoples individual purpose and discover what helps them recognize Joy. To help people feel empowered to make decisions to help them see their light and uncover their darkness. To do everything I can to spread compassion and kindness and the importance of vulnerability and support.

“You are not alone. I am here with you.” This is Gods promise to us, so we should make it a promise to one another.

Coach Mozingo