The year is 2014. I am sitting in the driver seat of my 2012, 6-speed Chevy Cruz by the Lehigh Canal park in Allentown, with a razor blade in my hand staring at the pulse on my left wrist.
I am battling myself in my head. Honestly trying to muster up the courage to end my life right then and there. Sure, I thought about my family’s reaction to my death. But in that moment I was more concerned about the car. I remember looking over to the empty passenger seat and asking myself; “Do I really want to get blood on these seats? Who would clean it up? Would they resell the car?”
My grandfather Francisco was still alive at this time. The depression I found myself drowning in wasn’t caused by the emotional abuse from the father of my kids. I had been lost long before this moment and long before running into him. I had no sense of identity, no foundation to stand on. No hope for a future. I was living in pure mental anguish.
In fact, the first time I ever contemplated suicide I was just 12 years old. I remember that night quite vividly in fact. It was dark, I sat on the back steps of our Livingston town home, staring at the midnight blue, starlit sky, with a stolen bottle of my mom’s prescription pills. I didn’t know how many I needed to kill myself but I told myself I’d just take the rest of the bottle to be sure. Thankfully I didn’t go through with it at 12 and I didn’t go through with it at 28 either.
In my next post I will circle back to the year of 2014. I chose these memories to set the stage, to place a spotlight on the importance of maintaining one’s sanity through knowing Jesus our Lord and Savior. Life’s biggest fact, is that the loudest voice which exists in our heads, is our own. For as far back as I could remember, I have had a consistent mental void, a corner of my mind dedicated to darkness. Sure, I’ve been through trauma but haven’t we all? When I think back on the multiple times I’ve considered ending my life, something or someone has taken hold of me in the nick of time.
I had my supernatural encounter with God in July of 2020. Let me be the first to tell, just because you are saved does not mean that life is now peaches and cream as you frolic through a field of wildflowers, with the wind blowing through your hair like a Beyonce video. In fact, in most instances everything starts to fall apart. For me, since then the last four months of the year have been extremely difficult on my mental health. I couldn’t even describe the level of hopelessness and despair that has invaded every cell of my being. It can only be compared to a pit inside of your stomach, so deep, so hollow, that it consumes you slowly from within. Now, add trying to parent from a place of emptiness. It has been by far the hardest thing I have ever had to do.
I’m being transparent here and vulnerable about my struggles with depression and suicide. There may be some reading this thinking that a relationship will fill that void, that children will fill that void, that the perfect job or series of accomplishments and fulfilled goals will fill that void. I don’t mean to burst your bubble but there is no worldly thing that will fill the emptiness or take instant possession of that space in your mind. There is nothing but the light of the Lord that will illuminate that type of darkness.
And one last caveat, when you do turn to Jesus, it is an ongoing choice to believe the words delivered in scripture. When you are in your darkest moments, even then you will have to choose to reach up and grab the hand of Jesus and let him pull you out of the murky waters.
I have been writing this post for over a year now. I started about a three weeks after my Introduction post and that was in June of 2023. I haven’t felt worthy of writing it while I was still struggling with suicidal thoughts. I was waiting for a moment where I could end this and say Jesus fully healed me. It isn’t there yet. Shortly after I began writing this post I went through a series of traumatic events and I thought that maybe I was fooling myself about Jesus’ love for me entirely. The one thing that is different as I enter this season, is I am prepared. I am prepared to lean on his word when I feel like the world is crumbling around me.
To think this is only my second post and I haven’t even detailed the Summer of 2014, where my life really started to change.
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