[My]Suicide Awareness

A couple of years ago, I posted about Kate Spade’s suicide  in “To the late Kate Spade, I was you.” 

Then, suicide was an attempt that would creep up in my mind when battling this disease OFTEN. Being diagnosed at 25 haunted me. I hated that my life was now wrapped around my body, breaking down and unable to repair itself 💥.

Six years later, I am smashing through every possible resource in hopes that someone, something, can navigate my brain back to my legs. I have lost half of my body. At this point, it’s “by any means necessary” that I will find my way back to walking again.

I was

Depressed ✅

Frustrated ✅

Thoughts of ending this physical and mental pain seemed to make my life easier ✅ ✅ ✅

September is suicide awareness month, and my birthday month ✨ September 4 ✨. I found it frustrating, at the time (2018), that I was contemplating ending it all with the celebration of life right around the corner. It’s wild how one tragedy can come before or after a win.

I was campaigning and would drive from my candidate's home to this bridge. 

T   O   R   N

I would get out of my SUV and lean over the bridge, which overlooked a damn,  in fear of “if I tipped over, would I save myself?”. I would contemplate! “If you are serious, you would tie something heavy to your feet so you can’t come up Are you ready???”

A destructive mind is not something to toy with. So I would look and listen to the waves crash against rocks, deciding:

“I’ll give it one more day”

Six years Dx, five years from forcing my ending, I am now in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down. Giving up is not something I do. Finding a way is something I better do. Until the man upstairs says, “Ashley, the chair is it.” I cannot, will not settle for anything less. 

I owe myself that much.