Love Letter to the Girl Who Tried to Die
If I could send you one message from the future, as you sedately lie in your hospital bed wondering why it is you remain on this Earth, it is this: You made it. As dark as this moment is, as hopeless and cruel as it feels, this is the first day of the rest of your life.
Nothing about this journey will be easy. You will struggle. You will cry, weep, sob, relapse with self-harm. But you will graduate college, and then grad school. You will write a book. Gain trauma weight, lose trauma weight, lose time to the crushing weight of trauma and crushing depression. And then, you will get better. Slowly — bit by bit, day by day — the poison will leave your body. Like a wisp of smoke, it will rise.
If you could see a glimpse of the future waiting for you, you would never doubt your ability to achieve it, to reach it. It would move you too deeply to allow it to slip away. Yet, you will leave that hospital with no idea of what awaits — and you will still make it. You can’t now see the light at the end of the tunnel, but you will manage to find it. Despite it all, after it all, you will climb out of that coffin, and find it. The light will find you, too, because it’s in you. It is you.
I’m glad you survived. One day, you will be, too.
