When things at home were scary or too much for a kid or teen to understand, hiding in my room with music was how I survived. With headphones on, I was in a world where the other kids, and the other adults for that matter, couldn’t hurt me. As a child, hearing music that resonated with me would always bring me to tears, often making me the target of teasing as I would easily become so overwhelmed with emotion. Music has had a powerful influence over me for as long as I can remember. And as bumpy as the road has gotten in the years since I first surrendered to the music, the spark it ignited inside me has sustained me with new life ever since. But there was one specific part of that aforementioned music festival in Atlanta where my will to live was given back to me. I’ve written before about dancing and music and how they threw me a lifeline when I needed it most. Suffice it to say, I was running out of time. I could see how this was going to end and while it terrified me, the fact that an “out” existed was almost comforting. I was starting to plan how and when I would do it. I could feel the passivity starting to fall away.
I was treading water and my arms and legs were growing tired and about to give out. Nevertheless, I had arrived at a place where I had given up on myself, not actively suicidal, but not really living either. I couldn’t understand how my life had gotten to a point where I no longer saw it as valuable to anyone else, not my family and certainly not myself. And instead of actively attempting to take my life, I stopped fighting for it, and I stopped trying to self-preserve. It was in this grey area where I found myself floating during the summer of 2017. But other people, hover somewhere in the middle, unwilling to take their own life, but not resolved enough to try to make it better. Whether or not we are willing to admit it publicly, or even to ourselves, many of us have gotten to a point where existing becomes almost too painful to bear.