Christmas carols crackled over the hospital radio and I shivered through my sweat-soaked scrubs. "Happy New Year" I whispered to myself. This wasn't how I had pictured my first Christmas break home from college. I had landed myself squarely in a psychiatric inpatient facility in Chicago thanks to an eating disorder that the doctors said might have killed me. I remember laying on that gray, rectangle of a mattress and looking ahead at the two paths in front of me. Which one was I going to choose? Although my eating disorder remains the most dangerous of my diagnoses, it wasn't my first experience grappling with the elusive idea of mental health. I've been blessed with a brain that notices things others miss, which means that I excelled in the writing classes I took for my undergraduate degree, but also means that on my family vacation last month, I noticed a jellyfish suffocating on the beach during our family beachside sunset walk. Needless to say, I spent much of my childhood feeling overwhelmed and unprepared. I learned firsthand the importance of mental health support during that first year of undergraduate. Which path was I going to choose? Ultimately, I decided that I don't want to live a life of survival: eating just enough to sustain life, or holding it together long enough to get through the day. I want to live a life that is vibrant and abundant. A life that allows me to see deeply, to feel deeply, and to love deeply. I have learned (and am still learning) that I have a brain that requires me to take things slowly. In order to function, I absolutely have to do things like get enough sleep, eat nutritious food, and schedule breaks into my day. I need time in quiet to process the things that I've seen, and in seasons where I neglect that I can feel my anxiety levels rising. I have a treatment team that includes an Eating Disorder Certified Registered Dietician, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor, and a Psychiatrist, and I see them regularly to monitor and maintain my mental health status. Wellness is not something that comes naturally to me, it is something that I choose. I find that leaning on those around me for support is crucial for keeping me on track. I am slowly and gently learning to accept my brain for what it is. Mental health support has not only saved my life, but transformed it. In fact, my experiences with mental health healing have led me to a Master's program in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, and I am blessed to be a part of a program that teaches me more about healing every day--both teaching healing practices to myself and to those that I work with. I wish I could say that this is a movie-credits success story. That I wake up every day fully recovered from my eating disorder and entirely unafraid of the world and what it holds. Instead, I suppose this is a different kind of success story. It's a story about a girl who still struggles to eat all of her meals. A girl who still sometimes wakes up afraid. But it's also a story about a girl, who in spite of these things is not only surviving but living. It is about a girl who takes breaks, a girl who sets boundaries, and a girl, who I truly believe is going to be okay. Why is mental health important to me? It has taught me how to live.

"The Eye of A Gun" By: Elizabeth Anne Shearer A balloon pops down the hall and the classroom jumps in the silence that follows. My heart is a bird shaking in its cage, and my eyes fill with tears before my brain can start thinking. The people around me giggle with their faces contorting into stretched smiles and knowing looks. The faces of a people who in the silence after loud pops know without thinking that it is the aftermath of a birthday party. Not the anger of young people ricocheting down the halls. You know, I’ve never held a brother in my arms as he died. But in the silence that follows a balloon popping, I smell my brother’s blood as it bakes on the highway. I see the red of the dust in the fingers of my children, and the blood pouring from the knees they dragged on the sidewalk. It is true that I have not seen death in the eye of a loaded gun. But I have seen it in the eyes of the children who play with my hair. In the eyes of boys who view sticks as weapons, When I always saw them as tools. I see it in the tears of mothers whose sons aren’t looking, In the gravestones that keep popping up closer and closer and closer to my bedroom. I may not have looked into the eye of a loaded gun as it prophesied my future, But I have stuck my fingers into the holes that stay behind. I haven’t looked at hell through the eye of a gun. I’ve looked into the eyes of my people and seen it there. --How long will you forsake us?