He told me it was the most selfish thing someone could do. I did not think the same. When my oldest brother, Tanner, attempted to take his own life in June 2022 my dad thought of it as a selfish act. I suppose he was right in some way, but I disagreed. In my mind, of course. I would not dissuade my dad from his own ways of coping. I know, though, that taking your own life is sometimes one of the most desperate acts you could attempt. I would know because I've been in the same place. When my dad almost died in a motorcycle accident in September 2019 I felt like my world ended. I was never the same. Seeing him laid out on the pavement writhing in agony before first responders got him onto a stretcher and into the ambulance broke something within me. In the week following it hurt to have to feed him small bites bit by bit while he was still in too delirious from pain to be able to feed himself. I felt the roles were being reversed too quickly, this sort of thing was not supposed to be my duty until he was old and wrinkly and on his death bed. This revelation, this near loss, it brought me somewhere deep down low I've never been before. I measure my life in time before this event because this is when everything began to change for the worse. I often found myself now endowed with a powerful fear of death since that day, and made deeper still by New Years 2020. On that night my mother - it is at this point I should mentioned my parents are divorced and share custody - got so drunk that began berating my slightly older brother, Logan, and I. She accused us of not loving living with her and she repeatedly told us she would very happily give my dad full custody. I know she did not truly mean what she was staying, but still. We talked in circles for several minutes until, at one in the morning, she told my brother and I to get out of her house. We had so little time to get our things. I won't go into further detail, but in the end this was my second brush with a family member's near death and my first experience with attempted suicide by someone dear to me. I still recall the bullet holes through the wall piercing the baby photo of me that had been hanging up. I shook like a leaf the entire way to the police station with Logan and my dad to make a police report for a wellness check. I still have nightmares about the dead look in her eyes when we had to pick up and watch the dogs while she was evaluated at a mental health facility. I am furthermore haunted by her maintaining that she never attempted and instead supplying that she was trying to stress clean and the first thing she went for was the gun. I've never opened my mouth to her on this topic in the last five years. That day truly catapulted me into the lowest of lows. I told nobody outside the family about it. I was changed eternally and my closest friends at the time were none the wiser when I had to return to school like nothing happened. When the pandemic shut the world down I was plunged into an isolation I have never felt before and have never felt since. For two years I wallowed with nothing to help me from the mental depths I had sunk to. I became familiar with fantasizing about escaping from such a place. I craved any release I could, and it was then my thoughts often drifted to suicide. I wanted so badly to just feel nothing. This is why I think that it's an act of desperation and not selfishness. I have never been outward with these thoughts to family. I know it would be too much for my family, so I abstain. Even when I struggle I feign being well to keep the balance. I have always been the youngest daughter, the over-achiever, the one that my family does not have to worry about. This gave me a more intimate understanding of a concept I already knew. It is important to always bear in mind that you never know what someone could be going through. Some people are so adept at masking their struggles that you could never know until it is too late. I keep it in mind to offer kindness to those I can. I give a spare dollar to those I pass on the street. I offer a smile and polite conversation to those I pass in the grocery store. I know I cannot change the past, but maybe my kindness can offer a little bit of light to someone in dire need of it.

Throughout my life I have almost lost both my oldest brother and mom to suicide. I was there to witness the aftermath of my oldest brother's suicide attempt and I can still remember the blood and my father's broken screaming. I still remember the bullet holes in the wall from my mother's suicide attempt. These things brought me down to a low, low point in my life. I struggled to get out of bed, I had, and still have, frequent and vivid nightmares of times where the attempts succeeded or ones where I witnessed them first hand. Having an imaginative mind was incredibly devastating throughout those times to say the least. I often wondered as well if I could have done anything to prevent those scars from being left upon my already-broken family forever. When it came to my mother's attempt, she did it after she got drunk and berated my brother and I about my father's, her ex husband's, near-death at the hands of a motorcycle crash. I still remember seeing his broken body on the concrete and falling to my knees screaming while the paramedics pulled him into the ambulance. I know that I, just a meek fifteen year old girl, couldn't have done anything to prevent her drinking that night and eventually kicking us out of the house, but what if? I try not to let it weigh on me though all these years later. When it comes to being queer, my identity was a hard thing to figure out. Throughout the time before sixth grade when I figured out I was lesbian I began to struggle. Would my friends still like me? Would my family still accept me? I faced rumors all throughout middle school for how I dressed, I've been called "it" and many slurs by random men that I was simply passing by, and I have faced the thoughts of how much easier life would be if I was straight. When my brother brought home his girlfriend for the first time earlier this year I would feel this vile, horrible jealousy boiling deep in my stomach. It was neither of their faults, but still I hated them with my whole being for the fact that they could simply cuddle on the couch without being looked at sideways. I wanted that; with all my heart and being I craved that existence. Over Thanksgiving of 2024 I finally came out to my parents. They accepted me readily much to my relief. I had always struggled with the thought of if my father not lovng me the same. He is one of my closest friends in the world and one of the only people that understands and wholly respects me. Now that I have been accepted and know I have nothing to fear I now wonder how the world will recieve me, especially in these scary times. My girlfriend, the person I intend to be my wife and partner forever, is black and genderqueer. I worry for our future together and if we'll be able to be legally married in the future. The future is uncertain, but I bear in mind what she tells me. We can only control what we can, and we can only take things day by day.