“You’re the sickest person I’ve ever met who is still alive,” was the way the doctor put it to my uncle when he finally took himself to the hospital. My Uncle John, who I always called Uncle Boo growing up, had a long and difficult history of mental illness. Because of this, he had trouble taking care of himself in even the most routine ways. Seeking preventive medical care was out of the question for him. When he finally agreed to go to the hospital, we knew it was serious. Hearing the doctor’s assessment of him helped solidify what we already knew; this would be fatal. The doctor who said this to him was no small-scale doctor- he worked at a prominent hospital in the city of Chicago. While his bedside manner certainly left something to be desired, this doctor made it clear he believed that Uncle Boo did not have long to live. I couldn’t help but wonder what his diagnosis meant for me. Uncle Boo and I had always been close. I knew he viewed me as his “mini-me,” and I looked to him as a sort of example- of what to do and what not to do. He and I were inherently very similar, and I truly felt more understood by him than by anyone else. I never had siblings, but my uncle became sort of like an older brother figure in my life. When I heard what happened to him, there was a part of me who was concerned someday that would be me. Over the next several days, we learned Uncle Boo was given two months to live. He moved in with his sister, and we prepared to watch him die a slow, painful death. His death wound up being more slow and painful than we ever could have imagined. Two and a half years later, he was still alive. Despite his previous apathy towards his health, Uncle Boo found a renewed fire in his belly and decided to fight. He had to get limbs amputated. He had to go to the hospital frequently to get up to 30 pounds of purple fluid pumped out of his body. He frequently found himself unable to breathe. But nothing, not even lack of oxygen was enough to make him give up. Every doctor and nurse that spoke to him told him to go into hospice. My Aunt Kathy told him he needed to go into hospice. He even logically thought he should go into hospice. But he also knew that he had a newfound passion for life that he had never had when he was well, and he wasn’t going to lose that. It was so hard to watch. It was also deeply inspirational. While my own struggles with mental health were nowhere near as bad as his were, they were certainly there. Despite being young and, thus far, “getting away with it,” I had also neglected my health and wellbeing to an extreme extent. Often finding it hard to get out of bed, even simple tasks like brushing my teeth often presented a seemingly monumental challenge. I sought comfort in food, quite literally only eating my comfort foods most days, and I frequently allowed myself to become dehydrated or malnourished, which affected all aspects of my life. Seeing Uncle Boo’s end-of-life battle was exactly the wake-up call I needed. I knew if I didn’t start taking care of myself, I could very seriously end up in a similar position. I was scared to start anywhere, but I knew I had to start somewhere. I started eating nourishing foods and exercising to help my body get stronger. I started going to therapy to address my mental health issues, I started being intentional about trying to make new friends. I left behind a bad job and found a new job I love, working with people I love. And soon I am returning to school to grow myself even more, and to learn valuable skills I can use to give back to the community. Watching from afar as my uncle slowly died was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. Hearing him say he wasn’t able to call us anymore because he didn’t have enough strength left to hold a cell phone broke my heart. We waited with bated breath every time he was rushed to the hospital. By the time we finally got the phone call we’d been dreading, most of my family was too numb to cry. My uncle’s death was a tragedy full of pain, fear, and sadness, and we would do anything to be with him again. But through his soul-crushing death, came a life-giving gift: a second chance. An urgency to fix my mess, a passion for life, and a fighter’s spirit.

“I knew we never should’ve let you go to college,” were the words my mother yelled as our argument came to a head. Following that sentence was yet another speech about how the (conservative Christian) university I had attended had brainwashed me into becoming too liberal and freethinking. This type of rhetoric was not new to me, and had, in fact, followed me throughout my life, manifesting itself in different forms. Whether it was my dad ranting about how Disney is manipulating the education system to turn kids into liberals, my mom suggesting I don’t want to become too educated so that I’d have a wider pool of more successful future husbands to choose from, or the simple fact that even into adulthood my parents would censor the types of movies, books, or music I could consume while living under their roof, the messages were all the same: education was powerful and dangerous. And I wanted it. When you grow up knowing that there are certain things you are not supposed to know, you begin to desperately want to know them. From a young age, I saw the power of learning and relished the fact that once something was in your brain, no one could take it away from you. Sometimes I felt like a squirrel searching for nuts and then storing them deep in the ground, or a greedy child rapidly stuffing candy in their mouth knowing their parents would walk in at any moment and scold them for eating too many sweets. I had a deep insatiable hunger to read banned books, study taboo subjects, and discuss new ideas with people who would be open to discussing them. I tried to learn as much as I could, as fast as I could, and never wanted to stop. After convincing my parents to allow me to attend college (partly due to insinuating it may be a good place to meet a future husband, as well as allowing my parents to select my degree program to ensure I wouldn’t be learning anything scandalous), I went off to school and became the thing my parents feared the most: a strong, independent, freethinking woman. I deeply desired all the things it was so forbidden for me to know. I longed to be an intelligent person who was well educated. This desire carried me through high school, college, and now has led me to start graduate school, and I have no doubt that it will take me far into the future as well. Throughout my years of learning and studying in whatever way I could, the same thing always brought me through, and the same thing always left me wanting more: knowledge is a type of power that no one can take away from you. That is what education means to me.

“I knew we never should’ve let you go to college,” were the words my mother yelled as our argument came to a head. Following that sentence was yet another speech about how the (conservative Christian) university I had attended had brainwashed me into becoming too liberal and freethinking. This type of rhetoric was not new to me, and had, in fact, followed me throughout my life, manifesting itself in different forms. Whether it was my dad ranting about how Disney is manipulating the education system to turn kids into liberals, my mom suggesting I don’t want to become too educated so that I’d have a wider pool of more successful future husbands to choose from, or the simple fact that even into adulthood my parents would censor the types of movies, books, or music I could consume while living under their roof, the messages were all the same: education was powerful and dangerous. And I wanted it. When you grow up knowing that there are certain things you are not supposed to know, you begin to desperately want to know them. From a young age, I saw the power of learning and relished the fact that once something was in your brain, no one could take it away from you. Sometimes I felt like a squirrel searching for nuts and then storing them deep in the ground, or a greedy child rapidly stuffing candy in their mouth knowing their parents would walk in at any moment and scold them for eating too many sweets. I had a deep insatiable hunger to read banned books, study taboo subjects, and discuss new ideas with people who would be open to discussing them. I tried to learn as much as I could, as fast as I could, and never wanted to stop. After convincing my parents to allow me to attend college (partly due to insinuating it may be a good place to meet a future husband, as well as allowing my parents to select my degree program to ensure I wouldn’t be learning anything scandalous), I went off to school and became the thing my parents feared the most: a strong, independent, freethinking woman. I deeply desired all the things it was so forbidden for me to know. I longed to be an intelligent person who was well educated. This desire carried me through high school, college, and now has led me to start graduate school, and I have no doubt that it will take me far into the future as well. Throughout my years of learning and studying in whatever way I could, the same thing always brought me through, and the same thing always left me wanting more: knowledge is a type of power that no one can take away from you. That is what education means to me.

If I could go back in time and give my younger self one back-to-school tip, I would encourage her to use the school year as a time of exploration. In school, it can feel so easy to get swept up in assignments, exams, and responsibilities, that we can wind up putting ourselves on the back burner. That was certainly true for me, and while I got excellent grades, I’ve often found myself looking back wishing I had more proactively used my high school experience. Being in school, you are able to join clubs and groups regarding anything you’re interested in. You can try out new sports, learn new languages, or pick up a new hobby and have access to leaders and coaches who are experts in those areas. High School also presents the opportunity to meet all kinds of people! Be friendly, outgoing, and open to new connections! You never know who could become a friend (or where your networking could take you in the future!) Take a class just for fun- simply because you can! Be it film analysis, animal behavior, or anything in between, you’ll never regret learning about something you love! Use your exploration time wisely! @samnoelleb1

The greatest problem facing our world today is a distinct lack of hope. Millennial and Gen-Z generations are viewed by many as the most hopeful generations because they are deeply idealistic and heavily advocate for positive change. However, idealism and hope are two different things, and today more than ever before, the former has replaced the latter. As a whole, modern young people believe their future is bleak. Any young person will tell you they know people who squander their money because they believe owning a home will be forever out of reach, so they don’t even desire to try. They know people who have decided not to have children, not because they didn’t want a family, but because they didn’t want to raise a family in the world’s current climate. And just about everyone knows someone who has run out of hope all together and lost their life because of it. When people lose hope, they stop caring, stop trying, and, in some cases, stop being. As much as anyone wishes there was a straightforward answer to this problem, there is not. “Hope” in its truest form cannot be manipulated or manufactured, and at the end of the day, no one can produce hope for other people. That being said, a potential solution to hopelessness may be to teach others to hope. How is this done? Through constant applied effort and genuine care, until people no longer feel alone. Through helping people obtain the resources they need, through being a resource for someone else, if we have the ability, until they feel they have solutions. And through empowering others over and over, as often as they need, until they realize their voice matters. And in helping others find hope, we even may create some for ourselves in the process.

The best piece of mental health advice I’ve ever heard has actually come from Khloe Kardashian. I am not typically the type to take life advice from reality TV stars, but in this case, I make an exception. In Khloe’s autobiography, she mentions the thing that most impacts her mental well-being is her ability to help others. She talks about how, for her, it can be really easy to get caught up in the drama of her day-to-day life, and if she’s not careful, she can get so entrenched in her own problems that she can’t find a way out. That passage of the book really resonated with me, because I tend to experience very strong, very consuming emotions. And when I’m sad, I can fall so far down into despair I think there’s no way out, nothing will ever get better, and nothing I do matters. She goes on to say that service to others helps get her out of her own head, as well as provides her with a sense of empowerment knowing she can make a difference. I have certainly found that to be true in my own life as well, albeit, I had not been able to put that sensation into words before reading this book. Realizing this has really helped me re-empower myself and caused me to be more intentional in using service as a tool when I feel my mental health start to suffer. Of course, helping others doesn’t automatically make your problems or emotions go away, but what it can do is remind you you’re not alone in the world, that people need you, and that you can change lives. It is a tangible way to prove to yourself those things are true, and you need to keep going. And that is powerful.

As strange as it may sound, I truly feel like my bad mental health saved my life. I was at work about a year ago, standing on a balcony and crying, wracking my brain for any reason not to let myself fall over the railing. I was being severely bullied at the time by a coworker who had sexually harassed me and then manipulated management into covering it up. She also spread lies about me, called me names, and turned every single one of my coworkers against me. I lost every friend I had there. My boss hated me. I was having nightmares every single night and panic attacks every single day. I never believed something like this could happen to me. Of course, I had never been so naïve as to believe there weren’t people in the world who were genuinely malicious just for the sake of it, but until that point, I don’t believe I had ever met one. Deep down, I think part of me also believed because I was a “good girl” that people would always like me. I’d never disappointed my teachers or bosses or parents. I did everything “right,” and it kept me safe. And now there I was, tears running down my cheeks and snot running into my mouth, processing the fact that in the span of a month, one person had taken everything I had from me. At that exact moment, I decided to stop playing by the rules. I knew if I left, a lot of people would have a lot to say. But I decided that “living life wrong” was better than ceasing to live at all, so I took a step back from the edge, finished my shift, and left. The next morning, I packed up all my work equipment, put it in a bag with my neatly folded uniforms on top, and dropped it off at the employee locker room area. Then I sprinted back to my car, sped away before anyone had a chance to question me, and blocked the phone number of every single person in my department. My mom was concerned that I hadn’t given my two weeks’ notice, because now I wouldn’t have references to put on job applications. My dad was frustrated that I hadn’t stayed in the job for a year, because now potential future employers may label me a “job hopper.” I received reports that my boss told our team he tried to call me over 50 times but “to be honest, she wasn’t the nice girl I thought she was, anyways. It’s not like I care she left or anything. She just should have told us she was going. She’s so unprofessional.” And that hurt to hear. But I was away from the situation. I wish I could say that meant I was away from the pain of the situation too, but to be perfectly honest, all this time later, I’m still in the process of healing those wounds. The nightmares have stopped; the panic attacks remain. My appetite has returned; my newfound social anxiety has never left my side. Not a single day goes by that I do not think of her and all she has done to me. And yet, I am also now able to think of things besides her. I think about my new job a lot. It’s supposed to be a part-time job, and it certainly pays like one, but it somehow manages to be all-consuming. And I wouldn’t change a thing. I never would have gotten a part-time job before. My parents were horrified. They hemmed and hawed about me needing a job where I’d get health insurance. But I reasoned, what good is health insurance if you don’t want to live? So I got a job that I like. I got a job doing something that matters to me, working with people who matter to me. And it makes me feel alive. I started therapy too. I don’t come from a background where therapy is encouraged. But I needed it, and it gave me another thing to help occupy my thoughts. I started seeking out new friends. I now make a more concerted effort to make new connections and meet new people instead of assuming that my coworkers are going to be my built-in best friends. It’s scary, but it’s brought a lot of beauty to my life. I’m hoping to return to school soon. I never feel more joyful than when I am in school, and I believe that after all I have been through, I am deserving of joy. I look forward to waking up each morning excited about what I’m going to learn that day. I look forward to throwing myself into projects I can give my all to, and I look forward to the day I remember what self-esteem feels like when I get my first “A+” on a graduate-level essay. My new motto whenever I decide to take a risk or step out of my comfort zone has become “it’s probably better than dying.” To an outsider, it may sound positively grim, however, that mindset has been the driving force behind every positive change I’ve made for myself in the past year. So when I say my bad mental health saved my life, I mean it. When things got so bad that I was ready to kill myself, I had the choice to choose death or to choose life. I chose life. And not just life, but life-giving people, life-giving things, and life-giving choices. I may not be the way I was before. I may not ever be again. But right now, I am someone who is able to boldly pursue her goals, aggressively chase her dreams, and live life on her own terms, all because of her bad mental health. After all, it’s better than dying.