Mental Health Awareness Month-Suicide

Therapy is not about placing blame, it is about getting to the root of the pain.

Going to therapy leaves you feeling emotionally vulnerable, but also leaves you feeling relieved. At last night’s session, I talked about the moment, April 5, 2021, I was ready to go. If you have never contemplated suicide, I can understand why this may be complex to understand.

When this moment occurs, typically there are many situations that lead up to this point. For me, I have abandonment issues. I am not afraid to admit this. It is something I am working through. It is not necessarily just people, but it is also experiences. There was this one moment in my career, I was crushed. I thought I was never going to work in education again, because someone else didn’t see my worth. That was a moment to overcome. It triggered me. Honestly and sadly, I have began to put minimal energy into the people who are not a part of my everyday life. There are many people in my life who never know what is happening with me, make assumptions about what they think I am doing and I just keep moving forward. Although I am creating my non-traditional family, this too can be a trigger. These people are not my family biologically or by law; however, they become my family through a bond. When they leave, simply put, it hurts. It feels like death. I spend a great deal of myself pouring into that relationship and for me, when life results in them leaving, I am shook. I am left empty with another gaping hole. It feels as though I am floating in life with no true sense of where I belong. Therapy is helping me fill these empty holes with myself. I am learning to pour into myself.

From the dreadful 2020-present, I suffered too many losses I could handle. So, on this particular night in April, I prepared to die. In my mind, I thought, I do not want my son to find me. That would be too traumatic as though the loss of a parent wasn’t traumatic enough. I wrote down all my passwords, cleaned my room, found a place to hide my keys and bank information and I began to formulate a text to my son’s father. I wanted him to find anything he needed and have access to everything he would need for my son. I formulated an email to my boss explaining how sorry I was to leave such an amazing year. That was it. They were the only two people I felt the need to communicate with. Looking back, how sad was that? I already knew my “911” crew would have dropped everything to come save me and I did not want that. Let me go.  

After I completed all of the preparation, to this moment, I remembered laying down in my bed and just lying there. I was thinking, I believe I am ready. I thought about my son, my beloved friends, the kids at my job and everyone my life had impacted. I just sobbed. I didn’t even know exactly what the source of my pain was, but the pain was there. Looking back, not one time did I think about my actual family. Not once did I even care if my family knew I was gone. They don’t talk to me when I am alive, why would they suddenly care when I am dead?

This led me down a road to explore, they (Specific people from specific situations) are the source of my hurt and I need to take care of me. I began to use my thoughts about everyone else in my life and that outweighed the bad. Now, I am working on letting them go. I feel everyone around me is traumatized in some way. We have all been through situations that deeply hurt us. While I understand their pain, I cannot help them. I can only save myself.  

I need to continuously love Tanisha. If no one checks on me, cares to see how I am doing, or keeps making dumb excuses to talk to me then GOODBYE. I have a true purpose in this life, and I need to focus on me. I am so hungry to heal, if my therapist said, “We have this new sky diving mental exercise!” I would take the leap with no hesitation. I have spent enough time thinking about others, moving forward, I will continue to focus on my healing.

There are many myths about suicide. I think it is important to hear the perspective of someone who has survived this feeling…a few times. Again, I am not looking for sympathy, I am just bringing awareness. In this moment, I am glad to be alive. It is refreshing to hear me say that. I am here to help someone else not feel alone…to not feel misunderstood, or forgotten. Do WHATEVER it takes to heal. You will survive this. Find your place of healing.

Be Strong, Be You.

Mother’s Day 2021

The last time I remember spending this day with my mother was in 2008. Such a long time ago. In 2008, given the circumstances, I was prepared to never speak to my mother another day in my life. At that time, I was fighting for someone else. I wanted to protect that person, even if that meant burning the bridge to a relationship with my own mother.

Before I say anything else, I believe I said this in a previous post, for the beginning of my life, up until the abuse was exposed, my mother was a great mother! She was hard-working, took care of us and was thoughtful of others. When I first began losing my hair, she wanted to protect me from the unknown because back then, it was as if I was the only person on the planet with the auto-immune disease, Alopecia. She introduced me to headbands and soon enough, the wig (Blah). The only thing that I felt lacked in our relationship was communication, which you have probably already figured out, continued to be an ongoing problem.

I grew up in the church and for most of my life and now looking back, the church and the Bible basically raised us. To the people around me, the Bible told us what we should and should not do and that was that. If rules were broken, there was a consequence, but never a personal conversation to learn from my mother as a child. Especially after the exposure of the abuse, I was literally scared to talk to my mom. I used to have conversations in my head and dream of how she could possibly respond in a favorable manner, but the fear was too great. As a parent now, I look back and think, that way of parenting was trash, but then that was “Just how things were”.

So how did I come to the conclusion to allow today to happen? Time….and therapy…and wanting to stop a holiday from derailing my life mentally. As I became older, therapy and knowing who I had become pushed me to shift my thinking. I had to set boundaries. I had to redefine what our relationship would look like. The child in me still wants to have that bold conversation to ask why every year since 2008, but the grown woman in me already knows I may never get that answer. The Tanisha that is healing knows that conversation may not turn out how I would like it and could be more damaging than healing. So, I stick to what I can mentally handle.

Over the years, Mother’s Day infuriated me and was depressing. I was silent about it for so long and then after I began this blog, I knew I could not have been the only person experiencing these emotions. I read posts from friends and people I knew who wished their mother was still on this earth and for the longest, I thought, my mother is still on this earth and she might as well be dead. She didn’t fight for me, she didn’t care about me and why am I the child chasing my own mother for forgiveness when I did nothing wrong?!

Over the years, I made a few attempts to visit my mother. I had to do short trips with no warning to test out where I was mentally. She also came to visit me on a few occasions, but it wasn’t until the death of my grandmother, last year, I really took the leap. When my grandmother died, the pain I witnessed from my mother connected with my younger self missing her mom. I then made a conscious decision to make an effort to see my mother and be around her. I made the decision that if my mother left this earth before me, I wanted to be at peace and not have what-ifs going through my head for the rest of my life. It is mentally exhausting at times. When she begins to reflect on the past, I am immediately triggered. I then have to show great restraint to stay quiet and say nothing even if I want to SCREAM!!!! In the end, I want to know I. Made. An. Effort.

Now that I am a mother, I give my son a voice. The growing pains of having conversations with him can be difficult, but we get through each one. I also want my son to learn how to set boundaries with others in his life. I hope he learns from me that he will never have to feel obligated to stay in any type of relationship if he doesn’t find it purposeful to his life. He can choose how people show up in his life and still be at peace with his decisions because his mental health matters.

So here we are on May 9, 2021. My mother and I laughed and cooked together. Cooking is basically all we can do because it keeps us busy and passes the time. My son and I bought her flowers and had a nice self-care basket of goodies…and of course, a few Colt 45s. Overall, it was a good day. A memory I can have forever. A memory I can be at peace with.

Be Strong, Be You

May is Mental Health Awareness Month

As you read this, I am not looking for sympathy, but I am here to bring awareness. (Excuse any typos…I am writing with courage). I want people to understand mental health is real. I am that person who feels me talking about my mental health is a bother to someone else. I am that person who wonders does anyone actually care about what I am going through? I am a helper, so that has also become my downfall on many occasions. This has triggered so many depressive episodes and over time, I am learning to only help as far as I can mentally give. Physically, I could give so much more, but the downward spiral when it isn’t reciprocated is damaging to me. It reminds me of a statement to stop expecting me out of other people. I told my therapist, I feel I am there for everyone else…in my mind…I just want someone to be there in the same manner at the same intensity for me.

I have been actively battling mental health the last 10 years. I say actively because before then, I was just trying to survive it. I wasn’t sure what I was experiencing. After 10 years, at times, it can be discouraging to feel like I am still at a steep, uphill climb. I have a diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder. Whenever a depressive episode hits me, it leads me down a dark path. All I can focus on is getting out of bed each day, putting one foot in front of the other and sadly, in my head, I have these conversations of why I should still fight for my life. My fight is thinking what my absence would do to the people that love and truly care about me.

What I have come to understand is it really doesn’t matter how much money I have or how my life looks because April 5 of just this year, I was ready to leave. The pain was just that great. What makes it hard is on the outside I look happy, I am smiling, I love my son, I love my job, but on the inside, there are deep wounds I am still working through to heal. I pray everyday, that I have conquered those fears and thoughts to live another day. I pray each day that any emotional trigger, I can handle.

When I began this blog, I thought…if I just get it off my chest, I will feel better. My theory was right. But, when I got to the parts of my life that were too hard to talk about, as you notice, I fell off. Every day, every week, every month and every year I thought about this blog. I couldn’t do it. So I guess my ability to speak on what has been painful is still bottled up inside of me. I can tell my therapist, but there is so much pain and shame. To make matters worse, so much pain has taken place within these past 10 years that have been piled on top of the pain I was initially enduring and here I am. Still standing. Still fighting.

I am thankful to the very few people in this world that I can be completely vulnerable with. (This sentence brings tears to my eyes and this is why this was not a video). If it weren’t for these few people, I would not be writing this today. To you, I say thank you for never judging me. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for supporting me. Thank you for helping me see the light when I couldn’t see it myself. Without you, I would not be here.

I am writing this today, on May 1, because my mental health journey has helped me realize how important it is to a fulfilling life. To me, this is where I will find complete happiness. It is true…you never know what is person is going through. Even if they look like a wonderful mother, educator, sister, and friend. You just never know. Be Aware…Be Strong Be You.