To everyone who's been a part of my life over the last year and a half,
Thank you. Thank you for holding my hand and supporting my battle against my mental illnesses. Thank you for loving me when I did not know how to love myself. Thank you for constantly picking me and helping me find hope and more importantly find help.
I want to thank you for holding me back during my high moments, when I thought I was invincible and could do anything. For forgiving me for the recklessness that came with that. For staying up with me till 3 a.m., making plans that would never happen and dreaming of dreams that were inconceivable but felt real in that moment.
For supporting me during the low that followed the high. My sudden realization that the dreams I had and the plans I made would not happen. Caused by the reality check that I still managed to give myself. The bitterness I expressed because I was so mad. Mad at the world, mad at myself and you. Why was I mad? That's a great question with an answer that I will probably never know or understand. So thank you for forgiving me for what I said when I was angry. For I did not mean what I said because at that moment, I did not know any better.
And my relapse, oh my god, my relapse. I had finally began to believe I was okay and receiving help was okay. But then everything shifted and I thought that nothing was okay. The time when everything felt like the end of the world. But you helped me realize that this was just one bump in the long road I had ahead of me. Even when I forgot that, you tried your best to remind me of this.
Then there's my classmates: the people who watched me continually leave class because I couldn't stop shaking and couldn't stop crying because I had an anxiety attack in class. I was crumbling under the stress that I had created by thinking that I could handle a rigorous course schedule, several clubs, two sports and a sorority all in one semester. But I continued in this self-destructive cycle because I thought that I could handle it all. Thanks for trying to making me feel as normal as you could during this time.
Throughout this last year and a half, I've struggled. I have heard many times that is not other people who saved your life, but yourself. But throughout my recovery, the love and the hope I have received from others has helped me find it within myself.
I'd like to add my favorite quote by Jamie Tworkowski: "You'll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living, breathing screaming invitation to believe better things."
I believe better things are to come and that we were all put on this earth to love ourselves and one another.
