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There’s Hope For You Too
By Emma Lange
If I jumped off that parking garage no one would even care that I am gone.
The person who cleaned up my guts from the sidewalk would feel no remorse or ill feelings towards this girl that they never knew.
My friends and family would be better off. My coworkers would succeed in my absence.
All these irrational and dark thoughts consumed my head a year ago. I felt so alone in my thinking, but through therapy and the big world wide web of knowledge I have learned that every single person on this earth feels and thinks the same things I do, not in the same time or context, but the same feelings.
Sitting in this building, in this room surrounded by people that I know are here because they are experiencing the same crazy emotions as I am; I feel completely overwhelmed. How am I supposed to act? If I just burst into tears will it trigger someone else here? Is it okay for me to judge someone if they are here for no reason other than their thoughts and I’m here because my mother is dying and I just got out of an abusive relationship?
Sometimes I feel like society tells me to feel a certain way. If it was okay for me to talk about my feelings then maybe I wouldn’t have ended up here. I just want to know why these things are happening. I feel so lost.
I felt a cloud closing in on me that week. Like something was building and creeping up on me. That Sunday night when I got off of work I knew that it was not going to end well.
He hadn’t responded to my texts for almost two days and I had driven by our old apartment more than half a dozen times. I saw her car there. In the spot that my car had parked for years. Did it even matter and did he even care? Replacing my parking spot for a spot for her? It seemed so significant to me, but really where I parked my car didn’t matter. What did matter was the amount of drugs in my system the night my heart stopped and I had to spend the night in the emergency department followed by a psych ward visit and a week of the extended observation bed.
I had never felt so alone in my life as I did when I was locked in a large room with a small room enclosed in glass in the middle. A small room where all of the medical personal sat and watched everyone around them, safe behind their glass. Were they trying to create a more hostile environment because that’s exactly what it had become.
I learned nothing by being there other than the amount of loneliness I had the capacity to feel. Luckily, a year later I can honestly say that although I have days where I still feel alone I have never felt as alone as I did on that day. No one to call, no one to talk to, surrounded by other people in crisis and feeling judged by the people that were there to help me.
I never want to be back there. I never want to feel those feelings again. I let the relationship I was in and the ending of that dictate my feelings. I never want to let someone have that kind of hold on me again.
Through therapy, mediation, exercise and a healthy medication regime I can honestly say that I feel better. The road wasn’t easy and I know that many more hurdles will stand in my way, but I wake up with hope.
That’s all I could ever ask for. Hope. There is hope for you too. Everyone is different and I believe that everyone has a different road, but I promise you that if you are feeling that alone right now there is a better way to live and there are people who can help you and that do love you.