Yesterday marked 6 months that I’ve been single. To be honest, I never thought that I would make it this far into the year. I thought that by this time I would have either died from a broken heart or by my own hand.

It’s funny how 2020 was considered such a horrible year. For me, however, 2021 has definitely taken the cake. One thing after another kept piling up to the point that I mentally broke and needed to check myself into a mental hospital.

The Breakup

In January, my two year relationship came to an end. He was the first person I ever truly fell in love with and wanted to marry. In fact, that’s what we were planning once the Mesa Arizona temple opened back up. I didn’t want the relationship to end. But he had tried breaking up with me 10 months before. As I stood there in my work parking lot, shivering in the night air, listening to him explain why he didn’t think we would ever work out, I realized that even though I loved him with my whole being, I couldn’t force him to stay. He had already agreed to a second chance and it still hadn’t worked. Sometimes “three time’s a charm” isn’t meant to be.

As the months wore on and I tried to be friends with him, more information came to light about the relationship that rocked me even more. I think that I experienced more trauma in the following six months than I did during the relationship. I finally accepted that trying to be friends was causing more damage than healing. People had been encouraging me for months to cut ties with him, and it took six months for me to understand why that was so important.

I’ve learned a lot of lessons from this relationship, but one of the hardest as been learning to let someone go who once meant so much to you. Two years is a long time to date someone. With the breakup I didn’t just lose my first love, my best friend, and a relationship. I lost his family – his mother, father, and sister who I loved dearly. I lost a future that could have been. I had to bury broken hopes and dreams of being by his side forever, of raising a family together, of supporting each other through the trials, of laughing through the tears. I lost the culture he comes from, one I grew to love while serving my mission.

During those two years I lost myself as well. The relationship consumed all of me and my time. Now I understand how that was unhealthy. I’m not trying to say I was a perfect girlfriend. I had many faults and did a lot of things wrong. He’s not a bad person either. We’re just not right together. We’re at different stages in our lives and despite trying, we could never get on the same page. Despite our good qualities, we hurt each other. One of my good friends once told me that in a breakup one person always gets hurt more. I think it’s safe to say I was the one who got hurt the worst. I’m still trying to work through the damage, pain, trauma, and scars that were left. I’m not sure how quickly that healing will come, but it will eventually.

Work

In April I found out two of my clients had passed away. One Monday I found out about the first one and that he had passed about 2-3 weeks previous. He was from New York. On the outside he was rough and tumble, but on the inside he was a teddy bear. I can still hear the timbre of his voice and that thick, New York accent. I remember his goals of being a substance abuse counselor and moving to the east coast once he graduated with his degree. He would have graduated this summer.

On Friday of that same week we got a call that another one of my clients – who I had just seen two days before – was found deceased in her bed. I remember running into my clinical coordinator’s office, telling her the news, and breaking down into sobs. I started hyperventilating. She told me to take the rest of the day off after I calmed down. I ended up taking another day off, too. This client’s death clearly hit me on an extremely personal level. For about 8 months I saw her on a weekly basis. After her mother passed last fall, we spent a lot of time together working on getting her housing. I remember driving her to get a new phone. I remember the last time I saw her – two days before she passed. I picked her up from the hospital. Once I arrived at the pick-up area, she got up and said excitedly to the BHT waiting with her, “See, I told you! I knew she’d come for me!” Hearing about her death completely tore me up inside. I’ll admit – I was angry for a little while. There was a part of me that wondered, “Why did you leave me? Why did you give up on me?”

A third client passed away a few weeks ago and I went to help the family clean up her apartment. It was another unexpected death. I didn’t know this client very well. She had just been put on my caseload a few months prior and I hadn’t worked with her very much. Throughout the past year I had a smattering of interactions with her and she was always kind, organized, and on top of her appointments. I stood there outside her apartment they day we cleaned it out, letting her sister yell at me in order to get out her frustration.

Death has never been easy for me to digest. I think it’s because, as Elder Uchtdorf once said in a Conference talk, that we are creatures of eternity and “endings are not our destiny.” But having three deaths off my caseload – not to mention other client deaths on the team and losing a coworker on another team – has really done a number. It’s been hard getting close to clients, building that rapport, and then having to say goodbye due to an unexpected death.

For the last two weeks May my team did a huge push to get our productivity numbers up. I can’t even begin to describe what happened to me mentally. In short, I felt out crazy. I was stressed and angry. I felt like I would blow up at any moment. There were times I thought I was going to start shoving computers over.

Halfway through the two weeks, that’s when I created a suicide plan.

Suicide Plans

On May 23rd I came home from church, feeling completely defeated. My heart was broken. I was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. It was so hard to get out of bed and do anything. I didn’t have the energy to clean the apartment, I was ordering out all the time because I didn’t have energy to make nutritious meals, I rarely ate breakfast and lunch, I was forgetting to take my medication, and I would go literally days without showering. I felt like my life was falling apart at the seams. At church I cried and cried and felt that I would never be loved ever again. I felt like my life was meaningless and I wasn’t doing any kind of good for anyone.

Once I got home from church, I sat on the couch and developed a suicide plan. My bed hadn’t been made in awhile so my sheets were wadded up on my mattress. I decided that I would hang myself from my ceiling fan using my bedsheets. The image and plan was so clear that I could feel the material of my sheets in my hands as I sat on the couch.

There’s only been one other time I had a suicide plan that vivid – it was back in 2017 while I was driving around at night and I planned on driving my car into a concrete barrier. The desire to hang myself was so palpable and real. But, even though I wanted to follow through with it, I was still terrified. I knew that if I stepped foot into my room I would actually follow through. Instead I stayed in the living room and told my roommate how I was feeling when she got home.

A little over a week later when I was on vacation in Oregon I wondered how deep I would have to cut the veins in my wrist in order to bleed out. The thought of being dead on the trailer floor was relieving.

The Talk

My vacation to Oregon was my saving grace. I visited on of my best friends, who I hadn’t seen in five years. Early on in my vacation she sat me down and told me that I needed to seriously consider going inpatient for my mental health. The prospect terrified me. I’m used to being the person picking clients up from hospitals, not being checked in. I didn’t know what would happen about work. I didn’t know how people would react. More than anything, I was scared that going inpatient wouldn’t work. I was afraid that when I left, I would be just as much of a mess as before I went in.

During that talk, my friend gently told me that she had hoped my coming out to Oregon would put her worries at rest. Instead, it confirmed how concerned she needed to be for my health and safety. I admitted to her that it hadn’t been until getting to her house that I realized just how depressed, unmotivated, and exhausted I really was. In truth, that week of rest barely scratched the surface of the healing that I needed to do. I loved my time in Oregon and hanging out with one of my favorite people. But I also truly realized, for the first time that entire year, how dead I felt on the inside and how I wasn’t feeling any happiness anymore.

Going Inpatient

The day after I came home from Oregon, I talked to my bishop about checking myself in to a hospital. He agreed with me and said he’d been thinking that for awhile. With his and his wife’s help, I went to a mental health hospital near my apartment on June 7, 2021. He and his wife dropped me off. I was scared. I had no clue of this was actually going to help.

The first day there was definitely a culture shock. However, I was blessed with an amazing roommate and I met some other great people there. The psychiatrist added Wellbutrin to my Lexapro. By the next day I felt my mood improving little by little. I started writing in the composition notebook I got there – the first time I’ve journaled in literally years. During our therapy groups I learned some more coping skills. Most importantly, I realized how I hadn’t been taking care of myself the last two years. I was so wrapped up in my relationship and work and trying to save both of those from falling apart that I rarely took time to do what I wanted or needed to do. I had time to actually rest and sleep and recharge my broken body and mind.

Changes

On June 15th I was discharged. The psychiatrist suggested that I take the rest of the week off and return to work the following week. Over the last four weeks I’ve started making some important changes that I hope will help me get back on and stay on track.

• Physical health – I’m making sure I take my medications every day. On top of that, I’m making sure I eat healthy and have at least two meals a day. I’m slowly making sure that I’m drinking lots of water as well (since our temperatures have been hitting 115 or above). I even started going to a chiropractor for my back pain. It’s been roughly three weeks and so far it’s been amazing. My back hasn’t felt this good in awhile. I’ll slowly start incorporating exercise into my daily routines.
• Mental and emotional health – I’m still seeing my therapist regularly. As of now I’m still doing weekly sessions for the most part. I’ll also start seeing a psychiatrist starting this month. Hopefully we’ll be able to find out if there’s anything else that is contributing to my depression and anxiety. The hardest thing, of course, as been cutting off communication with my ex-boyfriend. As mentioned above, I realized that trying to be friends was hindering me from truly moving on and healing. I wish things hadn’t ended so poorly. And right now, a part of me wishes that we were still together. But as painful as it is to move on, I realized that I needed to cut off all communication in order to start being myself again.
• Self care – I’m leaving my work at work. I’m making sure that I take time for me during the evenings. I’m trying to read more and even get back into writing. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m also trying to make sure I keep my apartment clean – not only our shared living spaces but also my room. I’m even pampering myself for the first time every by buying lotions and products that actually smell good. And I’m thinking about taking a tap dancing class because I’ve always wanted to learn tap dancing.
• Career – It was an extremely hard decision to make, but I realized that I needed to change jobs. My heart aches to leave my team, clients, and current company because I love them all so much. But the stress has been a lot for my mental state. On July 19th I’ll begin a new job at a new company. I feel so blessed that my coworkers have been nothing but supportive to me about this change.

Yesterday when I went to church, I wore a new skirt that I’m in love with, put on my favorite pair of Mary Jane Oxfords, slapped on some mascara, and felt like a princess. A dear friend took this picture of me. That smile is truly genuine.

A few weeks ago, a married couple sang this beautiful duet in church. It nearly brought me to tears because they sang it so beautifully. My soul felt like it was being cradled in soft, loving hands. After their duet I looked up the word disconsolate and realized it’s the perfect word to describe how I’ve been feeling this entire year.

I keep listening to this song on and off. One thing I’ve slacked on over the last two years is my spiritual growth and nourishment. In the depths of my sorrow I haven’t been turning to my Savior. I’ve been trying to trudge through all of this alone. And even though I haven’t turned to Him or my Heavenly Parents in prayer, I can look back and see where They have picked me up.

My next goal is to make sure I keep myself more spiritually grounded. I can’t wait to see where I am in 6 more months.