Breaking the Silence, Breaking the Stigma

I never thought of myself as suicidal. Even in the darkest years, I held onto a thin strand of belief that maybe tomorrow could be better. But pain has a way of wearing hope down until it’s barely a whisper. My body betrayed me in ways I couldn’t explain, leaving me desperate for relief.

I tried everything to fight it. Stretching, cold showers, Tylenol, long days packed so full of distractions that my mind had no room to wander. But the pain was faithful. It showed up at dinner tables, dulling my laughter. It hovered at work, waiting for quiet moments to press in. It curled into bed beside me, leaving mornings just as heavy as nights. Some days, sitting in the coffee drive-thru, I imagined letting go of the wheel. What if I drifted into a pole. What if the road swallowed me whole and the ache finally stopped. I didn’t want to die. I only wanted the hurting to end. But then guilt would flood in. What if I hurt someone else. What if someone had to clean up the mess I left behind. I couldn’t live with that thought either. So I kept those scary thoughts to myself. I smiled at the barista, took my coffee, and drove away like everything was fine. No one would have known what was happening inside me.

This is what so many people don’t understand about suicidal thoughts. They’re not always about wanting death. Sometimes they’re about wanting relief.

That ache had been with me for as long as I can remember. I grew up in chaos, above a meth lab, surrounded by addiction, violence, and silence. By the time I was eleven, I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder. Medication was suggested, but money was scarce, and even if it hadn’t been, I would have refused. I’d already watched the people around me numb themselves with pills, and I swore I wouldn’t live that way.

I’ve never turned to drugs, but I understand why people do. I understand why they become addicted. Addiction doesn’t start with weakness. It starts with pain. It starts with wanting the noise to quiet down, the ache to ease for even a moment. When you are drowning, you reach for anything that might keep you above the water. I chose art and words, but I know not everyone has that lifeline.

Still, the older I got, the harder it became to carry. Doctor after doctor dismissed me. “It’s in your head,” they said, as if my pain was imaginary, as if I was weak. And when you’re told enough times that your suffering isn’t real, you start to believe them.

Years later, when my pituitary tumor was finally discovered, I had the proof I’d been missing all along. A tumor pressing into my sinuses, altering my pituitary function, disrupting my dopamine levels. The kind of thing that can make someone feel suicidal,  not because they want to die, but because their brain chemistry has been hijacked. The scans didn’t just reveal a tumor. They revealed years of being dismissed, years of being told I was exaggerating, years of silence. And then, as if that weren’t enough, came another diagnosis: pituitary hypophysitis. Something so uncommon it didn’t even cross their minds when I sat across from them describing my pain.

The rarity of it all only deepened the weight. I had been fighting against something almost no one understood, and yet I was told again and again it was only in my head.

I carried that anger with me for a long time. Silently.  It sat in my chest, heavy and raw, boiling when I looked at my hollow-eyed reflection in the mirror. I was angry at my parents. Angry at a world that gave me no stability or safety or soft place to land. And then one night, after my 29th birthday staring at myself in that mirror, I whispered the words that would change me: I don’t have to live like them. 

That was the shift. Not a miracle cure, not an overnight erasing of the pain, but a seed planted deep enough to grow. I began searching for something different. I read Eckhart Tolle, desperate to make sense of my thoughts. I stepped into therapy, where I learned to name my triggers, to unravel them, to walk through them without letting them consume me. Slowly, I realized I could be more than my diagnosis, more than my environment, more than my pain.

And this is why it cuts so deeply when society blames violence on “mental health problems.” Each time a tragedy is explained away like that, people like me are lumped in with someone who walks into schools and gun down children, or who open fire on innocent people in cold blood. That isn't mental health, that is hate. That is anger. Yet, It tells the world that depression, anxiety, or trauma make us dangerous. That people like me are unstable, unpredictable, violent. That comparison is not only wrong, it’s devastating.

The stigma around mental health already isolates. It whispers when someone goes to therapy. It shows up in the hesitation to write a diagnosis on a medical chart for fear of how an employer might react. It lingers in the way people look at you differently when they learn you take medication. It builds in the dismissive comments when you try to explain your pain. Blaming violence on mental illness doesn’t help anyone. It only deepens the stigma, pushing more of us into silence.

I know what silence feels like. I know how it convinces you that you’re alone, that your story isn’t worth telling. I know how it keeps people from reaching for help. And that is why I’m writing this now, in the open, during Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. Because silence is part of the stigma, and it’s time to break both. 

Life isn’t about pretending the pain isn’t there. It’s about carrying it without letting it own you. It’s about choosing differently.

I had every reason to let my anger harden into hate, every reason to turn against the world. But I didn’t. I chose love over bitterness. I chose hope over despair. Not once, not magically, but every single day. I look back and can't believe how I used to feel every day and how I live in the present every day not weighed down every second by pain or the past, there really is a way through if you're willing to look inward and do the work.

That choice is what saved me, and it’s what allows me to give my daughter the love and stability I never had. She will grow up knowing that she is wanted, that she is cherished, that her story doesn’t have to look like mine. Her laughter, her freedom, her joy, they are living proof that cycles can be broken.

If you’ve ever been in that place, staring at the road ahead and wondering if it would be easier to stop, I want you to know you are not alone. Your pain doesn’t make you weak. Your thoughts don’t make you dangerous. They make you human. And if you can hold on, even to the thinnest strand of hope, there is a way forward.

I am proof that love, hope, and choosing a different way can change everything.

If this resonated, I’d love to hear from you, so you know you’re not alone.