Everyone has moments in their life that defines them. An instant in history that changes them so profoundly that they know they will never be the same.
Maybe it is the moment you kissed your spouse for the first time after your vows were exchanged. Maybe it was the moment you held you child in your arms for the first time. Maybe it was the day your dreams shattered, you took your first drink, or lost someone you love.
I have two.
The first, was when I was a sophomore in high school. It was the moment I was writing a note to a friend and I jokingly wrote:
"What would it matter if I killed myself?"
then, I realized
I wasn't joking.
She never saw that note.
The truth that I would contemplate suicide scared me to the core. However, it quickly became my reality. The weeks, months, and years that followed that single moment of honesty were filled with pain, confusion, and a darkness so tangible it was suffocating. It is difficult to describe to one who has never felt the tendrils of depression wrapping their inky arms around your mind, your heart, and your spirit.
Most of the time I couldn't put into words what I felt, but I knew that there was One who could understand the silence, so I spent countless hours curled in a ball in truly silent prayer. Rivers of anguish spilled out in the form of tears. Suicide for me was not a cry for attention. It was not simply giving up. Just as a small child who wakes from a nightmare cries out for a parent to save them, I wanted only to be with my Father where I could be safe from the monsters that plagued my mind as well as the monsters that I knew were real. All these monsters that I could not escape from. This nightmare I could not wake from. My bishop called it
"homesick for heaven".
I was later diagnosed with Bipolar II (also known as Manic Depression).
My second, was the moment I fought my way out of the different, but equally real darkness of unconsciousness into the most excruciating physical pain I had ever felt, making me all too aware that I had survived the car crash I was sure was going to kill me.
It was a normal day, less than a year after I had graduated from high school. I was driving to work when a car going the other direction swerved from her lane into a truck in the lane next to her, over corrected, went over the raised median and right in front of me. I knew I couldn't stop. I hit the brakes. I remember thinking two things.
First: I am going to die. There is no way I will survive this. (I was amazingly calm about this fact. It was surprisingly reassuring that I was ok with it, that I felt at peace).
Second: (oddly enough) Man, I just filled my tank with gas! Waste of money! (ok, so that was a stupid thing to think at a time like that, but there ya go)
The details of that day are hit and miss in my mind. I remember the spider web of cracks in the windshield. Voices. Sirens. Inside the ambulance with a medic telling me to breathe and keep my eyes open. Wires, IV, oxygen mask because I couldn't breathe...
When I opened my eyes for the first time after that accident, I had no idea how my life would be changed. The PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). The chronic migraines. The panic attacks. The social anxiety. The personality changes. The inability to hold down a regular job. The doctors, tests, meds, pain, frustration, anger, and eventually forgiveness.
Ten years later I still open my eyes each day to face these things.
These are moments that leave lasting imprints on our lives. They bring us to crossroads. It is what we choose at these crossroads that truly determines who we are.
For a long time I didn't want most people to know about these things. I was afraid. I was afraid of being judged, of being labeled... as crazy, an attention seeker, pathetic, or worse...
broken.
Something that needed to be fixed before it could be of use or value again.
As hard and painful as my road has been, I am grateful for it. If I were given the choice to live my life over, I would go through it all again. I would not trade what I have learned and what I have gained for an easier life.
"...all these things shall give thee experience and be for thy good." D&C 122:7
God has taken me in these moments and led me through the crossroads that have made me a stronger person. I have learned compassion, strength, hope, and faith. I have gained a testimony of my Savior's Atonement and of His compassion, understanding, and mercy. Alma 7:11-13* is my all time favorite on that subject. I have learned so much about my Savior from those three verses alone!
I have had opportunities to reach out and help others in ways that I would never have been able to if I hadn't first been prepared and taught through my own struggles. I have been blessed with gifts and talents that have helped me in my journey.
I know that I am where I am supposed to be. I will be healed. I have been promised that. But I don't believe the time is now, and I am ok with that. There are things that I am supposed to do that I may be in a unique position to do in my current state. I don't know. What I do know is that it is in God's hands, and will be in His time.
With His help, I can open my eyes each day, stronger than the day before.
~Kassi
11 And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.
12 And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.
