I have had three suicide attempts. Each time, the choice came from a desire to make the unbearable emotional pain end. What I didn’t realize in the moment was it was also a cry for help — I desperately wanted support, but did not know how to ask for it.
For years, I felt like sharing my pain and asking for help made me a burden. I felt like it made me weak. I thought for a long time what I was experiencing was a flaw in character, a shortcoming, rather than a mental illness.
I thought if I tried harder, I could be better, different, “normal.” Part of the problem was I was uneducated and uninformed when it came to mental health and mental illness and I wasn’t equipped with the language to explain or understand what I was going through.
Read more on themighty.com