It's darkly ironic that September is National Suicide Prevention Month, because come September 9th of this month, it will have been two years since I tried to end my life for a second time.
April 21st of this year marked the 6th anniversary of my first attempt, and June marked my first year with a proper diagnosis and treatment plan for my Bipolar II disorder.
I'm still here and while there are many times I get angry or sad, it's almost always because I love the life I have enough to worry about losing the things that make it worth living. I'm grateful to be alive and grateful to finally have long-term stability after almost a decade without any.
So much of what I went through and why I did the things I did was because I thought everybody would abandon me if I failed to graduate college or if my career imploded. And it was also because of the relentless blame I laid on myself for those things potentially occurring, when the way I felt and acted at the time was mostly dictated by the dynamics of my mental illness.
In both cases, when those thoughts got to be too much, when I felt trapped and backed into a corner, I finally made the decision to try and end it all because living through the worst-case scenario I had convinced myself was inevitable became a fate worse than death.
If you're struggling with these thoughts, these feelings, with mental illness - you're not alone. And that is why it is so important to normalize these conversations and to explore and reflect on our moods and emotions - things our society is terrible at, but slowly working on.
This is my attempt to add to the discussion. If you know me, if you have my socials, if you're a friend of a friend who has my socials - you are more than welcome to reach out to talk.
Oh, and if you want to know what a Baker Act is like - believe me, I have stories. Mostly about myself. But I'll only share those if you ask.
Below is a letter I recently found that I wrote to one of my former professors several months after my first attempt six years ago. It might also provide some insight into my experiences and attempt to connect the dots before, during, and after the incident.
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Hi Dr F.,
I hope this finds you well.
I know it has been a long while since you last heard from me, but I couldn’t leave things like they were the last time we talked to each other. Even though I had just come out of the hospital, I was still in a bad place mentally. At the time I was unable to see myself as the capable, confident, and kind person so many others saw me as. I saw myself as a slacker, a liar, and a failure. I saw myself as being incapable of amounting to anything significant outside the classroom and unfit for any leadership position or opportunity. Things were tough and there was nobody I felt understood what I was going through. And to a large extent, I wasn’t able to understand what I went through myself until after an extended period of reflection.
As I write this, I have just returned home from my last therapy session. My therapist has been instrumental in my recovery, and if not for her, I would still be wandering around aimlessly. I always said I’d need therapy after college ended, and I laugh thinking about how true that was. But today was my last session for a reason – after a month of working and waiting, I have been accepted for an internship; not just any internship, but an internship I never dreamed I would be able to get. In ten days from now, I will be on my way to Tallahassee to serve as the Community Outreach and Volunteer Coordination intern for the Apalachicola National Forest. I have many good memories of Tallahassee and look forward to the start of my eight-month long assignment. It gives me some form of direction in life and allows me to engage deeply with my passion for the environment.
In a way, I also want to describe my journey to reach this point. It has taken four long and uncertain months, but I feel much more alive than I did back when we last spoke. The final semester of senior year really took a toll on me, as they do many other seniors, but most do not end up having to be hospitalized because of it. While all my new endeavors – starting an internship at the Red Cross, preparing for life after college, and culminating my leadership minor – were certainly bold and exciting, I soon began to lose my grip on all of these responsibilities and my vision of life post-college. Something was off that semester, and I felt it from the start.
Things only began to head downward from there. As much as a person seems like they have it all together, they may, in fact be losing control. And as the semester went on, that’s exactly what happened. There was nothing I really looked forward to anymore: my recent surgery prevented me from hiking, I had lost the energy I once had to spend time on campus, and my internship began to feel like a chore.
While I certainly enjoyed writing my ELTs (Experiential Learning Transcripts) and spending time in Practicum, things were not fitting together there either. I felt inferior to my classmates who had done five internships, been to Costa Rica, or who were just more extroverted and successful than I was. I saw my accomplishments as miniscule and my story as weak compared to their polished presentations. I could tell you what I did, but could I ascribe some greater meaning to it that would move those who sat before me? It seemed unlikely.
And to top it off, the loss of control in my internship and other responsibilities spilled over into losing my sense of who I was as a leader (and a person), and if I was ever really worthy of being called a leader to start with. I did not feel capable, confident, or chosen for leadership and even after a week and a half of hospitalization and therapy, that mojo just wasn’t returning. It didn’t matter how others felt about me and my ability to get things done, what mattered most was my perception of myself, which at the time was at a record low.
In many ways, I could have tried to reach out to others, but when I did, it seemed like the answer was the same: “You’re Steve, you’ll get through it.” And that didn’t fly with me. I felt like nobody would sit down and have an honest talk with me, not even the therapists, but I wouldn’t have really known what to say anyway. The best way I could have communicated was through my erratic behavior and actions, which were so far removed from the way others knew me to conduct myself.
About a month before my hospitalization (pretty much directly after Spring Break), I stopped caring. I was overwhelmed with work and problems; I had bitten off much more than I could chew and the only appetizing way out seemed permanent. Thankfully, before I was able to inflict much damage to myself (or to others), I was forced into the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, and that’s where I spent the rest of my time at college, up until graduation day.
When I first got home from the hospital, nothing seemed to matter anymore. I was disengaged from the world and slept a lot. I didn’t care about my health and I didn’t care about my friends. Apart from letting people know I was alive halfway into the month of May, I preoccupied my time with sleeping, fighting against the side effects of my medication, and going to therapy. Most of June passed that way too.
It wasn’t until July where I really got serious about getting better. I finally went back to Jacksonville and saw a few of my good friends. I started hanging out with my friends at home more and began to eat right and exercise again. I started my seasonal job at Universal Studios. The conversations with my therapist began to become deeper and I started to open up more. At the end of July, I was able to tell my parents that I was feeling almost back to normal.
The end of July was also where I discovered my internship. It seemed like fate, but the job requirements were things that I could do or had already done. Riding a wave of renewed self-confidence, I applied and diligently worked on making my application the best it could be. I interviewed over the phone and visited the site in person. I must have made a good impression because three weeks later, my efforts were rewarded with a phone call asking me to accept the internship.
Since then I have been enjoying my time back in Orlando, filling out paperwork, and being in the company of good friends and family. I have a better knowledge of myself and can understand why things went so awfully awry during the denouement of my college experience. For now, I am back to chatting away with friends, who have shown me a massive outpouring of support since my hospitalization. I am enjoying life again and see my new internship as one of the best next steps I could have taken after college.
I no longer feel depressed and anxious, but triumphant and loved. And while the good feelings might not be there someday, I have built an amazing network of friends, family, and colleagues that can carry me through it. All I have to do is reach out and ask for help.
So, Dr. F., I want to apologize for the way I left things and ask for your forgiveness. You were a wonderful professor and a great influence on my life, and although I may no longer be a student in the Leadership Minor, it would mean a lot to have your support and blessings for the next step of my journey. Thank you for being there.
Best,
Steve Fredrick
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