"The Farthest You've Ever Seen" (for World Suicide Prevention Day)

Today, September 10th, is World Suicide Prevention Day. If you need help, you can now call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988, and I keep a longer list of helplines available on my resource page.

This past Sunday Leigh and I took a trip to Western North Carolina for our sixth wedding anniversary, and since Laila is still a fun-sized human, she came with us. We took a hike on the Art Loeb trail and paused on the peak of Tennent Mountain, more than 6,000 feet above sea level. I glanced back over my shoulder at Laila, who was riding in style in a snazzy hiking backpack, as she gazed out over the landscape, wide blue eyes taking in the vastness of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“Laila!,” I said, “This is the farthest you’ve ever seen!”

“Almost,” by Introvert Doodles

I keep thinking about a comic I first saw on The Trevor Project’s Instagram feed, created by Introvert Doodles. “There are four secret words I’ve never said out loud,” the comic creator writes: “I almost missed this.” I thought about these words on the top of Tennent Mountain, seeing through my child’s eyes the beauty all around us, hearing the buzzing of the bees and tasting the fresh blueberries, all anew. And I thought about a note Leigh wrote me, after I’d done a brief stint back in the hospital two years ago, about how she’d miss me and how she thinks that even if she’d never met me, she might miss me anyway. I almost missed this.

It’s a quiet little mantra for those of us who have survived suicide and/or suicidal thoughts and feelings. I could have missed this, and I didn’t, and I’m so grateful to be here, to be alive, to feel the weight of my 10-month old in my hiking backpack and hear her running burble commentary. And that gratitude has been hard-learned and hard-won, and I’m grateful to be able to say that, too.

It’s why I have a semi-colon tattooed on my forearm after a quote from one of Paul’s letters to the messy communities in Corinth — it reads “My grace is sufficient for you;” — because of Amy Bleul’s idea that it could symbolize a sentence that could have ended, but instead continued. What feels like an end can be a continuation, even a new beginning.

In my experience, living with suicidal ideation sometimes feel like there’s a fog in front of your eyes, like you just can’t see far enough in front of you to be able to see any way forward; and then other times, it’s as if you can only see things from too far away, only see big and horrible and seemingly immovable things and can’t see the ground right under your feet.

And so I stood on Tennent Mountain and looked out over the farthest my kiddo had ever seen in the ten months of her life.

And I also looked down at the rocks and the dirt and blueberry patches and the buzzing bees content to be about their vital work.

And I was grateful.

Please, if you are reading this:

There is such beauty to be seen, I promise.

You will see both farther and closer than you feel like you can right now, I promise.

We need you.

Please stay with us.

Please don’t miss this.

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Remember: If you or someone you know needs help, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, and I keep a longer list of helplines available on my resource page.