Suicide Awareness Month: You Are NOT Alone

Sept. 10th is National Suicide Awareness Day
Love on the wrist in support

Today is September 13th, 2016. Today would have been my cousin's 28th birthday...

May 31st, 2016 I got a text from my mother. A text that confused me, a text that startled me, a text that would break my heart. She simply said "Nikki's dead". I called her IMMEDIATELY. She confirmed it to be true. There were other speculations of course, but there was no denying the fact that she had taken her own life. 

My cousin suffered from depression- in mass amounts. She fought through it day by day. She still smiled. She still laughed. She still conversed. But even with that there was SO much she was going through internally. How do I know this? She told me. Growing up, I would come visit Texas for the summer. Whenever I would spend time with her, we would stay up all throughout the night sharing secrets, sharing pain, sharing tears, and bursts of laughter. We were close.  One of the things we had in common that we helped one another through was depression, and suicidal thoughts/ attempts. We were each other's safe place. A lot of the pain she held onto, she wasn't able to shake it. We grew up, I stopped visiting as much. We both had kids. Life happened. Fast forward, I moved to Texas. When we saw one another again, it was like we never had a brief decline. We picked up exactly where we left off. Reminiscing, laughs, love, sharing more secrets...

Nikki & I in our younger days

I have the guilt of not being there as much as I should have been, as an adult, like how I was when we were growing up. I felt like I could have saved her life if I would have just been more present. We lost contact last year. The last conversation we had was through text. I was going through a bout of homelessness, and was about to get a car and she text me to check on me. I love you were the last things we said to one another. Earlier this year I thought about her ALOT. I kept saying I would contact her, but kept putting it off. 

I truly believe our souls were connected though. The day/night before she died, I kept singing this song called Leavin' by The Tony Rich Project. I sang and hummed it all day. I drove home that night playing it on repeat. The next morning, the song remained in my head until about 30 minutes before I received the text from my mother. It stopped out of no where. For those of you that aren't familiar with it, the chorus goes:

Said I'll be leavin'

I'm looking for my wings in the sky

My journey's long over and my body's tired

So when I'm leavin' 

I'll make sure I'll tell you goodbye 

I know somebody really loves me

But I gotta be leavin' 

Depression is so severely real. So many people feel as if they have no one to speak to about it. Suicidal thoughts are real, and should be taken seriously. I know there are people out there that do it for attention, but all I ask is that you pay attention. Learn the difference. Don't blow it off- EVER. If someone is coming to you and speaking about what they've been experiencing mentally, don't say 'you need help' or 'I'll pray for you'. Be ACTIVE. Be THERE. Dig deeper. I came across the perfect meme the other day about suicide: 

And it's true. Those of us that have been there, knows all to well how it feels to feel crazy, or alone, or left out. Simply because we try to express how we feel but it never seems to work that way. People avoid the subject of depression and suicide. I have family members that know I suffer from depression, but because they aren't educated enough on it (or because they are in denial that their loved one is 'one of them') they simply ignore it, or say 'you need to get out of that'. There is nothing to get out of, when it hits, it hits. 

The point of this post is simply for awareness while sharing my story of being even more affected by suicide. If you have a loved one that trusts you enough to let you in, don't take it for granted. Trust me when I say it takes ALOT of courage to speak on it. Educate yourself. Ask questions. But again NEVER EVER IGNORE IT!! 

Be safe & remember