If you or a loved is in crisis, please reach out to the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 (United States).
Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. If you know anything at all about my story, you know my history with mental illness and suicide. It’s days like today that put everything I fight for into perspective.
I’ve been thinking a lot the past 24 hours about the nexus of all of this, what was one of the worst times in my life. It was a time I couldn’t have felt more alone and defenseless, but through it all I chose to stay.
Tim Coe who?
It was my sophomore year of high school and my grandma had just passed away, amid about a million and one other things went wrong in my extended family that caused everything I knew, everything I thought to be true, to come undone. Add to this, everything I was going through at school.
There were vicious rumors of a sexual nature going around about me at the time, started by one person in particular. I didn’t put two and two together until years later, but this kid was a bully nonetheless. He would torment me and call me a name that isn’t worth repeating. He would also post disgusting things online about me and get his friends to do the same. It all led up to the day he sexually assaulted me at school, in the hallway.
I did what my cop dad always told me to do in a situation like this, I reported it. What I was told and what was done (or not done) silenced me for years. I was forced to accept a non-apology from him to his face. I was told to “give him a break, his mom had just passed away.” Even at the time, I thought that excuse was disgusting. My grandma had just died, my extended family was falling apart, yet I wasn’t ever going to violate someone like he did to me. I wasn’t prepared to use my grief as an excuse to exploit people. Even so, the fact that nothing was done made me incredibly ashamed. The people who were supposed to protect me dropped the ball and made me feel as if I was the problem. And so, I shut up about it. I didn’t tell anyone, not even my parents, until last year.
But I knew. And it was slowly killing me.
Hold on tight a little longer
I remember standing in gym class and contemplating how I would tell my family goodbye. Would anyone at school even miss me? Would they even know who I was? What would the teachers say? What would be the excuse as to why it happened? I remember thinking up how I would die. But something told me to hang on. Maybe it was God, maybe it was the fact that by this time, it was May and summer was right around the corner. I don’t know, but I did hold on, somedays for dear life. Summer did come, winter did break, literally and figuratively.
The next two years of high school would be my best years of school yet. I made a name for myself being the kind upperclassman who looked out for the underdog. I did a double take my senior year when a kid called me popular.
“but I did hold on, somedays for dear life. Summer did come, winter did break, literally and figuratively.”
That wasn’t something I set out to be or even wanted to be, I just wanted to be kind to people. To be that person who I needed but didn’t have. If that was what made me popular, I can sleep easy at night.
But none of that would have ever happened if I didn’t choose to fight for my life two years earlier. There would be many more times in the years since, for a variety of reasons, which would see me fighting in that same way, a couple times coming very close to taking me out. The fact I’m still here is something I am enormously proud of.
I’m brave for making it this far.
Facing suicidal thoughts and ideation is like staring down death itself for weeks, months, and sometimes, years on end. Just the fact that anyone chooses to stay and fight for a day takes remarkable, superhuman-like courage. Sometimes, the greatest battle is just getting out of bed. Sometimes, all you can manage to do is just simply exist. And that’s okay, you should be remarkably proud of yourself for getting up. Day by day. Step by step. Sometimes, that’s all we can muster.
I could easily be another statistic. I’m well aware of my risk factors. I’m very aware that, statically, there’s a higher probability of me dying by suicide than me dying of cancer.
But I know one thing, I’m strong. The fact I’m typing this here today proves it. It takes an incredibly brave person to battle their own mind, to fight against bullying, sexual abuse, depression, anxiety, and loneliness.
I did, and I am.
I can’t say that I’m over what happened to me. Honestly, the person who did this to me is someone that I still haven’t forgiven. Every time his name comes up, or I see him tagged on Facebook, I get angry, I have flashbacks. This kid was almost my undoing, I don’t even think he’s aware of it, but he was. He took so much from me. But I’m strong. I continued in the face grueling circumstances, even though I had to go it alone for a long time.
If you’re in that same boat today, let me be maybe the first to tell you this: You are incredibly brave and you are unbelievably strong. Continue. Please stay.
It gets better.
Tim Coe 