Audra Day sings “I’ll rise up in spite of the ache, I’ll rise up and I’ll do it a thousand times.” Since I was a little girl, I knew something wasn’t right about how I reacted to others and to how I always felt so far away and different. I had a serious fear of abandonment, and it grew as I grew older, often making me jealous, resentful, and desperate. I suffered more than a child or teenager should ever suffer inside their own mind and it continued into adulthood. In my late teens, I was finally diagnosed with generalized anxiety and depression. As a young adult, PTSD became part of my diagnosis. When I was in a relationship in which I loved the man more than the sun and stars, my depression and anxiety became extremely severe and although he tried, he was tired, worn and I’m sure frustrated and had to leave me after 7 years when I suddenly lost my job and then spiraled downhill, losing myself and not understanding how to get out of it and crying wolf over and over that I would try. When he left, I admitted myself into a psychiatric ward, was released and started to learn to love myself again. Things quickly fell apart again when I was told more and new details to my newly broken relationship and my depression became worse, even after being released from an intensive outpatient therapy program, in which I had been newly diagnosed with atypical depressive personality disorder, finally explaining why I made so many things miserable for the man and the events I loved, along with my family and myself. At this point, I felt like dying without him, which is an entirely normal feeling when a relationship you become devoted to, (flawed by mental health or flawed by natural circumstance, positive or sometimes stressful, no matter how it is) ends. I blamed myself heavily for all and any faults and flaws, attempted passive suicide, which I had even done in my most desperate moments months before anything triggered my breakdown (if you don’t know what passive suicide is, please research it because only until I came back into therapy did I learn of this and what I was doing) and began self harming. Every day I watch my parents break to pieces trying to help me and love me unconditionally, because that is what love is, no matter who you are or where you’re from. You don’t give up on the people you love, no matter how hard the fight is, and mental illness makes it SO hard to keep that unconditional love alive. No matter who supported me or loved me in other parts of my life, all I wanted was my best friend back and felt as though my disease broke me down, killed everything I loved, lose the love and the patience of the person I loved more than life and most importantly, lose myself and who I was deep down somewhere inside. Truth is, I’m still in recovery. The reality of mental illness is that it is in fact a disease. It is a serious, vicious and life crippling disease of the mind and brain, and it ends up affecting your heart and the people around you. It takes away from their happy life as they watch you suffer and do the best they can to hold your hand through it all. And the other truth is that we can’t do this alone. I could never get through the agony without organizations or groups such as NAMI and the people in these organizations who are there to keep you together when the people you love are worn down and need to walk away to save their own sanity, which I still blame myself for, as we all do who fight this, but understand as well. And this is why I’m asking you to try and open your heart to donating to sponsor me walking on Saturday in Hartford. I’m doing it on my own. Because sometimes, those of us who feel like we want to die or can’t ever get back what we once had, we need to pick up our broken pieces and do it on our own. I don’t even expect 10 or 5 dollars from any of you. But I would give the world to raise at least my goal, because without the financial support, the resources for mental health is SO much more limited and rare than you can imagine and we need it more than many people understand. Every day we lose our loved ones to suicide and if you can save a life by giving us the resources and a chance at them, the family of their loved ones will forever be a part of you in heart and spirit and thanks.