I have been waiting since early spring to write this post. I was hoping to have it ready by my birthday, but like so many other things, that simply didn't happen. (One of my key areas of opportunity and focused area of character work is time management...)

One day in early March or April, I discovered that my birthday, September 10th, is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Day.

I found that extremely ironic.

Some of you reading this know that for most of my life, especially between the ages of 25 and 34, I struggled daily with the urge to kill myself.

I did not really want to share this publicly until I knew I had a really firm "yes" within myself to live. For years, it was a daily battle to say "no" but that's not a very strong choice. The strongest choice is to say "yes" to life, and that is very, very, very hard, especially if you've spent many years in pain, and have comforted yourself with the option to kill yourself. 

Suicide then becomes a friend with your house key. The thought can come in at anytime, and is actually a welcome guest.

My story of suicide has many chapters, and involves many people who are still living and would rather not be mentioned in my story, so right now, I will spare you the details. However, I will say that I grew up in rural poverty, where, for many people in my life, suicide was the only perceived way of escape.

When I was 18, a woman who I randomly met at the gym somehow knew that was something that I was struggling with. She had struggled with the same thing, and had made a choice to live, many years prior.

She declared a Bible verse over me: Ps. 118.17, "...I will not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord."

I just remembered that last spring...

I decided to live, even though life was ugly...

Life became better, but several years later, some really hard things happened in my life, and I became very depressed again, and entertained the option of suicide. That was a tipping point...I gave it back a key, so to speak.

On my 25th birthday, I looked at a bottle of pills, and decided it was time. But then I did a bizarre thing. I called a friend. He told me to wait just 20 minutes. To this day, I have no idea how, in Chicago rush hour traffic, he made it to my apartment so quickly, but he did, and I'm still here...

I got through that, but I secretly entertained the option over the years, especially in my early 30's when more very hard things happened, and my chronic physical pain started to increase.

So here's the point where it kind of broke off for good. A man and woman in my life  who have truly been surrogate parents to me, (you are probably reading this, and you know who you are!), took me to dinner. I confided in them that I was secretly contemplating suicide almost daily. They are unflappable. They simply exchanged glances, and my "Mom", said that if I did it, she'd kill my "skinny little a**."

Somewhere in the Bible, it says that laughter is like good medicine. I swear I started to laugh so hard that any suicidal tendency I had ever had broke off me in that moment, but there was more! My Father added to a story. He launched into telling me that when he and my mom were first married, he had jokingly threatened his new bride that if she dared die before he did, he would have her laid out in a red bikini. (She had one and he really liked it...). He proceeded to tell me that if I took my own life, he would do the same to me. (And since I knew he'd be the one preaching my funeral, he would not hesitate to carry out his threat...)

That idea was so funny and horrifying to me, and I swear I laughed so hard...I took back the key. Every time Suicide would knock on my door, I would remember that story, and would start laughing so hard, and tell it to go away!

I realize that sounds utterly bizarre, but whatever. It worked for me. This past year, I have also realized that saying no is not a strong enough choice...I actually need to say yes to living fully.

I know that is going to involve opening myself to experiencing pain instead of hardening myself to it and giving myself the option to escape it. And in that choice, I will also be making the choice to fully love myself...a choice I never knew until recently was actually an option. Now I know it's what everything hinges upon...

So I've said "yes" to living, and I hope my sharing this helps someone else establish their "yes"...