Lucky to Be Alive

An incarcerated woman writes of the constant battle for her own mental health while in prison.

William Blake The Inscription Over the Gate (1824–7)

by Mithrellas Curtis

After her arrest at 23, Mithrellas Curtis decided to use her incarceration to transform herself and her life. In her nearly 15 years in prison, she has accomplished many things, including earning an Associate’s Degree in 2015 and completing Peer Recovery Specialist training in 2022. She strives to use her experience and story to help others find hope and healing.

The publication of this story was facilitated by Empowerment Avenue, a program that supports incarcerated writers.

Editor’s Note: Please be aware that this story contains depictions of suicide attempts.

Author’s Note: All names other than my own have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.

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“I’m going to kill myself,” I said to Mr. Yeary as soon as he closed the door to his office. I was relieved it was him.

Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women, the prison where I was 4 years into a 20-year prison sentence, utilized a “clinic” system for mental health appointments at that time. Prisoners had to submit an IMS (Inmate Mail to Staff) form to request a clinic appointment, and whichever therapist was assigned to clinics on the scheduled day saw them. It was doubly frustrating because clinic appointments were only 20 minutes long, so seeing a new person at each visit meant I spent the bulk of the time acquainting them with my background and mental health needs. Fortunately, I’d seen Mr. Yeary a few times in the past, so he was one of two therapists I was comfortable sharing these thoughts with.

“Everything in my life is great. I like my job and I’m good at it. I have lots of friends who love me. My family is good…But I feel like I’m dead inside, like a ghost wandering through a life that’s not really mine.” I took a deep breath and continued, “Always before when I’ve wanted to die, I’ve been in the depths of despair, but this time is different. I feel nothing. I’m contemplating killing myself like it’s a logical thing to do, so clearly something is wrong. I need help.”

It was the longest speech I’d made in weeks.

Mr. Yeary sat back, looking surprised, but he recovered quickly. He let me breathe in silence for a moment before he asked, “When do you plan on doing this?”

“August,” I replied, “which gives you six months to fix me.”

For a long time, I had managed to talk myself out of the thought by reminding myself of all the people who loved me that would be hurt by my death. But that no longer worked. It didn’t matter who I hurt because my misery had grown so great; I needed relief—at any cost.

He proceeded to ask me whether I had a plan and the means to carry it out, and I affirmed that I did.

“Will you tell me what it is?”

“No. If I do, you'll take it from me,” I explained matter-of-factly.

We talked somewhat longer than the allotted 20 minutes. At the end of our session, Mr. Yeary told me that he would have to inform the rest of the Mental Health Treatment Team and that I would have to meet with them as well. I consented and left.

The day of my meeting with the treatment team, I went to work as a GED tutor, moving as if on autopilot. My years of experience carried me through each interaction with a student as I dully guided them through their exercises. I left early and plodded up the sidewalk to Building 2, where the prison’s medical and mental health services were provided.

After signing in with the officer on post, I sat silently in the small enclosed waiting area, my mind as blank as the white-painted cinder block wall at which I stared. I don’t know how long I waited; time had lost its meaning in the bleak fog that enshrouded me. Eventually, Mr. Yeary came to get me and I followed him into the multipurpose room.

Mr. Yeary ushered me into a gray plastic chair that sat alone on one side of a long table. The eight-person treatment team was arrayed along the other side. I felt like I was a witch facing the Spanish Inquisition as I looked at the faces—some encouraging, some concerned, one appearing distinctly annoyed—that studied me. Here was the group that would decide my fate. I didn’t like my odds.

That interminable interview drained me, and I struggled to focus as they peppered me with question after question. I felt trapped and uncomfortable as they dissected me like a frog in a science lab. Even then, a small part of my mind realized the logic of this process—often women in the prison claimed mental issues to manipulate the system so they could move to new housing assignments—but that knowledge was far from comforting. I slumped wearily before their scrutiny, wishing that I were as invisible to them as I felt to everyone else.

A brusque man at the best of times, Dr. Dennis, one of the psychiatrists, actually seemed to be doing his best to belittle and provoke me. For the first time in months, I felt a flicker of something other than numbness. I’ve never liked someone condescending to me, and a spark of my usual sarcasm colored my responses to him.

“When are you planning on committing suicide?” His disdain was evident.

“August,” I said calmly.

“Of what year?”

“This year,” I swallowed the word ‘jackass’ with an effort and stared defiantly back at him.

To my relief, the other psychiatrist, Dr. Winters intervened, gently steering the conversation back to neutral territory. I catalogued my symptoms for them: sleeplessness, lack of appetite, difficulty concentrating, apathy, and lethargy that settled on me like a physical weight.

Often the group of them conferred, speaking to one another as if I were not there—an echo of what I felt everywhere else in my life. I had tried to talk to my friends about what I was experiencing, but they weren’t equipped to deal with it. Most made light of it or told me to “cheer up” or that “it could always be worse.” I had learned to keep my thoughts to myself, to suffer stoically, masking my emptiness behind a bland smile. If I’d thought that the mental health staff would be different, I would’ve been disappointed, but by then I’d learned to expect that dismissal from others.

Finally, they sent me back to the waiting area while they deliberated on my treatment plan. I dispassionately considered the options: They might throw me into a “strip cell” (a cell in the Acute Mental Health Unit where I would be stripped of my clothes and belongings and put on a 15-minute watch) that very day. They might dismiss me back to my housing unit to fend for myself. They might prescribe me medication and send me on my way. They might give me individual therapy. Or they might choose a combination of these approaches. At that point, I didn’t care what they chose.

When Mr. Yeary returned, he told me that I’d be scheduled to see Dr. Winters soon. He and I would start therapy the following week. As I started to walk away, too numb to be optimistic about my treatment plan, he stopped me. Looking into my eyes, he said earnestly, “I’m glad that you told me, Ms. Curtis. I’m going to do all I can to help you.”

My memory of the following months is hazy at best. I recall disjointed snippets and scenes with no logical order to them. I know that I went to work every day. I attended therapy twice a week—attended because that’s all I could bring myself to do, not just in therapy, but in every part of my life. I was there, but I wasn’t there. Asking for help had taken the last reserves

of my will, so while I was attending therapy—and work, school, and programs—I was not participating actively. I was a spectator of my own life.

Regrettably, the Prozac I’d been prescribed exacerbated rather than alleviated my symptoms. I became sick and jittery, unable to attempt more than a mouthful of food at a time or sleep for more than a few minutes a night. Under those conditions, my mental health rapidly deteriorated further. I began having auditory and visual hallucinations with which I interacted. Part of me knew these voices and shadow people weren’t real, but as I felt unreal myself, I welcomed their company.

I withdrew near totally, staying in my room, repeatedly reading the same paragraph of Bleak House by Charles Dickens uncomprehendingly. It made no difference that Dickens is one of my favorite authors; I simply could not grasp the meaning of the words. Sometimes my roommate would try to engage me, but I remained mute or responded in monosyllables, eschewing her companionship in preference to my personal spectres. Many nights, as my roommate snored rhythmically below me, I lay in the crepuscular cell, staring at the ceiling as midnight slowly melted into morning.

Until I couldn’t face another day.

***

I don’t remember which was more difficult: drawing a full breath or opening my eyes. I could accomplish neither for endless moments, moments during which I was assaulted by my own nerves. Pain like I’d never experienced wracked me, seemingly permeating every cell of my body.

I was alive.

Choking on air as if it were noxious gas, I finally forced my eyes open a slit. “Water,” I croaked.

There was a flurry of movement around me and an unfamiliar face approached on my left.

“Mithrellas?” I struggled to focus on the man, but his white lab coat was nearly blinding. “Do you know where you are?”

Closing my eyes against the glare of his coat, I fought to form the word. “Hospital.” I reopened my eyes. Oh, god, it hurt.

“That’s right. You’re at UVA Hospital.” The doctor spoke slowly like he wasn’t sure I was following—but for once I didn’t take offense because it was hard to comprehend anything against the backdrop of pain screaming through every part of me. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

I was dubious, but he looked so solemn that I nodded minutely—and instantly regretted it. Grimacing, I rasped again, “Water…please.” Every syllable seared my throat, and I groaned, closing my eyes with the effort.

“You don’t understand, Mithrellas,” the doctor tried again. “You shouldn’t be awake. You shouldn’t be able to talk. Nothing we did should’ve saved you.” He paused. “You shouldn’t be alive at all.”

Frustrated and impatient, I gathered all my strength to choke out, “That’s great…but I did and I can…And I’m really thirsty.” I stopped to draw a jagged breath; it felt like razors ripping my throat. “Can I please have some water?”

After an eternity, during which the doctor prattled on about how lucky I was (I didn’t feel lucky), stopping just short of calling it a miracle, someone finally brought a large gray pitcher-like cup with a handle and a fat straw. “Mithrellas,” this new voice said from my right, “here’s your water.”

I vainly attempted to raise my head, but the nurse stopped me.

“Just relax,” she cooed. She held the straw to my parched lips and I sipped weakly.

I nearly choked as the cold water sent a white-hot flare of agony through my esophagus, followed by aching relief. When I pulled my lips away, the nurse removed the cup, setting it on a swiveling table next to the bed in which I lay.

I closed my eyes and knew nothing for a time. Intermittently throughout the night, I roused briefly and was tended by an RN named Jameson. He was funny, always making jokes and trying to make me smile. Like all UVA staff, he called me by my first name, and he insisted I use his as well—like I was a real person and not just a prison inmate. His presence was comforting and every time I floated to consciousness, I hoped it would be him who came to check on me, making me laugh weakly as he dosed me with the myriad meds I merited. When he left, I soon slept.

It was daylight when I next stirred. Gagging, I moaned, “I’m gonna…be sick.”

Officer Southern jumped up from her seat by the window and rushed over to hold a narrow blue bag to my mouth. No sooner had she gotten it in place than I vomited charcoal-laced water into it.

Gasping, I collapsed back onto the pillow—even in my wretched state, I appreciated the unaccustomed softness of the mattress and pillow compared to the plastic-encased ones I had back at the prison—and squeezed my eyes shut. Tears of pain leaked from between my eyelids. I lacked the strength to brush them away, so they sat quivering in the hollows beneath my eyes.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “Can I have some water?”

As the nurse had, Southern held the straw to my lips so I could drink. “You scared the hell out of us, Curtis,” she said sternly, frowning worriedly down at me. “What were you thinking?”

I finished drinking and attempted a shrug. I felt detached despite the maternal concern on her face, and I couldn’t answer. The night of my suicide attempt seemed so long ago. “What day is it?”

“Saturday.”

Blinking slowly, I absorbed that detail as she continued talking. Saturday…I’d taken the pills—nearly a month’s worth of Verapamil, a blood pressure medication—on Wednesday night and ended up stuck on the floor of a bathroom stall where a couple of friends of mine found me. After trying unsuccessfully to make me throw up, they alerted the officers on duty in the building.

By the time the nurses had wheeled me to the infirmary—on a stretcher since I couldn’t hold myself in the wheelchair they had initially brought—my blood pressure and body temperature were dropping fast, and they couldn’t feel my pulse in my wrists. As we waited for the ambulance to arrive, I drifted off several times, only to be roused abruptly.

“Curtis!” C.O. Taylor didn’t exactly shout, but it made me flinch anyway. “Don’t you fall asleep!”

“Please let me,” I whispered. “I’m so tired.” My exhaustion was soul-deep, so much more than a desire to sleep. I wanted to die.

“No, ma’am,” he said as he gently removed my earrings—he was known for being a germaphobe, but for once he didn’t bother to put on gloves. “What’s going on with you, Curtis? You don’t have to do this. You can always talk to me. No matter what post I’m on, just have the officer in your building call me and I’ll be there.”

“Thanks,” I murmured. It would’ve been touching if I’d had the capacity to feel anything at all in that moment. But the depression I’d suffered for so long had left me completely empty, a shell devoid of emotions—good or bad. I felt nothing but bleak hopelessness, weighed down by the futility of trying to go on living.

For five months I’d been trying to get better. Since I’d sought help, I’d been going to therapy with Mr. Yeary regularly and taking the Prozac that Dr. Winters prescribed, but I only seemed to be getting worse. Fighting what felt inevitable had exhausted me. I couldn’t do it anymore.

“But please just let me go,” I finished, closing my eyes.

“Curtis!” he barked again. I ignored him, but I jerked awake every time he said my name. Soon enough the EMTs whisked me away to the hospital. The last thing I remembered was lying naked on a table, surrounded by an army of doctors and nurses—and of course the ubiquitous pair of correctional officers hovered nearby, the male with his back turned out of respect for my nudity. I stared in fascination at the monitor showing my vitals. My pulse was six beats per minute and my blood pressure was 43/16.

Soft blackness blanketed me when I closed my eyes, drowning out the noise of the medical team frantically working on me. “So this is what death feels like,” I mused, feeling myself drifting into blessed unconsciousness. And for the first time in months, I think I smiled as I embraced the dark.

The arrival of a nurse brought me back to the present. She gave me injections of saline and phenergan (an antihistamine) and handed me a medicine cup of liquid laxative to drink. To top it off, she gave me a dose of Tylenol, the strongest pain reliever the hospital will administer after an intentional overdose—it did not help.

After she left, I looked around the private room. Until then I’d been too preoccupied with pain to spare any attention for my surroundings. Officer Southern had reclaimed her seat beside Officer Jeffries (nicknamed—mostly affectionately—Grandpa by most of Fluvanna’s residents due to his soft-spokenness, kindly manner, and white hair) in front of the window to the right of where I lay. To my left was a door leading to a bathroom, beside which was a large mirror on the wall. I couldn’t see my reflection from my position, and I still couldn't lift myself to do so. (When I was finally able to lever myself up for a look, my face was unrecognizable. I looked like a Gothic heroine in a Victorian novel: bloodshot, feverish eyes burned from the depths of cavernous sockets, hollow cheeks cast sharp shadows, and dry, cracked lips gaped in shock in a pallid face somehow both sunken and puffy at once).

I was in the hospital a total of four days—the first two in a coma, and another two until I could eat and keep down a few bites of food. On the fourth day, a Sunday, we were to return to the prison. I was given a bar of Dove soap and a travel-size bottle of Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo to shower.

Despite insisting that I wouldn’t need it, I slumped onto the shower chair as soon as I peeled off my hospital gown. I was spent from the combined effort of walking the few steps from the bed and stripping. The shower, too, took longer than I anticipated because I had to stop frequently to rest: lather my hair. Stop and breathe. Scrub my face. Pause. Left arm. Right arm…

My entire body still hurt more than anything I’d ever felt—detoxing from alcohol and drugs after my arrest seemed like the pinnacle of health in comparison—and every labored breath still burned in my raw throat. Who knew surviving a suicide attempt would feel so torturous? Since I’d intended to succeed, I hadn’t even considered the possible consequences of failing.

When at last I emerged from the bathroom, gripping the door frame for support, Officer Jeffries’ chair was empty. Officer Southern helped me dress in the bright orange scrubs I’d wear for the trip back to the prison. The sweatpants and panties I’d worn to the hospital were in a plastic bag on the bed, but my t-shirt and sports bra had been cut off of me when I’d arrived in Emergency.

Several minutes later, C.O. Jeffries entered, pushing a wheelchair. C.O. Southern apologized as she shackled and handcuffed me, locking the cuffs into a box attached to a chain around my waist. She helped me into the wheelchair as Officer Jeffries held it for me. He rolled me out of the room, down the hall, and out to the transport van. People averted their gazes as we passed, but I was too weary to care.

The short drive back to the facility was uneventful. I dozed to the soft soundtrack of worship music as the van rocked me. Upon arrival at Fluvanna, however, I was appalled to learn that I would have to walk from the sallyport all the way to the Acute Mental Health entry of Building 2, a trek of several hundred feet. I could barely hold up my head, let alone stand. How the hell did they expect me to walk that far? Were they punishing me for trying to kill myself?

It certainly felt like it as I shuffled in my shackles, staggering every few steps and only staying upright because Jeffries and Southern gripped my arms. To my immense relief, they removed the cuffs and shackles once we entered the intake hallway of Building 8. I even got to sit for a second and catch my breath. But that was only the first short leg of my journey.

After traversing the long intake hallway, C.O. Jeffries left and we were joined by Sergeant Slate as we exited the building. Now came the hard part: the football field length of the courtyard between Buildings 8 and 2.

Sergeant Slate took my arm on one side and Officer Southern took the other. They practically carried me to Building 2, on the opposite side of the compound. Even with them taking most of my weight, I struggled and had to rest every few steps, so the crossing took several agonizing minutes.

They escorted me down another hallway to one of the Acute Mental Health wings, where I would be on 15-minute watch in a strip cell for several weeks. Before we entered the wing, they directed me to step onto an isometric scale: 126 pounds, the smallest I’ve ever been—and even that was probably more than my true weight at the moment. I was bloated and swollen, my wrists, ankles, hands, and feet tick-tight from the saline pumped into me at the hospital.

My final destination was unlike any cell I’d ever seen. Instead of a bunk, there was a large rectangular structure in the middle of the floor. It looked like a plastic-covered table, but it was solid. When I inquired about it, I was informed that straps could be attached to the metal rings around the base—and my turtle suit—to restrain me if I “acted out.”

“I can barely move,” I remarked sarcastically, “how much ‘acting out’ do you expect me to do?”

“It’s just a precaution, Curtis,” Sergeant Slate calmly explained.

They strip-searched me, and to their credit—or simply proof of the misery they witness daily in their careers—neither woman flinched at the bruises covering my arms and abdomen from the injections or the half-healed cuts on my breast and thigh that I’d inflicted on myself in the weeks prior. Officer Southern gave me the turtle suit to put on, though unlike the ones I’d seen in the regional jail, which were green (hence, I’d thought, their designation), this one was black. It was basically a large swath of thick material that wrapped loosely around me, held in place by a handful of wide Velcro straps; it was the only covering I was permitted while I was on “precautions,” so I couldn’t use it to harm myself in any way—a shirt, gown, or sheets could (ostensibly) be used to strangle myself.

“I’m on my cycle,” I informed them. “How am I supposed to wear a pad without panties?” At the time, Fluvanna did not provide the option of tampons; those had to be purchased from commissary.

“You can attach it to the turtle suit,” Slate said, without showing me how to do so.

Southern brought me three pads and they left, locking the door and leaving me alone in the frigid cell. I had no underclothes, no blankets, no property, not even toilet paper for the steel commode on one side of the room. It was just me and the camera mounted in the corner above the door, watching my every move and sending a constant feed to a monitor in the control booth outside the wing.

I glared at the camera for a few seconds before turning my back to it and trying to maneuver a pad into place between my legs without flashing my private parts at the control officer. (This modesty would soon desert me; I was only permitted to shower three times a week—in a locked cage that I was handcuffed on the way to and from—so once I begged Mr. Yeary to approve my access to soap and a washcloth whenever I requested them, I stripped and washed at my sink between shower days). Giving up on securing the pad to the fabric, I pressed my thighs together to hold it in place.

Exhausted, I hobbled over to the “bed” and sank heavily onto it, pulling my limbs and head inside my turtle suit to fend off the cold. Maybe this is why they call it that, I thought, thankful that it was big enough for me to curl up inside it.

For the next few weeks, I did little more than sleep. I woke to pick at the meals they brought on rubber trays—spaghetti, green beans, mashed potatoes, oatmeal, everything plopped onto rolls (or biscuits) and cut into pieces so I didn’t need utensils—to take my newly prescribed Wellbutrin, and to talk to the Mental Health staff that evaluated me daily.

I had other visitors as well. Officer Jeffries was often posted in the building, so he checked on me regularly, usually admonishing me to eat. Southern, Slate, and Taylor all came to see me a few times, too. Even Ms. Harlow, my boss, and Mr. Henry, my vocational teacher, came to talk to me. They both expressed well wishes to see me back at work and school soon, and Ms. Harlow brought “get well” messages from our GED students.

“They’re worried about you,” she said simply, “and they miss you. We hope you’ll be back with us soon, Ms. Curtis.”

“I’ll be back as soon as they let me out of here,” I replied. I was eager to get out of the strip cell and back to what remained of my life.

“Well, get better first. We’ll still be here when you’re ready.” Though she looked stern at first, Ms. Harlow softened with a smile.

“Thanks,” I smiled weakly back at her and we said our goodbyes.

I was assigned to the Intensive Treatment Program, or ITP, a step-down program in which I was awarded privileges for participating in treatment by complying with my meds and therapy. Although I wouldn’t have considered undergarments a privilege (and any other time, they are a requirement: anyone caught not wearing any may receive a disciplinary infraction), I was thankful when they were the first things I earned back—first socks, then panties, then bras. By the end of the second week, I’d graduated to a state-issued nightgown. Soon I merited a move to the other side of the wing, where I had an ordinary bunk and mattress, sheets and blankets—though it still had a camera. Finally, I got baby blue scrubs to wear. I even acquired limited access to commissary, but I was prohibited from purchasing razors or caffeinated beverages.

One evening, some days after this move, an officer called me to the door of my cell to serve me with an institutional charge. (Prison is a microcosm of the world, complete with its own mini-justice system. Charges, or tickets as they are often called, are disciplinary reports brought against incarcerated people when they have broken the institutional rules. There are two categories: 100-series, which are more serious, like drug charges or attempted escape, and 200-series, the lesser offenses such as unauthorized area or “delaying and hindering”—walking too slowly between buildings. Institutional infractions can result in penalties ranging from fines; the loss of privileges such as phone, visitation, or commissary; segregation—though theoretically that has since been eliminated as a form of punishment; loss of good time and a change in release date). It was an offense code 139 for “self-mutilation or other intentionally inflicted self-injury.” I signed and asked for witness paperwork to fill out for Mr. Yeary, explaining the mitigating factor of my ongoing mental health issues. (Having never used the forms before, I filled them out incorrectly).

The next day, I told Mr. Yeary about the ticket I’d gotten, since it seemed another unfair punishment for my legitimate mental issues. Over the last several months, we’d developed a deep rapport. He was one of the few “safe” men I’d ever known, and one of the few who I hadn’t attempted to manipulate by sexualizing our interactions. From him, I began to learn feelings—first through his emotional responses to stories I recounted of my past, then slowly finding those emotions buried deep beneath the steel of my ingrained resolve to never show weakness. He tried to hide it, but I could tell that he was angrier than I’d ever seen him—even more than he had been when the Department of Corrections pulled me back to the prison so quickly after my suicide attempt instead of allowing me to receive some inpatient psychiatric treatment at UVA.

He explained that the reporting officer (the officer who wrote the charge—he was the one in my housing unit who first responded the emergency) didn’t follow procedure: He was supposed to contact a QMHP (qualified mental health professional) before writing it to verify that I could be held accountable mentally, yet he hadn’t contacted anyone in the Mental Health department. Livid, Mr. Yeary told me he would “look into it.” Several weeks later, I received a form stating that the charge had been dismissed due to not being heard within the timeframe. But I knew the real reason.

Two months after my suicide attempt, I made another step down in my treatment when I moved out of Acute and into a Mental Health program wing in another part of the building. It was 2:50pm when Sergeant Priest brought my stored property box to me, telling me to hurry; the move had to be completed by 3. I’d regained most of my strength by then—and a sizable portion of my belongings had been confiscated by the institutional investigators; it would be more than eighteen months before they returned it—so once I changed into jeans and a chambray shirt dug out of my newly recovered box, I wrestled my other box onto the cart. Pulling the cart behind me, I followed Sergeant Priest down the hall.

Before I could even get my stuff into my new room, chow was called. I hastily piled my boxes in the middle of the floor and ran out. Disheveled as I was, I was thankful to be relatively free again.

Walking into the chow hall after so long was unexpectedly distressing. Crowds of women jostled each other as they threaded between the long metal tables and stools bolted to the floor, picking their way to the drink dispenser or to visit with friends from other housing units. The clamor of voices and clanking trays pounded through my head, and the women in line around me invaded my space. I shrank against the wall, slinking along as quickly as the press of people permitted.

“Are you ok, Rellie?”

I turned to see Kelsea, a friend of a friend of mine. I nodded mutely and tried to smile, but she looked doubtful.

“Are you sure? You look overwhelmed.”

Taking a bracing breath, I said, “Just culture shock, I guess, after being in Acute for so long.” Looking around anxiously, I saw that the line had moved. I moved to follow it around to the serving window.

“Ok, Rellie. Let me know if you need anything,” she called, and I waved as I slunk around the corner.

After picking up my hard plastic orange tray—with a spork!—I sat down and picked at my food. I felt panicked and flinched every time someone hugged me, which happened repeatedly. Within minutes, I gave up trying to acclimate and slid my tray through the dishroom window, escaping as quickly as I could back to my cell.

I shut the door behind me and sat on the floor, shaking and gulping air. It hit me that recuperating from this ordeal was going to be much harder—in countless unforeseen ways—than I realized.

Thus began my arduous—often grueling—recovery journey. Initially, based on my experience prior to my suicide attempt, I had no real reason to believe that I could get better or that it was even worth the effort of trying. And to be honest, my early engagement with treatment during my convalescence was half-hearted at best, a token show of effort to appease the powers that be so they would let me out of the strip cell, and later, the special programming wing, 2E.

I met with Mr. Yeary daily—and why wouldn’t I? It was practically the only time I could get out of my cell while I was in Acute. But soon I discovered that I couldn’t spend that much time in therapy (our sessions were often longer than the scheduled hour) and not get something out of it.

Often in those early days, people would comment on how lucky I was that I’d survived—or worse, ask me, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t die?” I couldn’t muster a response because I honestly wasn’t glad I’d survived. I had wanted to die, and I felt far from lucky that I had failed in that quest. But no one understood or wanted to hear that, so I kept silent and hoped for a day when I might feel differently. That day was long-coming.

Once I moved to E-wing (no other Building but 2 has more than four wings, so saying E-wing can only mean 2E, the mental health programming wing), I went back to work. I only worked half-days for the first few weeks, and even those short hours exhausted me. Instead of instructing students as I previously had, I sat beside them, relearning things I’d known since childhood. Fractions, decimals, and simple sentence structures, all were a struggle for my damaged brain. Every day was a battle against breaking down, but Ms. Harlow and Dez, my friend and coworker, were patient throughout my rehabilitation. And the students showed me more love and support than I felt I deserved after deserting them as I had.

As frustrating and painful as that process was, it was nothing compared to the work I was doing in therapy. The groundwork I was laying with Mr. Yeary actually made me feel worse for a time. It opened a floodgate on memories and feelings I’d long repressed and was not yet equipped to wrestle with. Before learning how to recognize, understand, and regulate these emotions, I often came close to giving up and just taking all the meds I could get (something I’d long resisted) and to push me into a blank fog of mindlessness indefinitely—and really, how different would that be than the haunted existence I’d already endured for so long?

But somehow, every time I reached that precipice, someone in my life—my boss, my students, my friends, even correctional staff—would offer a well-timed word of encouragement, and I found a way to fight forward. And eventually, I built up the resilience to push through and bounce back from difficulties. I learned to sit with the feelings and memories I’d denied all my life, to calm myself when I was triggered, and to begin extricating myself from trauma’s stranglehold.

Today, more than a decade since I swallowed the pills that nearly ended my life and forced me into treatment, I still continue that work. The process is never-ending; it is a lifelong journey I consciously undertake each day. I’ve worked hard to discover my purpose through the painful experiences of my past. Now, as a Peer Recovery Specialist (as well as a Peer Mentor in the reentry community) in the same facility where I nearly died, I use that darkness as a light to understand others’ struggles and help them overcome their own hurdles and move forward.

I still battle depression, but now I practice good self-care, and I know how to recognize the early warning signs and seek help and treatment before it gets too bad. I don’t always need medication, but currently, I’m back on Wellbutrin and going to therapy (with a new therapist; Mr. Yeary left here several years ago). My life is fulfilling and productive, full of joy and warmth.

Though writing this was at times hard—even triggering—it was necessary for my healing. This is why I do what I do: to bring a voice to those who feel silent, to illuminate the invisible, the forgotten and alone. I was and am one of you.

And even when it feels like all is lost, there is hope. The road is long and it is difficult. But it’s so worth it to finally know, after all these years, the truth of the doctor’s words: I am lucky to be alive. I’m lucky to have had the chance to learn from my wounds—whether inflicted by my own hands or another’s. I’m lucky to be able to share my story and my strength. And as long as there is life left in me, I will continue to do so.