“I remember thinking I wanted to die rather than live through another February day of grayness; I didn’t tell anyone because I knew it wasn’t normal. And normal was all I ever wanted to be.”

“I wanted to live more than I wanted to die. I didn’t know how to live. I didn’t know how I would be able to live life on life’s terms. But I know God carried me to the end of that journey so I could start a new one. In those few days, God brought me to the point of willingness again, to start down a path with an unknown destination.”

“Why did I want to die? Because living was just so damn hard, even at age 10. When all I had to do was get up in the morning and go to school, it was more than drudgery; it was excruciating.”

“I thought that day was the end of my life. It was the end of the world as I knew and understood it. I was taking another step into the unknown, again, onto a path unknown, grappled with fear and anxiety.”

“I knew if I stayed where I was, nothing would get better; nothing would change. If I wanted to ease the pain, I had to try something different.”

“I am not proud of this moment. It is not one I share with others often, and rarely have I done so. It was hard to live through then. And it is difficult to walk through now, 22+ years later. But this is the moment that lay to rest every doubt about whether or not I had a “problem.”

“I’m not ‘different’ from anyone else. Crises and tough emotional periods are the grit around which my inner self has been formed. Some, I have come through with more grace than others.”