It has been a MINUTE my friends! I hope everyone is doing well, and I have stayed in all day today as it has been pouring rain in the Salt Lake valley. 

Life hit this girl pretty hard, per usual. Isn't that the case for most of us all too often?? Included in my life's adventures, I have been hospitalized twice in the past two months for completely unrelated reasons (I am pretty sure). Also my drive to go to school and complete my schoolwork plummeted with my mental health, along with my ability to keep up with any sort of relationship in my life. And yet, somehow, I pulled through the lost feelings, confusion, mess, attempt to take my own life, and severe kidney infection, to come out the other end. 

And yes, you did read that correctly and yes I am being serious and yes I might be about to get real heavy with you guys but I promise it's for a good reason. I should probably have more social qualms and boundaries that prevent me from talking about this so publicly, but I have my own selfish reasons of coping mechanisms so, oh well I guess. 

In the words of a great writer:

No on can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don't. 

Stephen King

I just want to say that this is by no means a cry for a help. In fact, more than anything I am still unsure with my life and why I even post such personal things on this blog. One of my biggest hopes is that I can just provide some thoughts for those just like me. Anyone who has to chart their own "blue and lonely section of hell". It may not be much consolation but you are not alone and I am right there with you. 

Looking back, I actually wrote down many thoughts I had right after getting out of my first little hospital visit, and I never had the courage and mental strength to post them. After thinking things through, I have decided to leave a little excerpt from my unpublished post that I wrote a week or so after I attempted to take my own life. It may seem very heavy and nonchalant, but I promise that I do not take these things lightly, and I am not encouraging that form of action I took in any sense! I have promised honesty on this blog though, so I plan on keeping that up. How often are we truly honest with ourselves and with others? So now with that little disclaimer out of the way...

 March 3, 2018

"The main reason I am writing this, is because the hardest part isn't dying or even the part where I attempted to take my life. The hardest part has been after the fact. After it didn't work, and the strange form of peace I had in moving on is now gone, and I am left to wonder what do I have now. Really. I am in this weird in-between phase where I feel so distant from life and everyone around that it feels like I fit even less than I did before. It feels off to go out and talk to people, to run errands, to do anything really. If I felt like I wasn't living life before, it feels like it even less now (how many times can I use the word feel??). I hope that doesn't sound crazy. It is interesting because I have had many doctors and people tell me that life is worth living and to not give up, but in reality it is also logical to think that there are billions of people on this Earth and people die everyday. It's really hard to imagine that one person going away is a problem. There is so much problems happening in this world, inequality, starvation, awful people who believe that they can do whatever they want to others, it gets pretty heavy imagining staying. Especially when I don't see a direction of any kind that leads anywhere productive, happening for my future. I would never ever want anyone else to feel that way though. Maybe that's what suicide does to you, makes everything feel disjointed from me that I can just walk out. Like I'm in the middle of a concert, and everyone is jumping and laughing and talking, and then there's me. So I just slip through the crowd and right out of the gates. But these feelings and emotions are as real as anything, and it is not easy trying to live after suicide. It is like trying to conjure up reasons to keep going through everyday when I've already found every reason not to. 

This might be the hardest blog post I have ever written, to be so open and honest and probably too stand offish about a very very serious subject. It just doesn't feel as serious to me when it is just life. Who knows what comes after this one, but I imagine that we all have had many loved ones who have passed on to wherever that is and they are probably doing fine. I just hope this post can help others going through something similar, to know that you are not alone nor are you crazy. I guess we'll just have to figure this out together and find our paths. Either that, or make sure we are all on the list of people they send to Mars for the first mission to stay. Mars might be a cool place to find purpose, yeah? In all seriousness, paramedics saving lives is real and because of their help I didn't fall asleep for good. Also, because of that one call I made to the Crisis Line, they got me to where I needed to go to be safe. So there is hope for us all yet I think."

Since writing those thoughts, I have actually been able to find a better balance for my life, and I am doing quite a bit better! Not perfect or excellent, but it's all about the little things and goals that I did not have before. It's actually very interesting, because I don't feel as if I did anything out of this world to improve or figure anything out, it sort of just happened. All of a sudden I found myself on the other side of a really dark section of my life, without any notification or epiphany to the change. I walked through some really deep, dark blues and blacks, and found myself wading through some lighter grays with hints of indigos. 

A few weeks ago I met up with some close friends who I've known a good portion of my life, and there was a point in our conversation where we started talking about what everyone had been up to. I found myself not sharing my hospital trip, and instead started talking about how I felt pretty unattached to life with not a whole lot of direction, but in my quirky way made it sound like it was just some grand spontaneous adventure. Which is quite far from the truth. It got worse when one of my friends mentioned how she could never live like that but how it was definitely something I would do, and then we all laughed about it. Later after thinking about it and talking with my therapist, I realized how much that had effected me, because I in know way am happy feeling so aloof and in a constant state of shifting and in need of a plan. Hindsight is 20/20, and I would never have wanted this life for myself if I could have helped it. Of course my friends had no idea that is what I was thinking since yeah, I need to work on communication sometimes, and I am in no way getting angry! It is just something I have been contemplating about, how chances are the strongest of us would not choose the trials that come into our lives, no matter how much it looks like we are handling things. Once again, most of the time I am pulling through on total accident and somehow come out the other side, ha. 

Well, these are just some thoughts and an update about the life of the strange blogger whom you stumbled upon through your social media feed:) Oh, and if you are wondering about my second hospital visit, it was because of a severe kidney infection I contracted literally almost two weeks after being in the hospital, and I once again found myself in the ER. Luckily it was just an infection that I was able to get better from through some kick ass medications, and not anything to do with my gallbladder or a kind of surgery, which originally they were worried about! Now, I am trying to make up work for school that I missed for like a month and it's right in time for the semester to end so let's see if I can pull off a miracle people. 

In all honesty, my mortal ties are few and far between but just from my hospital stays I have received some great help and had incredibly giving people come through for me, including an amazing sister. Despite my feelings of anxiety and awkwardness around those who care about me, I could not be more grateful for everyone who has reached out and helped me pull through this past bit. Which includes sitting with me through tests and scans at the hospital, or showing up to do my hair and listen to me ramble about my existential crisis that has once again erupted into my life. Also, I know I already had a quote in this post, but I have a complete music obsession (as most of you know) and I wanted to leave off with some words from a great new artist named Woodes, whom I'm pretty sure she wrote "Still So Young" for me, no big deal. 

Small flakes of snow or just grains in a globe that you shake

Passenger trains getting slower the older you get

But time don't scare me, no

The future's still so young.

All of my friends

All of their ghosts

They try to remember the days when they drew all of their plans

All of their hopes

But we'll never bend cause you know that once it was impossible to fly

Follow the ones with dreams too high.

I can't see the future but I have to believe that it does get brighter each day that I push and climb to the tops of dreams that some may say are too high or don't make sense. What better way to live than proving others wrong right? Really though, I find that there is no greater success than learning to let others live to do their thing, while I rise up to do what's best for me. I hope beyond anything that you all can do the same!

Here is to a great rest of the weekend, and I hope I wasn't too much of a downer. Life is looking up and as always I feel support just by you wonderful humans who read to the ends of my posts. Once it was impossible for humans to fly, but now we can let our dreams take us anywhere. 

Sincerely,

Jessi Hope

p.s. If you are struggling at all with mental illness or suicidal thoughts, please PLEASE reach out, because believe it or not, there are people who care about you and life will be darker without you. As a reference, here is the crisis line for those of you in Utah. Please reach out. There are people aware of you and who care. 801-408-4118.