santos scribes

_{*CONTENT WARNING* this writing contains the authors experience with suicidal ideation & mental health- reader take care-}

The first time I considered suicide was the Fall of 2004. I was 23. I didn’t know about Adoptee Remembrance Day (October 30th), Adoption Awareness Month (est. November,1993) or Foster Care Awareness Month (est. May,1988).

My “best friend” at that time told me over the phone with her signature nonchalant schadenfreude that my high school sweetheart had recently married a formerly close friend of mine. The couple had begun dating years before which had been its own painfully dry pill to swallow, but my youthfully fragile mind had not yet considered the thought of marriage for them.  The news, as well as its delivery, gutted me. Or rather, it excavated the well of trust, love and relative comfort my relationships with these people had helped me begin to build.

Forever I had carried hollowed out spaces within my sense of Self; a by-product of losing my family at such a young age and never quite fitting into the one that adopted me. Both of these seemly kind, lovably flawed kids had in our recent past felt like what I imagined family to feel like. We experienced a kinship that was deeper than our surface labels and even as we hadn’t talked in years a part of me had held on to a sort of masochistic hope we would be close again in the future- that they would date and break up (like every other relationship did) and we would all laugh & reminisce about it someday but their marriage announcement, their own legally binding contracts changed all that in an instant for me.  

Even as I can rationally see from the outside looking in that my reaction(s) didn’t fit their crimes, the experience marked the beginning of my decade’s long challenges with suicidal ideation and mental health. The marriage announcement was transcribed as permanent loss(es) in my internal systems, emulating the all too familiar battering of losses I experienced as a baby and child. With no one to talk with about how I was feeling, without the language or awareness of what might be going on or coming up for me at this time, my mind grew dark; darker than ever before and a place I now affectionately call “The Hallway” appeared. 

When I feel my most lost, in times of extreme duress and overwhelm, this is where my mind goes, returns to really: a pitch black, narrow hall of nothingness dotted by doors with no handles, lights with no bulbs and the innate nagging sense of an outside but no real way to get there or rather only one -very real- way to get there, to get out of, to get out beyond the pain of my own self-loathing and emptiness.  

Most of us who understand and experience suicidal ideation understand it is less about wanting to die and more about wanting the insatiable pain of that “hallway” to end.  

Every day I wake in a body and with a brain, in a world where I was permanently discarded by the people who gave me life, by my parents who never mind their reasons, their circumstances or their limits decided- voluntarily- to terminate their parental rights of me and in doing so, turned me over to a world and a life where everyone would tell me I should be grateful for it.  

Grateful, at 5, for the mother and father sized holes in my heart and psyche.  

21 years removed from or into this journey, I would love to tell you I don’t struggle with suicidal thoughts or my mental health anymore. I’d like to tell you that mostly because I too live in a world where our collective mental health has never been worse and still the topic is so unbelievably taboo.  

What I can say is this:  

I struggle far less these days. The last time I was in the hallway was this summer, July, just before my 44^th birthday and before that it had been two years almost to the day.  

I have the right people and professionals in my life. The right tools and practices in place so when the darkness comes, I have an easier time remembering I can hold my own hand, I can call out from the darkness of the hallway, that there are people who love me and can help, people who hold a piece of my specific light to reflect back to me in troubling times. 

I’ve learned to practice compassion for my extremely scientific, animalistic brain and to celebrate the brilliance of my ever expansive and curious mind and nature.  

I continue almost daily to practice the radial acceptance of things that once felt unacceptable, of things I cannot fix or change about myself or my past experiences. 

But perhaps most helpful to me, as of late, I try to remember and remind myself as often as I can; I am here.  

This year’s Adoptee Remembrance Day hit different. Perhaps because my most recent time in the hallway was just three months ago and so when I lit my candle that day, when I let myself feel the emotional discourse and collective grief of all my adopted sisters, brothers and folx who share similar struggles and also the pain of those who did not survive their mental health crisis’, I counted myself too, for the first time ever- I struck that match and said; I am here. 

and as long as that’s true, I am no one’s statistic and my own fucking miracle.  

author’s note

if you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health you can call or text 988 for immediate help- Research shows Adopted Persons are 4 times more likely to attempt to take our own lives than people who aren’t adopted and still so many of us suffer in shame and in silence. I share this piece of my story so that one less person is silenced, one less person is shamed, may my liberation be yours as well. November is Adoption Adoptee Awareness Month. For years this month was used to promote adoption and now it is a month for Adoptee’s to reclaim & amplify our voices as well as share the deeper, lifelong complexities some Adoptee’s experience. Today, November 3rd was my relinquishment day, the day my parents gave me up- 38 years ago- and 12 years ago, on this day (in 2013) I got my family back, legally and by way of marriage to my husband Robert and our beautiful son who at the time was just 5 months old- our daughter, 5 now turns six in a couple weeks- thanks for being here – take good care of yourselves and others out there xo, S.