(TW: Suicidal thoughts, eating disorders, and obviously rape.)

I’m going through the usual nighttime motions. I eat some cookies while watching a TV show that makes me laugh out loud. I take a melatonin. I brush my teeth. I’ll relax for a little while longer before taking my sleeping medication. The day will end, and another day will begin. Not one time today did I think about killing myself.

I don’t even think one time this year I have (it’s January 14th.) Sometime last month I had a moment or two where I felt that profound despair, helplessness, tiredness, that longing. But my imagination on the matter wasn’t too vivid. I was in touch with the knowledge that the feeling would pass.

I had a nightmare the first week of the yearish where I died in a car crash, and I spent some time in the dream experiencing an awareness of the end of my life. Among other things, I dreamed an intense grief at the thought that my story had ended; I dreamed a graphic desire to keep living.

A week or so ago I had a nightmare that included me correctly reciting my rapist’s phone number as I last knew it. I haven’t looked at that number in many, many years. My brain decided to let me know how etched it is in me. The dream included other more typical upsetting themes, but that was a notably creative way my mind decided to remind me of him and his inherence to my life.

One of my first nights of the year I had three separate rape/sexual assault dreams. I’ve had a few nights so far in 2024 where it takes a little convincing for me to take my sleeping meds because of recent nightmares. The act of choosing to sleep and subjecting myself to the potential of dreaming of Avery is sometimes really fucking hard.

I’ve been in recovery from my eating disorder again for a while now. For how rapidly and deeply I relapsed, for how quickly I became devoid of the desire to recover, for how alluring the thought of withering away into nothing became, for how unattainable professional treatment felt, I’m wholeheartedly grateful that I’m okay again, solidly once more. Relapsing after so long was a different kind of challenge. It felt like I knew too much to have fallen so far backwards and therefore nothing could convince me it would be worth it to recover yet again. But I did. Not without a lot of help. Not without a lot of loss. But I did. And it turns out, the other side of relapse is a different kind of relief. I’m reminded how lucky I am to be okay.

* * *

As I’m brushing my teeth today, for no reason at all I’m thinking about one of the lowest days. It was 2022. By that point I’d been at least passively and often actively suicidal nonstop for around six months. That day I had gone to the pool with my friend. So many somethings were destroying me.

Instead of getting out of the car and swimming, I stayed in the car, inconsolably crying, and I told my friend to start their swim. In the car, I was flooded with ideas of ways I could go kill myself right then. At least one of the ideas I’d never thought of. And they seemed so chillingly accessible. The thought occurred to me that I was probably legally supposed to inform my lawyer, to inform Avery’s lawyer, that I needed to supplement my answer to his question during my deposition inquiring of me about what methods I’ve pictured my suicide. That answer was never complete to begin with, and obviously I wasn’t actually about to call my lawyer and tell him, “Hey, I thought of a new way to off myself, could you let Steve know for me? Thanks!” And yet sitting there with snot and tears saturating my face, genuinely unsure if I was convincing myself to kill myself or convincing myself not to, the fact that my rapist’s legal tactics still claimed space in my head only made me feel more desperate.

I actually decided that day that I was going to go through with it. I pictured it so clearly. I needed it so badly. I had the car, and I was alone. No one would know until it was too late. Nothing could hurt me more than I was already hurting, guilt for my loved ones couldn’t stop me, I couldn’t do life anymore.

And yet I couldn’t do death. I couldn’t. I was too scared, too frozen (and infuriated with myself like I am every time I’m paralyzed by fear and instinct and whatever else it is that makes me unable.) I realized in that moment that I would never kill myself, because I could never kill myself. I could not imagine being more sure and more ready and more able than I was. And I still couldn’t do it.

So instead, I went into the rec center, and I did my stupid swim. I cried into my goggles the whole time, having to stop to drain them as if they were leaking throughout. It wasn’t the first swim like that, but it was the worst one I remember.

Eventually I got through some version of the swim, I showered and changed and dried off. I got back into the car with my friend who knew I’d been upset and knew about my life and my mental state in general but never knew what happened in my mind that day, and we continued on with the day. I continued on with my life.

That wasn’t some turning point really, other than me essentially accepting suicide wasn’t an option but for all the wrong reasons. Things stayed bad. Some things got worse. Some things stayed the same. Eventually everything improved, slowly, almost unnoticeably, like when Avery first unzipped my green strapless dress. Somehow things improved until I found myself in bed tonight, thinking about how I want to keep living, how I want to be okay, how a lot of the time I’m happy, how things are mostly all right.

* * *

I have PTSD. A lot of the time that just is; there’s a part of my brain that will always be tangled and confused and held down by the memory of Avery. That part of my brain isn’t shrinking, but I think the rest of my brain is becoming more capable of not being so distracted by it. Yet some days, some moments, my PTSD can be really bad, and it sucks. It sucks for me, and it sucks for whoever’s with me.

I am appealing the lawsuit, but the appeal process is slow and quiet, and I’ve gone from someone who is consumed with knowing every single detail and possibility of what’s happening in that process to someone who couldn’t handle it at all to someone who trusts that if I need to know about something, my lawyer will tell me. After all these years and everything he’s seen me go through, he seems to have a good handle on when I need to know something.

Because I’m appealing the lawsuit, it’s technically not over, but I thought that I’d feel like I could go back to therapy at this point, and I don’t. Maybe when it finally really is over I’ll feel differently. Maybe at some point I’ll be able to handle going back. I cry sometimes knowing how much I need it, how much I miss it. I grieve for it. I realized that having to turn my therapy file over to my rapist did irreparable damage to my vision of what therapy is. It doesn’t really matter whether there’s a rational risk that I’ll need to share my file again; knowing that a place that was supposed to be safe, secure, confidential, and healing wasn’t, broke the safety of therapy for me.

I have to believe that will change eventually. I’ve gotten close a few times to being able to have a fuck-it mindset and reclaim therapy. But always, so far, I’ve been stunted by the conceptualization of Avery’s eyes ripping through the words that make me, knowing me against my will. Always, so far, the only power I can claim is in not letting myself become words in a file that he can insist on getting his hands on.

So, I need therapy, and I don’t have it right now. But I learned a lot in my years with my therapist, who did so very much for me. I have a lot of tools from it that still help today. I sometimes try to think about what my therapist would say, and it helps.

I’m doing all right. I have a lot of good days, even more good moments, and I have some hard days and hard moments — just like everyone else. I’m physically healthy. I’m mentally okay. I am not in crisis, and I haven’t been for a while now. I have reengaged with being alive after a drastic withdrawal. An average day in my life is unquestionably functional. I can no longer even see the edge of the precipice I used to reside upon. I’m often happy, and I savor this contentment. I feel more connected to myself and to the people I hold dear than I do to Avery, most of the time. When I think about the future, I feel excited. I’m looking forward to racing, to climbing 14ers, to planned visits with friends and family, to backpacking, to stargazing and seeing Jupiter through a telescope, to making new connections, to days at work that leave me feeling good about myself, to buying a house someday, to reading good books, and to finding out what life has in store that I can’t predict right now but will be so glad to have experienced.

I know there will be hard times. I know I will struggle. I have more to say about what I’ve been through, and I know I will go through more. But I want to. I want to live through the good and the bad. I want to keep being alive. And I do not take that for granted one single bit.