One Last Picture

 Our computer screen saver shuffles through pictures. Every time this one comes up, I feel a punch in my gut and a lump in my throat. 

This one image elicits such strong emotions in me, more than any other picture we have. Our pictures from Glacier National Park are still very painful for me to look at, because it was when we came home from that wonderful trip that I broke. But this one picture is 10x more painful than all of those combined. 

It was taken on July 31. At that time, I was going on two straight weeks of intense anxiety. But that weekend, it had escalated, and I was in a state of constant panic. I had to keep walking around my house and around the block, because it seemed that walking was the only way to release some of the built-up tension and painful energy flowing through my body like a vicious poison. I was somewhat depressed, incredibly anxious, and barely holding onto life. 

I kept pacing around my house, wondering how a person could survive such pervasive darkness and extreme anxiety, when I heard the joyful screams of my family in the backyard. They were running through the sprinklers, getting wet, and chasing each other. For some reason, I snapped a picture from inside, but I didn't go join them as I might have usually done. By that point, I was just a hollow version of myself, and I didn't understand how they could be so happy or have the energy to run and laugh. I wondered what good there was left in the world that a person could find the strength or desire to smile. 

The next day, I left my family with a precise plan of how to be gone forever. This is the last picture I had taken, the last picture my family would have been left with as they would have grappled with all of the unanswered questions, namely how someone with so much to live for could feel terrible enough to end it all.

I share this for many reasons. Because I desperately wish someone could understand the trauma that fills my mind and heart from what I experienced. Because this shows the harsh reality of what depression and anxiety can do to a person. But mostly because I want anyone who reads this to remember that there is so much to live for. Don't leave your family with that one last painful picture. Reach out and choose to stay.