2,107 Sunsets Ago

One hundred and thirty two Americans successfully ended their lives on December 21, 2015. I should have been among them. My plans had been in the making for five long and painful months. That day and everything leading up to it changed who I was forever.

Imagine having your face pressed against a hot stove burner. The pain and the heat are unbearable. Now imagine that this pain never goes away. You can only sleep for about twenty minutes at a time before the pain wakes you up. You wake up feeling like your head is submerged in boiling water. Imagine being sent to one doctor after another, none of them able to give you an answer as to why this is happening. This was my life in the months leading up to my suicide attempt.

I had gastric sleeve surgery on June 9, 2015. I just knew that it was the key to changing my life forever. It certainly was, but not in the way that I expected.

My descent into tragedy began with severe, debilitating migraines. For a few weeks I could barely even sit up without unbearably painful pounding in my head. Whatever caused this finally subsided, much to my relief.

I went downtown with my dad and stepmom after weeks of being laid up with the migraines. I looked up at the sun shining down on me. Just that simple little thing made me feel so happy to be alive. I had no idea that it was the last time I would ever enjoy the sun shining on me.

Early in July of 2015, I woke up feeling like my skin from the neck up was on fire. It wasn't just pain. I could have handled just pain. It was the intense heat that made it so miserable. My skin was bright red. I assumed that I had a very high fever. I went to the doctor and was shocked that I didn't have a fever at all.

Day after day, this pain and heat never went away. If you were to touch my cheek, you would pull your hand away quickly because the heat would make your finger burn. What followed was months of doctors and tests that brought no answers. I was tested for Hodgkin's lymphoma, rare endocrine diseases, thyroid disease, and more.

Labs showed that I had hyperthyroidism at a critical level. It seemed that we finally had an answer. Hyperthyroidism can cause excessive sweating and flushing. I was prescribed the beta blocker Atenelol to help with the symptoms. I took one of the Atenelol and within twenty minutes I was scared to death that my heart was about to stop.

I went to the ER where they did an EKG. My pulse was only forty four and irregular. Needless to say, they told me not to take the Atenelol anymore. My heart rate went back to normal when it wore off.

By this time, everything I had been through was really getting to me emotionally. My mental health was plummeting quickly. The pain and heat were not only unbearable, but they were constant. The only thing that brought minor relief was having a fan blowing on my face constantly. Gradually, I stopped participating in life. I sat on the couch at my mom's apartment with the fan blowing on me, dreaming and praying for this to all go away.

Mom and I lived three apartments down from each other in the same building. I was so sure that I must be dying, that I was afraid to be alone. I stayed at Mom's apartment for that reason. I had no idea, at the time, that I had a very harmless disease that just happened to cause severe pain.

I hid that bottle of Atenelol in a special place. There were twenty nine pills left in the bottle. If worse came to worse, I would end this pain myself. It was a plan that was sure to work.

I cried when the doctor called and told me that my thyroid levels were fine now, so that couldn't be why I felt like I was being burned alive. Every other doctor had no answers. Every test came back normal.

A friend of mine had the silliest idea. She said to type into Google, “Why does my skin feel like it's on fire?” It seemed so dumb, but I was desperate, so I tried it. Every search result was about a skin disease called rosacea. It really seemed to fit what I was going through. I made an appointment with a dermatologist, really hoping that I had finally found an answer.

When the dermatologist's assistant walked in, she looked at my dark red skin with shock, saying, “Wow, you look really uncomfortable!”

That was the understatement of the year.

The dermatologist walked in and looked at me, saying, “No, you don't have rosacea. Rosacea doesn't cause pain. Let me go ask the head dermatologist what she thinks.”

I thought that I was going to die right then and there. This seemed like my last hope of ever knowing what the heck was wrong with me.

The head dermatologist walked in and looked at me as I sat on the exam table, on the brink of tears.

She will never know how much it meant just to hear her finally declare the name of what had ruined my life.

“You have erythematotelangiectatic rosacea,” she said, matter of factly.

“In layman's terms, it's called flushing rosacea. It's the type that causes pain and discomfort in some people. I'll write you a prescription for minocycline.”

With that, the visit was over. I began taking the prescription immediately, hoping that it was the cure. Needless to say, I didn't know much about rosacea at that point. Thankfully, I didn't know that there is no cure.

I learned later that rosacea lies dormant until something triggers it to manifest. My weight loss surgery was the trigger. It's a progressive disease, affecting the tissues of the skin and eyes. It causes no symptoms at all in many people, but other people experience pain, flushing, disfigurement, nerve damage, and even blindness from it. The disease has numerous triggers that can cause flare ups. Number one on that list is sunlight. There are also numerous foods and medications that can trigger flare ups.

After about three weeks of the medicine not working, I called the dermatologist's office, saying that the pain was actually getting worse and not better.

She said, “Oh, that medicine takes about three months to start working.”

I dropped the phone, crying harder than I ever had before. Mom asked what was wrong. I just sobbed, saying that I couldn't live for three more months like this. It was November of 2015 by then.

I thought back to all the times I kept on hoping that this would be over. I had hoped to be better in time for my cousin's Halloween party in October. That didn't happen. I thought for sure that I would be better by Thanksgiving. That didn't happen either. This time I just knew that I would be better by Christmas. I had to be. If I missed Christmas with my family, I knew that would be the end of me.

I had a long history of suffering from depression. I was only ten years old the first time suicide entered my mind as a possibility of ending all pain. Christmas had saved me many times. Anyone who knows me knows how obsessively I love Christmas. Many bouts of depression had led me to suicidal ideation, but I always hung in there because I wanted to experience one last Christmas first. By the time I experienced the joy of Christmas with my family, I always remembered how much I had to live for and why I wanted to be alive. I hoped that Christmas would save me once again.

By this time the depression was so deep that there was nothing to my life anymore. I sat on Mom's couch with the fan blowing on my face, bringing minor relief from the fire burning from within me. I dozed off here and there for short periods of time before the pain woke me up again. I woke up feeling like someone had just poured boiling water over my head. I didn't talk much. If I talked at all, I had nothing kind or positive to say. I didn't do anything. I didn't eat or drink unless Mom brought something over to me. I cried every day, just wanting it to all be over.

You might be thinking to yourself, “I know someone who has rosacea and she lives a normal life.”

Please understand two things. First of all, I had the worst case of it that the dermatologist had ever seen. Due to the severity of it, she didn't even think that could be the correct diagnosis at first. Second of all, rosacea wasn't my biggest problem – depression was. Real, biochemical depression is like a cancer that takes over and distorts everything. I really was in severe physical pain, but if it weren't for falling into the deep abyss of depression, the disease probably would not have immobilized me.

For all of the physical inactivity, my mind was very active. I observed people in a way that I never had before. I noticed how much they complained about things that they should be grateful for. For example, Mom's friend sat at the table ranting to her about how long she had to wait in line at the store. I thought to myself that I would give anything just to be able to go to a store. I resented her complaining, as she sat there healthy and pain-free. I would have traded lives with her in a heartbeat.

My life before the disease wasn't anything to be proud of. I clung to depression as though it were my security blanket. It was toxic, but it was familiar to me. I refused to leave the abyss, because it was my home. If there was nothing to be sad about, I would quickly create some cause for my sorrow and misery.

I spent most of my time online, looking for someone to chat with. I often caused drama with other people. I was very insecure. If I'm honest with myself, I was a toxic friend. I felt entitled to people's attention, not respecting that anyone was allowed to have a life outside of me and my need of them.

I was very stuck in a victim mentality. I felt unjustly deprived of happiness. I blamed everything and everyone but myself for the situation I was in.

I was also a very inactive person. I didn't cook, hardly ever cleaned, and hardly went anywhere. None of this was my fault, though, I believed. I also believed that I was powerless to change any of it.

As I sat there, day after day, I imaged how different my life was going to be when I got better. I was going to be grateful for every moment without pain. I wasn't going to complain about stupid things anymore. I wouldn't waste all of my time online anymore. Now that real drama had entered my life, I was finished with needless, petty drama. I dreamed of being able to learn how to cook. I wasn't going to be a victim anymore. If I survived this disease and the pain that it brought, everything else in life seemed easy to overcome.

All of those hopes and dreams seemed to evaporate away on the morning of December 21, 2015. I had thought for sure that I was going to better in time for Christmas, but I woke up on this day with worse pain than I had ever experienced before. I knew that I was going to miss Christmas with my family. Christmas wouldn't save me this time. If that was gone, all of my hope vanished with it.

Worse than that, a close family member had recently berated me, saying what a burden I was. He was right. I couldn't make myself well again, but there was another way that I could stop being a burden and end my pain too. I felt pressured to make sure that Mom didn't have to watch me suffer or take care of me anymore. She never would have wanted me to do what I did next, though. I found the bottle of Atenelol in it's secret place and discreetly put it in my pocket.

I petted my cat tenderly and whispered, “I love you,” one last time.

Mom was in the kitchen, cooking shrimp stir fry for me. I had started the paleo diet when I read that it helped some people with rosacea. She was kind enough to cook the meals for me, eager to do anything to help me.

With tears threatening to fall from my eyes, I said, “I'm going to my apartment. I think I left a gift for my cousin down there. I'll be right back.”

“Hurry back,” she said.

“This will be done cooking in about ten minutes,” she smiled.

I walked down the hallway to my apartment that was three doors down from hers and started sobbing as soon as I got in the door.

“I don't want to do this!” I screamed at the universe.

“If there's any reason to go on living, I need you to send me a sign right now!” I yelled at whoever or whatever might be listening up there, if anything at all.

I looked and listened carefully, but there was no sign from the universe that my life had any meaning.

I didn't take the time to write a suicide note. I did make one last post on Facebook, though. To this day it shows up in my Facebook memories every year. It simply said, “Love and miss you all. Merry Christmas.”

I uneventfully swallowed all twenty nine pills. For some reason, the reality of what I was doing didn't hit me until it was too late.

Suddenly, I thought to myself, “Oh my God, I just killed myself. What if I could have gotten through this and been better someday?”

I regretted making such a permanent decision over a problem that might not have lasted forever. I've heard people say that their past life flashed before their eyes when they were about to die. I had the opposite experience, though. I saw a vision of a future without the disease. I was happy again. I was out living my life. I was doing all of the things I had dreamed of. I was so full of sorrow that I would never get to see this life.

I knew that in about twenty minutes, I was sure to be dead. After all, just one of those pills had nearly stopped my heart in October. I decided that the least I could do was go back down to Mom's apartment and eat some of the stir fry she had been cooking for me. I was sure that by the time she knew anything was wrong with me, it would be too late for anyone to save me. I would never survive those twenty nine pills.

She was really proud of that stir fry that she cooked for me. I knew that it was my last meal, so I enjoyed it and savored it. I kept watching the clock. I wondered what it would feel like to die. I wondered how it would happen.

Twenty minutes passed.

I thought to myself, “Hmm, I don't feel any different. Something should happen any time now, though.”

Thirty minutes passed. Nothing felt different. Forty minutes passed. An hour passed. Nothing happened.

I smiled for the first time in months. I had gotten my sign from the universe after all. I knew that somehow the laws of the natural world had been suspended and I was made invincible against those pills in that moment of time. I knew that I wasn't going to die. Most importantly of all, I knew that my life must have a purpose after all.

I have no explanation for what happened on that day. There's no reason that I know of to explain why I didn't die. My heart, which had slowed to forty four beats per minute with just one of those pills, never slowed or missed a beat when I took twenty nine of them on December 21, 2015.

I didn't tell anyone what I had done. I couldn't risk being hospitalized in a mental ward. In order for me to fix my life, I had to be in control of it. I wasn't going to be a victim anymore. I also didn't want to be stigmatized, as people who attempt suicide often are. For two years, this was my secret.

As for the vision I had on that day – it all came true. The day I attempted suicide was a turning point for me. Since I was alive, I decided to fight with everything in me to conquer this disease. I researched the disease thoroughly, willing to try anything that might help it. I was determined to be one of the few who went into remission, no matter what it took.

Gradually and slowly, I began to live again. The depression and the hopelessness that it had brought slowly faded. The medication was due to start working in February. It still didn't seem to be helping, but it was time to go on with my life anyway. I got up off of Mom's couch that day and turned the fan off. It was the beginning of learning to live with the disease.

The sun was my enemy. It caused me the most pain of any of the triggers. I adjusted my life to live during the night time and sleep during the day. I followed the anti-inflammatory version of the paleo diet very strictly for two solid years. In order to do so, I had to learn how to cook. I discovered that I had a natural talent for cooking and that I really enjoyed it. I savored every moment without pain. I also learned to deal with the pain better and not to get so upset over it.

Rosacea flare ups are largely linked to negative emotions like anger and anxiety. If I became nervous or angry, it felt like someone lit my ears on fire, which spread to my whole face and neck. I had to learn not to be nervous or angry. I learned coping mechanisms that I had never cared to learn before. The negativity and drama that I once thrived on were now linked to physical pain.

As I learned to focus on the positive, my symptoms decreased. I became a different person in every way. Nothing in my life really changed, except for my perspective, but somehow that made everything different. I was seeing my life and the world through a different set of eyes.

In 2017 the dermatologist said that my disease seemed to be in remission. She said that I didn't need to come back unless it ever flared up again. Tears stung my eyes once again, but this time they were tears of joy.

My last words to her were, “No offense, but I hope I never see you again.”

Remission doesn't mean that my disease is cured, but it's much better than it used to be. I rarely experience the pain and flushing anymore. The sun is still my main trigger, but it's not so severe that I have to live nocturnally anymore. The sun shines on my ear while riding in a car and it becomes hot and burns sometimes, but I've learned to take it in stride. I've learned that it doesn't have to ruin my life.

In June of 2017, I went to the beach for the first time in years. I nearly fell to my knees in awe. It was as though I were seeing it for the very first time. I was amazed at how beautiful it was.

Still sensitive to sunlight, I began to take sunset strolls on the beach. The sun was my nemesis, and I derived a weird satisfaction in seeing it set each night. It became a strange obsession that got me outdoors, and it was good exercise too. I literally based my life around those sunset strolls. I wanted to see it every single evening.

My perspective on life was totally different than it used to be. I remembered back to when I thought that the beach was unexciting and stupid. Now its beauty brought me to tears. The sound of the crashing waves, the beautiful pink sky, the water extending out for as far as I could see, making me feel so small, and those mind-blowing sunsets.

You may wonder why a person wouldn't tire of watching the sun set every night. The thing is, no two sunsets are alike. Everything is different every single time. The colors, the clouds, the water, the reflection of light upon the water, the birds flying overhead or floating on the lake, and even the texture of the sand on the beach. These were all things that I never would have noticed or cared about in my former life.

Everything seemed so amazing and wonderful to me after the agony I had been in since 2015. The agony which led to my miraculously failed suicide attempt. It was like being reborn and having a whole new chance at life. One that I thought I would never have.

I kept all of the promises to myself about how different my life would be if I was ever healed. I still make nearly every meal from scratch and I love to cook. You'll hardly ever find me online. If I'm online, it's never to create drama. It's to do constructive things, like write stories for Vocal. I'm not a complainer, a victim, or a drama queen anymore. I'm too busy chasing my dreams, watching every sunset, and grasping at every shred of joy that I can find in this life.

You'll see me covered in zinc sunblock, with my UV protective sun hat and sun blocking umbrella. Summer is the only season when I can't go out much during the daytime due to the heat and strong UV light. I still enjoy summer sunset strolls, though.

I live just minutes away from a beach on Lake Erie. The summer sunsets are so perfect. The sun sets right across the water, giving the perfect view from the beach or the pier.

Most people don't live to see the other side of suicide – what would have happened if they had survived. I'll never know why I didn't die on that day. I can't prove that there's no perfectly logical, scientific explanation for it. But even if there is, I would rather believe that something magical was at work. Whether it's true or not, that belief changed my life.

Today marks five years, nine months, and seven days since my life should have ended. I can't claim that I've done anything amazing, but I've experienced millions of joyous, magical, and important moments that I'm so thankful I didn't miss. I've lived to see 2,107 more sunsets than I should have. I won a photography contest, got a poem published, and got to meet Sophie B Hawkins.

I've experienced countless smiles, memories, and laughs with my friends and family. I lived to make Mom's life special in every way that I could. I got five years with her that I wouldn't have had. She thanked me for all of the meals together, the games that we played, and the fun times we had before she died.

I had the solemn honor of taking care of Mom, as she had taken care of me, for the last days of her life. I stood next to her as she took her last breath on April 8, 2020.

As she departed this world, I whispered in her ear, “Don't be afraid. I'm right here. You're not alone.”

I wouldn't have been there with her if I had died on that day. If you're thinking about ending your life, please don't. Please know that your life matters in ways that you can't see right now, but someday you will. In the moment I swallowed those pills, I never could have imagined how great my life would be and how much it would matter if I could just hold on for a little bit longer.

I can honestly say that I'm glad I didn't die on that day. Looking back, I'm even glad that I experienced something so horrific that it shook my life to the core and completely changed who I was. My disease was never completely cured, but my outlook on life was.

Even now, with Mom gone, I still see the value in living every day to the fullest and appreciating every day that I'm not suffering with that horrific pain anymore. The greatest way to honor Mom's memory is to love the life that she sacrificed so much to help me build.

One of the last things she said to me was, “When I'm gone, I want you to go through life with a smile on your face and love in your heart.”

If that's the only thing I achieve in this life, it's good enough for me. It was all worth it. My attempt to end my life was what ultimately saved it.