Dark Memory, Light Dawn

Weekly Journal One

I want this to be my weekly diary, and I will do my best to do it on time. Every week I write is another week survived. I hope I might start to thrive.

CW: Suicide, Mental Health, Self-Harm

I like to say that I write fiercely and honestly, right? So here goes.

I don’t really understand my life right now. I walk into classes at Fletcher and Harvard, and I do well in those classes, but I still want to die. I do my best to shut it out and ignore it, but I often can’t. I sit there in the back of class, taking my as-needed first-line medication and worrying about needing to take my last-line medication. I sit there using ice packs, elastic bands, warheads candy — anything I can do to distract me or just get me through that moment. I use DBT distress tolerance skills and grounding exercises to keep myself present, and sometimes I have to fight off the rising panic in my throat. The class material? War crimes, mapmaking, and far-right extremism? I have no idea, either.

Harvard Kennedy School in the sun. The students down there will either be rich or running the world soon.

My skills (and my pills) are working, I guess, for I haven’t missed one class yet this semester. I am doing my level best, and I am driven, at least in part, by the motto I adopted in inpatient — ‘if nothing else, I show up’. Back then, it was about the various daily group therapy sessions, check-ins with staff…