This is a stream of conscious ramble, I just need to let it out. I don’t want to worry friends or family so it has to go somewhere. Thanks for letting me ramble.

3:23 AM that was the last time I saw on the clock. In 3 hours it will have been a year since I made a suicide attempt. I thought I wasn’t gonna be this reflective but I am. Like clockwork, it turned midnight and my mind shifted. I’m a genealogist, and for some reason dates and timelines have always been important to me. They stay with me.

In my family, we have a tradition where we do shots of moonshine (I have moonshiners from Kentucky in my lineage and recent history, like really recent) for military family who pass away. I adapted the tradition and made it for death dates for loved ones, and for large days. I will think about the shot for the person or event. For example: my Papa usually gets two shots. A shot of moonshine and a shot of Jack. His name was Jack. He was a moonshiner, and in the military. 

I did a shot of Pineapple Vodka two weeks ago, the first of its kind. Well, I did a whole bottle with a loved one. But it was over the day. The first shot I did, I cried. And the last one I did, I honored my pain. I did the first one and the taste slammed into me and I remembered my first taste of pineapple vodka. The man the year before who had done a shot with me. He was a friend of a co-worker who was crashing on their couch, and he had brought some from Las Vegas. Looking back I can see that he was interested even though he had a girlfriend at the time, but I wasn’t, I didn’t even take another shot - just said thanks that I liked the flavor and declined another shot when he kept offering another. But it was weird he kept pushing it. I turned back and kept talking to my friend. 

A couple days later I was crashing at the co-workers place and woke up to him there. I was raped that night. Fast foreword a year later to two weeks ago and my last shot of Pineapple Vodka I did, I knew the moment time wise the event occurred and stood up from bed and went and did the shot. The pain hit me like a ton of bricks but I let myself feel it. One of the hardest moments to stand there and do, but I wasn’t alone - and I honored my pain.

I’m not doing that tonight. I don’t trust myself with these feelings to be honest, especially with how I made the attempt. Two weeks after my attempt I spiraled faster and quicker and went down a path darker than I have ever been down. I drink half a fifth of moonshine that evening, taking a sleeping pill with every shot. I had made my goodbyes and I sent out a vague message of hope and kindness. 

That is the thing that scares me the most and why I don’t trust myself. That is why I have no liquor or anything in my apartment at the moment to do a honorary shot. Because if I go - if I choose to go, no one would have warning. I’ve always been that way.

I bottle things up and can pretend like everything is okay so well that you would never know that I was going to do it. I can plaster such a convincing smile on, I can make you laugh, make you smile, but be hurting so badly no one can tell. It’s why I’ve gotten so good at telling when someone else is doing it.

I’ve gotten better at letting people in - but not with tonight, not with how I am feeling right now. These emotions are too intense for anyone to handle, let alone people who actually know me. 

I am having a hard moment because I am remembering what it felt like. For me, I knew the moment I felt myself go cold and like the shadows from the corner of the room started to grow, when I saw faces in those shadows of loved ones and people I knew. I knew I had made a mistake. Remembering that - and sitting here is hard.

One year - that’s a lot of good and bad in a year. But I’m gonna make it through this. I always do. I’ll wake up tomorrow morning, just like I did a year ago. Except this time - I am not going to cry because I failed, because I was alone, because the pain was too much. This time I am going to get up, make myself a cup of coffee and go outside to see the sunrise. It’s time to start living, and even though this shit is hard, and some nights I don’t know if I’ll make it. I will always know that sun will always come up the next morning. We got this. One sunrise at a time. 