Stay for Tomorrow
by Theo Burkhardt
I closed the bedroom door and sank onto the carpet. Leaning my head against the doorframe, I let out a long sigh. Everything was happening so fast. I rubbed my eyes until I saw kaleidoscopes and tapped my head against the wall. It felt like the house of cards I had been carefully building had come crashing down. My brother had been diagnosed with cancer and was recovering from surgery; my partner and I had just broken up; I was struggling with my sexuality and gender identity; and my best friend and I had a falling out, with everyone taking sides. I was drowning, clawing for a breath of fresh air. The world was spinning faster than I could keep up. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t want to live like this either. I felt numb. I was so desperate to feel something—anything to silence the voices in my head—that I would self-harm almost every night. Afterward, I’d put on sweatpants and a sweatshirt and collapse into my bed. I didn’t care if I woke up or not. I loved watching the sunrise, but I didn’t care if I made it until morning anymore. I barely touched my breakfast and went through the school day with an absent stare.
One day, my sleeves drifted up, and a friend noticed my wrist. “Oh my god, are you okay?” she asked. I tugged on my sleeves and told her I was fine as my throat tightened. She had a terrified, heartbroken look on her face. I became sick to my stomach when I looked at myself in the mirror. When people looked or talked to me, it was like being under a spotlight. Nothing lasts forever. Laughter can become tears, but those tears will dry up, and even scars fade. The sun will set, and then it will rise again. I have had my ups and downs, but I really hit rock bottom at the end of senior year of high school. A year ago, I was barely keeping it together.
One night, I was upset over something small and sent an email to my theatre director. By morning, everyone hated me. I spent all day deciding if I wanted to go to rehearsal later that night, but I finally decided to face my mistake head-on. Walking into the theatre, I could feel all their glares scratch and crawl all over me. I walked up to one of my best friends. He looked at me and said, “Don’t talk to me,” before I could say anything. I sat down and didn’t dare look up from my phone. I felt nauseous, and the room bent and swirled around me. I had never felt so alone. Panic seized every fiber of my body, and my heart was beating out of my chest. I clambered out of my seat, wobbled out the door, around the corner, and into the bathroom. My chest was tight, my palms were wet and cold, and I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to cry, but I just couldn’t. I debated leaving right then and there, and it took every ounce of my strength to walk back into that room. The second rehearsal was over, I lept for the door without saying a word. When I got home, everyone was asleep. I felt empty but overwhelmed, exhausted but on fire. I reeled through the house to the safety of my bedroom. Closing the door, I sank to the floor and rested my head against the door. A terrible, desperate thought boiled up from the depths of this simmering sea. No matter how hard I tried to plug the holes in the dam, no matter how afraid I was of it, this tsunami surfaced violently and swept away everything in its path. I didn’t just want to go to bed and not wake up; I wanted to die. I wanted it all to be over. There was no hope left in my heart; there was no sunrise to wait for. The rest of that night is a blur. I woke up the next morning in a mess, with a kind of despair I had never experienced. I was still alive. Part of me was relieved, but I was mostly angry and ashamed. By chance, I had a doctor’s appointment that morning, and when my mom left the room, I broke down and told him everything.
I spent that night staring at crisis center ceiling tiles and talking to one social worker after another. The next month was spent sleeping on an inflatable mattress in my parents’ bedroom and going between theatre rehearsals, doctors’ offices, and school. I would give one-word replies and stare at the floor, and nothing in the world could have convinced me to open up. I had had therapists before, and I had always tried to be open about my feelings, but this was something different. I would shut down when they would ask questions, and nothing was working. I had buried so many feelings and built so many walls to feel safe that it would take a lot of time and work to break through them all. I knew deep down that I desperately needed help, but I just wanted it all to go away. I didn’t want to be a burden on anyone. It took months of persistence from a whole team of medical and psychological professionals for those walls to start to crack. I spent the summer between high school and college in a Partial Hospitalization Program learning how to look at myself in a mirror again.
A year later, I’m better. I still wrestle with anxiety, depression, and the emotional trauma that leaves me with pangs of grief at little things that remind me of the past. But the thing I regret most is not asking for help earlier. Not everything worth doing will be easy. In fact, being open about my mental health (first with myself, my therapist, my family, and now with the world) has been one of the hardest things I have ever done, but I don’t regret it for a second. It’s hard asking for help when you’re worried what others will think or what they’ll say, but no one deserves to suffer in silence. No one deserves to feel like they’re alone. This is why I have decided to break my silence, to open up not just to a therapist but to the world, because it’s time to speak up and dismantle the stigma that made me want to hide and bury my pain like it was something to be ashamed of, instead of feeling safe to talk about it. Everyone has their own story, and in sharing mine, I hope that I’ve helped in a small way show that it’s okay to feel the things you’re feeling, it’s okay to talk about them, and that there is hope for morning. In the words of Ernest Hemingway, “Night is always darker before the dawn, and life is the same. The hard times will pass; everything will get better, and the sun will shine brighter than ever.” Hope is knowing that every night ends and that the sun will rise again, and peace is knowing that every day ends in a beautiful sunset. No matter how dark things seem, no matter how long and dark the night may seem, stay for tomorrow.
