GOBBLEDIGOOK: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

The first time I really experienced death was at the ripe age of 19 years old. The beginning of one of the many transitional periods one goes through as a young adult, it was weeks before my 20th birthday and it was nothing I saw coming, nothing anyone saw coming. It was 2010, I was giddy with life because I had just committed going to Portland State University and in a few months I'd be living in Portland. However, on May 6th, I got a series of phone calls from my brother. The first one was unclear, he said, "Joshua got shot."

I sat there, silenced. Joshua recently had been bullied at school. Cyber-bullying amongst all the rest. He was jumped in the locker room a week before, and on this day his mom went to the school to talk to the principal because everyone involved was suspended for fighting. While she was gone, Joshua, my little cousin, committed suicide in his grandparent's bathroom with this grandpa's gun.

He was 15 years old, experiencing his first of high school. I can vouch of the miseries that high school presents, but I can not imagine his experience. It happened so quickly, and just like that, ended just as fast. Him and his girlfriend broke up, a downward spiral, and then he was gone from our realm of consciousness. There are often times I hear songs that I wish I could have showed him and sung to him that made had me feel like I was less alone. However, everyone has a different story, and I was never able to hear his story. I think his story was just beginning before the book was slammed shut.

Joshua's death used to be really hard for me to talk about. For a few reasons, mainly because no one ever really wants to talk about death or suicide. Especially suicide, it is so stigmatized that people dehumanize the idea that it is so relevant to so many people. We just stay quiet. I've stayed quiet about it until recent years, years in which I think I'm beginning to heal because I am starting to open up. In high school, my dad also had a suicidal attempt, I was the only one home and he drove himself to the hospital to get the pills out of his system. I felt guilty for a while because what else are you supposed to think when you're 15-16 years old and you didn't know your father was wishing to die. So here I am, feeling motivated and stronger to be open about these things, because staying quiet means relieving them in your head, by yourself, until you, yourself feel as though you are losing grips on reality. It's as simple as that. Why else would I not develop anxiety until my early twenties, right after Joshua past away? Because feeling certain ways are stigmatized and looked at as weak.

Saturday, October 25th was nana's second anniversary since her passing. Coincidentally, it was the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention's "Out of the Darkness" suicide awareness walk. My family and I walked alongside each other for our Joshua. It wasn't an easy day and the weeks leading up to it, I was a mess. I am still trying to collect my pieces. I am so fortunate to have a best friend who remembers and has been with me through all of this to send me love. She has been my greatest support system in opening up. Mainly because she has always let me know that it's okay to feel the way I am feeling and that I shouldn't be so hard on myself for it. At the time, I didn't realize that this was going to be an important, healing moment in my life, until today. Today, I felt like sharing some stories I've had with suicide because it is nothing to hide and it is nothing that should ever define someone's worth or should define that person's life. Joshua was the most loving human beings I had ever met. Soft-spoken with a smile that he'd try to hide by looking down. He had the longest eyelashes you have ever seen and was always there to give you a hug if you asked for one. I remember the day he was born more vividly than anything else in my youth. I was in love with that boy from the moment I laid eyes on him. That love is something that will never fade. Every time I hear "California Love" my memory goes to him barely able to stand on his own dancing to it. Joshua James Jackson, you are in my heart forever, thank you for teaching me how to love. You were the first example of teaching me how to love something more than loving myself and being aware of it. I was only 5 years old and I remember you meaning more to me than all the stars in my sky.