COPING : LEYA'S STORY PT 3

A MENTAL HEALTH STORYTELLING SERIES

“When you're grieving like this, you feel like there's no end in sight. You feel like you're going to start crying and you’ll never fucking stop.

I was so scared to do ANYthing again – how do I continue to do life as if I didn't just lose one of the most important people in the world?

I had to learn to be kind to myself. I had to learn to give myself grace, that I could be sad AND I could laugh. That was a big one. That I could be sad AND I could still enjoy the sunshine on my skin.

I felt like I didn't deserve to be happy, healthy, joyous, or free because Matthew couldn't be. Why do I get to be happy if he's not happy? If he's not here? It's not fair.

But the alternative is to not exist. And I know Matthew wouldn't want that. So I had to go against what I felt. And I had to just keep doing it day by day.

Doctors prescribed me anxiety medication. I took Xanax a few times when I felt like I was having panic attacks. I was on Zoloft for depression already, and now we’ve upped my Zoloft.

I took sleeping pills for the first 60 days. Nothing good was going to happen in my brain, so I started going to bed really early. I just worked and I slept.

Those first couple months weren’t just depressing – they were world-changing."