By Cade Bethea

Sometimes if I close my eyes and take a deep breath, I can find it. That vivid mental image of myself staring in the mirror in the spring of 2017. If I concentrate hard enough, I can almost place myself right back in that spot. The rush of a thousand different feelings, most of them dark, flood over me. I am a 21-year-old college student, and I’m supposed to be “living my best life.”

For me, pretending to have the greatest, happiest life had been easy, but it was becoming increasingly harder. The longer I keep my mind in this place, the more real it begins to feel. Now, the person I am seeing in the mirror is unrecognizable. I look worse than sad, I look broken. I am laser focused on myself as I begin to pray that the mirror, myself or maybe God, will answer the questions I so desperately need answered. This is how most of 2017 felt for me, like I was trapped in a glass box. The box got smaller and smaller each day, as I watched my life fly by outside. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew it was not good.

Coincidently, in March of 2017, the Netflix Original "13 Reasons Why" hit the streaming service and became a worldwide phenomenon. Being obsessed with TV and pop culture, of course I watched. It was thanks to that show that I worked up the courage to physically write out and release the thoughts in my head to someone that I trusted completely. I hoped this person would help me figure out what to do or who to talk to. In a dark turn of events, I received no reply. I believed I was to blame for how I felt, and my spiral ensued over the following months. It’s no one’s fault, however, if someone reaches out in a moment of crisis, please do not ignore their plea for help.

April 26, 2017 was the worst day of my life, but now I draw inspiration from it. On that day, looking in the mirror, I said to myself, “If I can get through this, find the strength, pull myself up, rise above… I am going to make sure I do everything I can to make sure no one ever feels the way I feel right now. I won’t stop until everyone knows that what they are feeling is normal. I don’t want anyone to ever feel this much loneliness.”

Fast forward to present day, I have clear and wide-open eyes. In September 2020, I painted a mural in Downtown Little Rock during National Suicide Prevention Month. It is a quote from "13 Reasons Why" that is very important to my journey:

“Because the minute you start talking about it, it gets easier.”

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