What is the hardest thing you've been through?

“The hardest thing I had to face was when my boyfriend Zach committed suicide 2 years ago, he was 21.  He was an alcoholic, and I actually thought he was getting better, we talked and everyone said he stopped drinking, he moved out of his house, he was doing good. And then out of nowhere one morning I woke up with like the sickest feeling in my stomach. I knew something was wrong. I heard from his friend later that night, he called me and said Zach’s missing. We found a suicide note at his house that he signed and dated that morning. He was missing for like a day and half and we finally found him. He had hung himself in the forest outside his house. That was very traumatic. I always knew he was very depressed cause he was an alcoholic, so we’d drink and party and everything would be fine. And then the next morning everything sucked, we had no money, and it was just bad until we drank. One thing we shared in common was our depression and mental health issues but he wouldn’t admit it to anyone but me.”

“We bonded over that but he definitely misled me into thinking he was doing better, it was an absolute blind side. We were so much happier when we were together and we were always together from the moment we met. We met at my friend’s house party. It’s so cheesy but I walked in the room and I took one look at him and I was like, ‘that’s mine.’ I don’t wanna sound crazy but it was like we were meant to be together and I was 100% right. We agreed on everything, we had a lot in common. The main thing I learned is that what you think is gonna kill you, isn’t gonna kill you. If something happened you’d think it’d be the end of the world, like I’d just die. You’re not going to, I promise you no matter how badly you feel like you want to, you’re gonna keep waking up every morning. It’s hard at first, you don’t really want to be there but then you start to appreciate the little things in life that are worth sticking around for. It really puts your life into perspective. Things I used to think were a big deal, grudges I held, none of that matters”.

“It’s a really hard road, depression. It ended up giving me post traumatic stress disorder from his passing, which is something about myself I’m trying to deal with now. But it’s mostly made me more confident as a person because really it’s like, what can you lose? What do you lose by putting yourself out there when you’ve already lost the most important thing in your whole life? Once you get over the initial bump of grief and shock, it’s comforting to know that once you’ve survived something so bad, you really can make it through anything. It forces you to wake up, stop being childish about the little things that bother you in life and to suck it up and deal with it. For a whole year I was in shock, I thought I was doing okay. And then one day another one of my friends, my first ex boyfriend, passed away exactly a year after. But that’s what brought me out of shock. After Zach passed away, I quit school. I was in theatre and film. I kinda quit acting because I didn’t really have passion anymore. I just felt so drained as a person. When you lose someone who you feel like is apart of you, you don’t really know who you are anymore. It’s hard to act and be in touch with your emotions when you’re not in touch with your emotions. Recently, I got a role in a music video that filmed here. I was really nervous, like how am I supposed to act when I don’t feel like myself? But I went, and it actually went really good. I felt more like myself than I felt since Zach died. The passion and excitement was there, it was like a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m still the same person that I was before. Which is the main problem, you don’t feel like you’re that same person anymore. If someone told me this right after he died, like ‘you just have to pursue your passions and do things that make you happy’. I would’ve laughed in their face and said you’re stupid and you don’t know what you’re talking about. But it’s the truth, if you keep doing things that make you happy and surround yourself with good people. The things that make you happy won’t make you happy when you first do them, but if you keep pushing then it’ll eventually come true.”