There was a time when I lived in my car, and not by choice.
I don’t like to use the term homeless, because for all intents and purposes, I had a roof over my head.
Myself and my dog got food from the food bank, huddled under blankets in the back seat in -20 degree weather and went to the bathroom on the side of the road.
I had entered into an intense episode of psychosis.
Eventually I was held in a hospital against my will and told that if I tried to leave the police would arrest me.
When I did get a room in a shared house, I had no way of paying for it.
The doctor told me categorically that I could not work – and stupidly, I believed him.
So, I got myself into debt paying rent with my credit card.
I was forced onto disability payments and told I was the governments problem now – those payments barely scratched the surface of life’s expenses, and so the debt continued to build to a debilitating amount.
For me, I was down and out.
But nobody knew how bad it was.
I used alcohol to self medicate and I self harmed regularly.
If I wasn’t drinking, I didn’t feel like I was living – because when I wasn’t drinking, I felt nothing.
And when I felt nothing, I wanted to die.
Every single moment was self defeat or self destruct.
I didn’t see a way out.
After too long of living in that depth of darkness, I took myself to the ocean and tried to glide off into the waves – I would say maybe my 4th or 5th lucid suicide attempt at this point.
A few men in a boat came to my rescue.
They gave me blankets, took me to a safe space and talked me down.
The next day I checked myself back into the psych ward and said enough is enough.
It wasn’t meant to be that way, but I knew I was the only one who could change it.
It might not have been the last time I self harmed, or self medicated, or acted self destructively.
But it was the last time I tried to take my own life.
You see to me, hell is a construct.
Built from all the shitty things the world has told us that are untrue.
Built from the guilt, shame and trauma of yesterday.
But tomorrow doesn’t have to look the same as yesterday.
Today is your chance to change it all 
