Rachel Eliza Griffiths

having survived such an experience that has reinforced the most wondrous and beautiful and incandescent spaces of this marriage and this friendship.

This friendship is beautiful, and I'm grateful for it, and that gives me a lot of strength and courage to just keep going.

You just have to keep going.

There was a moment where I was in my 20s.

I was just having a really difficult time.

And I really, at that point in my life, didn't have a grasp yet on my dissociative identity disorder.

And a day came, a morning, I was working on poems.

I was kind of, again, having this morning where before I had to go teach and be elsewhere, I was just alone.

I realized there is an aspect of me that is so distressed, that is so underdressed, that is so hopeless and so despairing that I was really concerned for myself that there were other parts of me that wanted to keep working on my poem or to have some breakfast or to...

sit with the dog for a minute would not be able to counter or withstand this particular aspect of my personality.

And I felt that it was those parts of me that forced me to pick up the phone and call, you know, the suicide prevention number that I kept on my desk and

I called that number.

There was someone I could speak to and describe, you know, how distraught I was.

But I also realized that there were different kind of voices coming from me saying, I'm worried about myself.

And at the same time, a voice saying, this is the only option for me.

No one can help me.

I'm tired of bothering my family, burdening my friends, the shame, the stigma, the despair.

I think on the other end of the line, as it is their job to listen carefully and decide whether you just need to talk to someone or if there needs to be a next action.

And the next action involved law enforcement showing up to the door of my apartment in Brooklyn.

And, unfortunately, what then took place was a kind of criminalizing of this attempt of me to help myself to go toward professionals rather than, you know, call a family member or a friend.