“If we don’t find something that works, I am going to die,” I sobbed to the psychiatric unit counselor when I woke up on the medical floor following my third suicide attempt in less than 12 months.

I knew that if my medical team didn’t find something to save me I would be dead within the year. I was dying and every single thing I was doing to try and save my own life was failing.

I’m a master’s level clinical social worker, with training in crisis and suicide prevention. I knew, or thought I knew, how to help and support people in my exact situation. I was doing EVERYTHING I was “supposed” to do: take medication as prescribed, see my therapist, make sleep a priority, exercise, yoga, walking, try and eat healthier, chart my mood and triggers. I was a “good” patient. I was a model for Bipolar. I loved my husband, he was loving and supportive of me, and our kids were healthy.

But it wasn’t enough.

This was my 6th lifetime suicide attempt. I had survived three attempts as a teenager that I never told anyone about. When I made it to adulthood, especially after becoming a mother, I thought I was immune. I had lived with varying degrees of suicidality since middle school. I knew what a death by suicide did to a family and I could never do that to my husband. I would never choose to leave my kids.

My first attempt as an adult hit like an out‑of‑control freight train, while I was on the psych floor. Luck saved me. I had struggled with increasingly intense mood swings for several years and the suicidal thoughts destroyed my defenses.

The second attempt I survived only because I just happened to be texted by five different people, and when I read one text asking, “What are your plans for the day?” I realized I was going to ruin my husband’s day and called 911 in time to save myself. This attempt scared me. I needed medical treatment and everyone took this attempt seriously.

My memories of the ER are hazy, I was in and out of consciousness, but I remember the look on my husband’s face. I never wanted to see him like that again.

He couldn’t even touch me. I saw him broken and terrified. I wouldn’t do that to him. I was broken but I couldn’t keep breaking the people I loved. The people I needed.

I tried so hard to get it all right. I took my meds even though the side effects were awful. I followed all the guidance I would give a client. I kept a “3 things I’m grateful for” journal for six months. I consciously loved my three children and found joy in the little things.

And then my big winter mood swing came.

I knew I was shaky and up all week. But I was looking forward to going to a big musical with my whole family, sisters and parents included. That morning I woke up and I wasn’t ok. I knew it. I called my husband, packed my bag for what would be my 9th hospitalization in 3 years.

My kids left for the musical, my husband came home, and I didn’t make it.

It was a compulsion I lost the ability to fight. A ride I had no control over. A hallway with only one door. I have tried to take full ownership but the only truth is that once I crossed a point emotionally or psychologically, the suicide attempt happened to me and I couldn’t stop it.

I was always a sensitive kid and teen, and made to feel guilty for it. I tried to be strong, to not need help. I learned to fake it. I wasn’t good at pretending I was ok, I was great. But I was a bomb. One with an increasingly frayed trigger switch.

I’d been diagnosed with Bipolar 1 rapid cycling in 2014 after I lost the ability to fake being fine. Over the next three years I felt more and more like a crystal vase that had been repeatedly shattered and glued back together. If the wind hit me wrong, I would fall apart.

The most basic functions of living were a struggle. I could barely brush my teeth, heat up spaghetti‑Os for my kids, or even sit upright. Most days I could not function after about 4pm. And those were my better days.

Waking up on the medical floor after my third suicide attempt as an adult, a mother of three beautiful healthy children, feeling death waiting at the foot of my bed, I was utterly shattered. Hopeless. I couldn’t even feel fear, I just knew I was dying and I did not know how to stop it.

What I didn’t know was that it was, finally, the start of my recovery and truly healing.

My psychiatrist, who I was lucky enough to have had since my diagnosis, had always treated me with respect and I felt seen by him. We started me on another medication and within two weeks of being inpatient I started to feel better. I even began to feel hope.

Knowing how fragile I was and all that had happened over the past 12 months, let alone the previous three years, it was impossible to trust that I was ok. I knew no one had any reason to trust me. I had no reason to trust me. I never felt anyone was angry with me, simply scared for me.

It took a solid year, a year without an attempt or hospitalization, before I think my husband and family (my children were all young and never knew I had ever attempted suicide) seemed to be able to breathe. I knew within three months that this time was different but only time could show those around me.

It took 18 months before I cracked a dark joke to my husband that he laughed at. “Too soon,” he’d said stone‑faced when I casually said “Omg kill me now.” And then briefly, I saw a smile and a piece of his trauma begin to lift.

It’s now been nearly five years. Five years without a hospitalization or a med change, and I’ve only had one episode with suicidal thoughts that felt serious.

I still feel fragile more than I’d like. In the early months of my recovery I focused heavily on understanding where I was each day. How far from the edge. How close was I to shattering and blowing up my world. I learned where the edge was and I tried to stay so far away from it that I’d never go over again.

A year into my recovery I shared my story—my perspective with lived experience and as a clinician—at a state suicide prevention conference for professionals in the field. Being able to share and make my story useful helped me to make sense of it. It infused some sort of purpose into what was a meaningless horror story.

I had, and have, everything I ever truly wanted. A degree from an important university, a job I loved, three kids who I adored, a husband who is supportive, compassionate, understanding, and loving. Friends and family who love and support me and my family. A home in a safe community with good schools. I was highly educated in the exact illness that was trying to kill me.

But none of that mattered. I was still fragile as a bomb and it took the right medication before I could be defused. Before all that I had going for me could begin to help me recover. To heal.

I don’t work now except for a couple of hours a month. One look at my medical records and SSDI approved me. Like I said, I still feel fragile and not working has helped me heal, to find the balance between managing my illness and living this life I am so grateful to have.

Five years ago I lived believing my death by suicide was inevitable.

Today I live consciously grateful to be fully present each day. Maybe some day I’ll take my health, my life, for granted again. Honestly I wish I could.

I wish I could shed the trauma and the horror of those 12 months. I wish my husband and loved ones could forget.

Nothing made clearer how much I was loved as nearly dying, repeatedly.

I try to make up for, repair, make amends for, the pain I caused by living my recovery every day since.

Ultimately however, I chose to live for me. Selfishly, I want to be here with my family and experience my life. I keep working on my healing as an act of self‑love and gratitude towards those who held me up when I couldn’t go on. Each step on my own honors the love of everyone who has carried me through my illness and my recovery. Every action toward health is a giant middle finger to the monster illness that tried to destroy me.

I am still fragile. Some days it feels far away and others I can see it causing my fingers to shake and it messes up my words. I am fragile but I am not weak. No one who fights and faces their mortality can leave it weak. I am fragile but my love is fierce. I am fierce.

My suicide attempts shredded who I thought I was and decimated the walls I had built over decades. In recovering I had to decide what truly mattered and I rebuilt myself, honoring and seeing who I am when everything else had been blown to dust.

I woke up that day believing I was living on borrowed time. I could hear the minutes and seconds ticking down. The fear that I will relapse and ultimately lose the war still lives right in my chest. I live each day unable to forget the fragility of my humanity, my life. I can feel the sands of time in my hands and I cry, overwhelmed with gratitude to still be here.

I wish I had a better understanding of what happened to me and why I almost died. Why I survived. What it means.

I don’t. It was senseless and cruel. I lived by accident. And the truth is I can make no promises about the future. I probably will relapse one day. I will struggle with suicidality again.

All I know is that, at least now, I hope, no one will think I went down without a fight.