Dedicated to my camp family and all of the Nelis who save(d) my life.

Neli and I started losing our hair at the same time. Mine fell out slowly, subtly, long strands stuck to the scalp of my hairbrush, a shedding that likely wasn’t noticeable to those around me – but a loss that terrified me nonetheless. Neli’s went quickly, in clumps. One week, it seemed, her hair was there, and the next it had disappeared, her newfound baldness a common look on the oncology unit. Though I couldn’t see it at the time, we were both sick.

I was nineteen. Neli was five.

***

Neli came into my life during my first experience with severe, prolonged suicidal ideation. I was a freshman in college and couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong. I felt strongly that I needed a reason to be sad; in the absence of some trauma or tragedy, I had no logical way to make sense of my feelings and, therefore, no way to “fix” them.

I’d been sad before. Feelings of worthlessness and a deep-seated fear of being disliked had floated in and out of my life from eighth grade through high school. Empathy often overwhelmed me in such a way that my heart actually hurt for those I encountered or observed to be lonely; I felt achingly empty and powerless, consumed by the circumstances of others.

So the sadness, sure, it was there. But I never considered it to be systemic; I never considered it at all, really, beyond the actual moments of experiencing it. This was just who I was – sensitive. And maybe a bit sad – but, then, who wasn’t? I was working through the trials that all adolescents endure. I was supposed to be like this.

And then college – and sadness so strong, it felt like a stinging slap to the face, albeit without the bracing awakening such a slap should bring. The euphoria of meeting new friends and embarking on an adventure faded fast a few weeks into my first semester. It wasn’t homesickness – I’d gone to prep school, had become accustomed to living away from my family. I knew, too, that it wasn’t the shifting of my relationships with high school friends, though certainly they did shift.

I thought it might be boredom, so I threw myself into projects for school and community service. And I drank. A lot. Gatherings without alcohol were no longer fun; I increasingly needed it in order to have a good time. And the good times grew fewer and farther apart.

Truthfully, nothing felt worth the effort, the tremendous amount of energy I found I now had to expend to accomplish any task. I still went to class, maintained straight As, and did what was expected of me. On the inside, however, my life had begun to feel like a car careening towards a cliff – I couldn’t pump the brakes; I was descending, grabbing for handholds, reaching fruitlessly for something to save me from the blackness of the abyss into which I was sinking.

***

Exhaustion bordering on paralysis.

Near-constant crying that I concealed with makeup and music.

A complete loss of appetite: I told friends headed to the dining hall for dinner that I’d already eaten. I subsisted on snacks, food I forced myself to eat. It wasn’t about control – I simply wasn’t hungry. At all. My clothes felt looser. I struggled to adjust to the new dimensions of my body, wearing belts with my jeans, feeling my hip bones jut out, sensing unfamiliar roominess in my bra. Then – hair loss.

I was terrified but trapped – the fact that my friends and teachers didn’t appear to pick up on my turmoil made it that much harder for me to even consider the idea of asking for help. If I could convince them that I was alright, surely I could get to a point where I believed that myself.

It was during this time – when I was making myself eat English muffins with peanut butter and jelly I kept in my small dorm fridge; when I was crying myself to sleep, sorrow my roommate certainly heard (though she allowed me to pretend that my pain was private) – that I started going to the hospital. Another volunteer commitment – I was searching for something to live for.

At the children’s hospital, volunteers could rock babies, or clean the activity rooms, or bring toys to patients. It took concentrated effort to force myself out of bed every Sunday morning, but I never backed out. I said I would be there, and I showed up, showered, sober, seeming to be an average college kid – who just happened to also be struggling to stay alive.

On my first day, I was introduced to a tiny girl in a too-big bed – Neli. Her English was limited; the family’s first language was Spanish. She looked like any five-year-old would – it wasn’t clear that she was sick, though the sheer amount of stuff in her room suggested that the hospital stay had already been longer than most.

Neli was methodically placing each item on a sheet of Dora the Explorer stickers to the plastic guardrails that lined her bed. She barely spoke; when I realized that a monologue of questions and comments was unlikely to elicit verbal response, I joined her in her endeavor. We fell into companionable silence – a silence that, for a fleeting moment, proved to be a salve for my sadness.

Of course, Neli couldn’t cure me, just as I couldn’t cure her – she had chemotherapy, and I had this commitment, to show up and be present. I didn’t see her every week; she was often resting and unable to play. But even when we didn’t have a chance to interact, I thought of her during every hospital shift; indeed, she came to embody this volunteer experience which, in turn, was the primary reason I hadn’t yet killed myself.

Even Neli’s presence in my life, however, couldn’t fully dispel the fog that now clouded my every conscious thought. That spring, I often laid in my loft bed in my dorm room, staring at the sunshine and flowering tree outside my window. One Saturday morning near Easter, I found myself consumed by the sense that I was, somehow, actually falling away from it. Nothing felt real anymore – I didn’t want to die; rather, I simply didn’t want to continue to live with this pain, this hopelessness.

My parents are unaware that they saved my life that weekend. They drove for 8 hours to spend Easter with me. Their presence kept me from being alone, and I survived because of it.

I couldn’t talk about my pain – but I could talk about Neli. As we ate a Sunday brunch before church, as I struggled to swallow spoonfuls of granola, I told them about the hospital and when I mentioned that she had recently lost most of her hair, that only a thin rim at the edge of her scalp remained – I started to sob. To anyone else, I was crying for a little girl who had cancer; only I knew that I was also crying for myself.

I’d never felt particularly religious but during the church service – the irony of celebrating resurrection and life after death was not lost on me – something stuck with me. Don’t place a period where God has placed a comma, the minister sermonized. The sentence isn’t over yet; there is more to be said.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about God, but the suggestion that there was more to the story – to my story – was a powerful one. And if the universe was speaking to me now, I felt confident that Neli had something to do with it.

***

My depression didn’t disappear, of course; I wouldn’t even say the fog lifted. But I found within me a shred of strength and channeled it into actions that I hoped would allow me to reclaim my story from the darkness.

I gradually began to eat again. I enjoyed the excitement of transferring to a large, urban university that was diametrically opposite to the small, suburban liberal arts college where I’d spent my freshman year – the year from hell, I’d decided. But I’d survived it, it was done, and I was perhaps even better for it.

Until I wasn’t. The depression came back, as all chronic illnesses do, though more slowly; because the tempo had changed, I didn’t consciously connect it to the pain of the previous year. Still, the similarities were striking – my appetite lessened and my desire to be social diminished, if only because it took so much energy to get out of bed and participate in the world. I still earned straight As – and, just as I had the year prior, maintained the façade of a well-adjusted student, even as I counted down to summer and what I felt would be an escape, a chance to rest and reset, to reconcile the person I often pretended to be with my authentic self.

Serendipity led me to southern California, to a job that would allow me to combine my experience with Neli and my own fond memories of attending sleepaway camp. As a cabin counselor caring for children with chronic and life-threatening illnesses, I hoped to find something important enough to make the energy expenditure worth it.

Three months of working with children and teens who had muscular dystrophy, kidney or liver disease, hemophilia – each day was an adventure full of laughter and little sleep, sugar and sharing jokes with colleagues I would come to consider my closest friends. Friends who would, in turn, witness me becoming my best self: someone not afraid to sing loudly or dance goofily; someone who embraced the exhaustion in exchange for the magical moments of stories and stargazing, slumber parties and secret missions; someone who, much to my surprise, wasn’t afraid of imperfection or mess but, rather, welcomed oatmeal in my hair, marker tattoos on my arms, and paint from head to toe. This wasn’t the me I’d longed to be – this was someone I couldn’t have imagined.

I’d stumbled my way into this sacred space, found my own kind of holy work. And in so doing, I’d realized – Neli wasn’t the first half of the sentence; she was the introductory clause to the first line in an ongoing conversation.

***

It took me several more years to figure out what came next. I struggled with a desire to continue the work of that summer, even as I pushed forward with my undergraduate degree in an unrelated field. There were some dark days, but nothing on par with the fear or the hopelessness of my freshman year, and the stormy clouds that had overshadowed me as a sophomore. When I graduated, I returned to camp for what I thought was my final summer – and, for a while, it seemed that it would be.

Because once I left camp, moving back to the city where I’d studied to begin my first post-grad professional job, I plummeted – further and frighteningly faster than I ever had. I was overcome with depression – utterly debilitated by it. Weighed down, again, by thoughts of suicide. So lost and unsure that, when my mother suggested I see a general practitioner, I agreed.

What followed was a year and a half of agony, of utter terror, of wanting to die – as I worked with this doctor to try a new drug, and then another, at increasingly larger dosages. When she referred me to a psychiatrist, I thought I had reached the end. She had given up on me. I was beyond help. I could just as easily give up on myself.

Throughout this, I was sustained: by the support of my parents, yes, but also by my memories of camp, of my campers and the friends I’d met there. One friend sent me regular emails, pictures of a happier me, short notes reminding me I was loved. Another watched YouTube videos with me, albeit over Skype, as she lived a literal ocean away; she kept me safe the day after a night that found me sobbing in bed, ready to end the pain – if only I’d had the energy.

The support of my camp family, as I would come to call those who companioned me through the longest, darkest nights, was essential to my healing, as were weekly sessions with my psychiatrist. My doctor’s commitment to me was crucial in my exploration and ultimate acceptance of the mental illness I’d alternatingly ignored or denied for nearly a decade.

That spring – after months of medication management that included starting and then detoxing from 6 different drugs, all of which proved ineffective (and, in some cases, made me sink even lower) – I went to Connecticut to spend a weekend at a camp that was part of the same organization as my camp in California. I was paired with the sickest kid on site – Nick had come straight from outpatient chemo, accompanied by his parents, brother and sister. Three days with a little boy who knew what it felt like to stare down death: for the first time in such a very long time, I found, with him, moments of pure joy, moments when I felt happy to be alive.

***

It’s been nearly four years since I first started receiving treatment for Major Depressive Disorder. I take 11 pills every day – to help me eat, sleep, function. I can’t speak to what will help or heal anyone else; all I know is that these medications continue to save my life. So, too, does ongoing contact with my doctor. My biological and camp families unfailingly surround me with love when I need it most – all I have to do, I’ve discovered, is ask.

My fundraising for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has afforded me the perfect opportunity to educate and encourage others within my social networks. I consider myself immensely fortunate, too, to be able to offer support as a volunteer Crisis Counselor with Crisis Text Line.

All of these pieces have proven to be important and even critical to maintaining my health, but perhaps the most essential ingredient – the one without which I know I still would be lost – is my work. I returned to school to pursue my Masters of Social Work and for the past two and a half years, I’ve put that training to use working with patients receiving palliative care and their families. Walking with children, teens and young adults along the continuum of care – sometimes to the very end of the road – is my honor, a privilege made all the more poignant by my own continued journey with an illness that, twice, has nearly taken my life.

This is the second part of the sentence – the story I’m supposed to be living. It began, in so many ways, with a girl named Neli. I’ve no idea how it will end – but I know how it won’t.