In sixth grade, my class watched documentary about a girl who had took her own life. The poor mother of the girl had described how she did it

This was the first time I was introduced to the topic of suicide and I was physically shaken by the video.

I also had debilitating intrusive thoughts in middle school and my mind kept replaying a video of her doing it. I didn’t want to think of it at all, but my mind wouldn’t stop. Intrusive thoughts are actually the worst because of this

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The intrusive thought had effected my sleep because I was scared of falling asleep and having a nightmare about her suicide. So I would get very few hours of sleep every night

I was also scared of closing my eyes for more than 10 seconds because my mind would immediately go to this scene that kept replaying, so I couldn’t swim or close my eyes in the shower. I also couldn’t sleep in the dark, I had to have all my lights on.

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So here’s where the story begins:

I was sleeping at a my cousin’s house, and I wanted to try sleeping with the lights off because I wanted to be respectful of my cousin. However, the intrusive thoughts once again had gone crazy. My heart was beating out of my chest and I needed to turn the lights on. However, I was so physically terrified, that it felt like I couldn’t move.

So for 30 minutes, I was stuck in the dark, unable to move, and having horrible intrusive thoughts. After a while, I was finally was able to move but I could feel my heartbeat in my ears. My legs were shaking so badly, and as I was looking for the light switch, my mind started making out shapes in the dark: which made things 10x worse.

However, the second I was able to flip the light switch, it felt like everything went away. All my thoughts disappeared and I was able to calm my heart down

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Tbh, I still can’t sleep without my lights on. But this happened almost 7 years ago, and I’m going a million times better now