Safe and Sound: The Short Memoir

Chapter 1: Red Autumn

When the red autumn leaves first began to fall, I had a healing heart that was hopeful and optimistic for the future. After all I had gone through this past year, I felt like this autumn would be different, a new beginning for me. However, walking down a path that seemed like the start of recovery, soon became a path of pain and sorrow that I have never gone down before, and it felt like I was drowning underwater, like my hands and ankles were chained with hands pulling me further down into the dark. I want to share things that I've only ever been able to mention and write about in my journals. The things that have haunted me. The things that tear me apart, piece by piece. The things that caused me to feel like it's never going to get better. The things that caused me to feel relieved about ending my life. This is how I was able to keep my head above water and begin walking a path in life, where I feel Safe and Sound.

Everyone has insecurities. Whether it's about the way they look, certain traits they have, or something they're not proud of. Everyone has them and it's normal. I even have a few of them, like the way I look, my humongous ugly nose, my skinny twig-like body, my overthinking brain that has trust issues, severe OCD and anxiety like you wouldn't believe, and my huge feet that are too big to fit into the pretty pink sneakers that I wanted to wear so bad for my grad. There's one more insecurity that I have, one that has caused me to spiral and what began a downfall 3 times. My teeth and they're declining health. When I was growing up, brushing our teeth was never really forced upon us, not for any other reason than my parents not having a good routine of brushing as children themselves. These habits were passed down to us. This has been a generational thing, and as gross as it sounds, it just wasn't a routine for us. My mom and aunt when they were younger, had terrible teeth problems because their mother was toxic and didn't raise them to take care of themselves, which began a trend of bad healthcare. Both my aunt and mom have complete dentures because of this, and with my degrading teeth, I knew someday it would be my turn too.

Since the autumn of 2021, my teeth began to get worse. I broke a tooth in the back of my mouth and it was then nothing but an outer shell. Weeks later, I was in quarantine for Christmas break and received some chocolate as a gift, so I took a bite of a small piece and chipped a tooth in the front bottom row. It got worse after eating a dry rib a few months later. This has caused me so much pain and insecurities for over a year. I fought hard to forget about it and kept trying my best to do everything in my power to take care of myself.

For the last few years, I have noticed that October or more specifically autumn, for some reason, is when I get extremely depressed and every bad situation decides to occur. I began calling this my seasonal depression era. This trend of sadness began in the fall of 2020, and since then, every October something terrible has happened where I would go down a dark path. My favourite time of the year ultimately became my most dreaded time of the year. So when Autumn of 2022 was approaching, I made a promise to myself to take things slow. To remind myself that it was going to be okay. To take care of myself the best I could and write out all my thoughts and feelings. To take it one step at a time on this tightrope that I keep having to walk. To my surprise, things were actually going well that autumn. I started hanging out with my friends more and I finally got scheduled dentist appointments with a new dental clinic. Every other dental clinic has always made me feel bad and I would come out almost in tears, but this new dentist never did that. He was so sweet and kind to me, and for the first time in a long time... I finally felt hopeful and happy. My teeth were slowly but surely, getting fixed and I felt so confident. There were some not-so-good days that month, but the good days overpowered the bad. I finally saw the light in this dark pitch black room I'd been trapped in for years. It was a good October, which made me think I had finally broken this yearly tradition of having such a depressing autumn. I won this battle. A battle I had been fighting for a while and I wanted to celebrate. Party with my friends and be a reckless teenager like teenagers are in films. However, that battle was far from over. This would be the beginning of a path I've never gone down before.