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When I finally decided not to kill myself, I had just finished smoking a bowl of marijuana.

To be fair, it was a nice day to begin with; I woke up to sunshine and singing birds, took a warm bath, made myself breakfast and lounged around in a kimono robe until noon, when I decided it was prime time to go out back and smoke. Maybe, if I was lucky, get some writing done.

So I smoked and, lying back in the patio chair with the sun warming whatever skin my robe left bare, thought about my writing in the pleasant environment I'd found for myself. And the more I thought, the more I not only realized that I had real, honest faith in my future, but that there would be a future. That life was worth living. That there would be ups and downs here and there, but in the end, everything would be all right. The feet would still be under my ground, the birds would sing, and someday, even if I had to tear my heart out, I would be a successful author.

That day, I cried. Not from anxiety or sadness as I was so accustomed, but from joy.

For about a month prior, I had been struggling with the decision of whether or not to kill myself.

To understand this can be difficult for some people; but even suburban girls from Ohio suffer from chronic depression and choking anxiety. I have been lucky enough to receive both genetic burdens along with a host of personal issues, the foremost being a series of recent discoveries about childhood abuse I was too young to remember. Even before the revelation, I had been harming myself: punishing myself for things which were not in my power to begin with. This, I blame on the antidepressant Effexor, which was prescribed to me from the end of 2008 until March of 2009, and did nothing but terrible psychological harm which was only worsened when personal problems emerged.

I was taken off of the drug when I recognized how appealing suicide seemed to me; or rather, I took myself off. My doctor, while happy to help nurse me off of the SNRI, seemed eager to place me on another antidepressant, if not right away, then "In a month or two, after we see how you're feeling."

Paying her respectful lip service and silently telling her where she could stick her pills, I left the office expecting to have rid myself of suicidal idealizations and planning; but weeks marched on, long after the half-life of the last pill had passed, and death still seemed glorious. When I found my half-full bottle of Effexor in the back of a drawer and imagined swallowing them all with the wine

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