My truth.

2010 was a rough year.

I parted ways with the improv troupe that had been my family for 3 years. Personal and professional issues caused things to not be fun anymore.  I was down on myself as a human being and as a performer. I was anorexic.  I had gone from 180 pounds to 125 in a short period of time by not eating. I hated everything, most of all myself.

One night, I took out a bottle of sleeping pills.  I piled them into the lid, and put them on my dresser. I was crying every night. I cried that night. I sat on the floor, hugging myself and crying.  What was the point of this pain?  I felt that I was annoying my friends with my constant sobbing and rehashing and reopening of old wounds.  I was annoying myself.

I took my phone and stared at the number for a suicide hotline.  I stared and stared.

I clicked the phone number on my iPhone. The number popped up with the call or discard option underneath.

I clicked call.

"All circuits are busy.  Please try your call again later."

Astonishment.

Shock.

Tears stopped.

A bubble started forming in my stomach.

And suddenly I was laughing.  Somewhat hysterically, but laughing. Uproariously laughing.  Rolling on the floor giggling as snot and tears dried on my puffy face.

I got up.

I put the pills away.

I called a therapist the next morning and set up an appointment.

I'm better now.  So much better now.

Some people never get better.  And they are missed.

I'm not ashamed that I'm on anti-depressants. I'm lucky that I can afford them and that they allow me to smile more every day.   They helped me ignore a very bitter, angry person that I was confronted with last night during an improv show, who doesn't even know me but carries a grudge against me for some idiocy that occurred in that awful year of 2010.  2010 Lauren would have run screaming into a corner of her mind.  This Lauren smiled and let it roll off of her.

Find help if you need it.  There's only one of you, and you're needed.