I Was Chronically Suicidal for 20 Years. After 3 Rock Bottoms, I Found Hope

It wasn’t until age 32 that I decided to live.

After three rock bottoms, 30-plus psychiatric medications, 50-plus in-patient psychiatric admissions, and over 200 shock treatments, I decided to turn within for the help I needed.

Turns out what I needed the most was already inside waiting to come out.

But let’s start at the beginning.

At age 12 in the ’90s, I knew I was different. I came from a normal working-class family with no family history of mental illness. Being a pre-teen, my parents said my anxiety and depression were just a phase.

Bullying, raging emotions, and destructive thoughts started to take over my life. As my body was growing, I developed Scoliosis in my back which was a start to lifelong chronic pain.

My junior high school classmate jumped off a nearby bridge while her family was going through a divorce. I also thought that would be a good way to end my pain inside that was not recognized outside.

I started to self-mutilate my arms and legs and ingest anything I could find in the medicine cabinet.

At age 14, I had my first inpatient psychiatric admission. My parents had to hide their car keys after I tried to start the car in the garage to inhale the fumes, risking the lives of my family members as well.

I was not only hurting myself but anyone around me. My landline phone was taken away after I had called the cops so much to ask for help.

By the age of 16, I was starting Electroconvulsive Therapy, ECT for short. My body had the worst side effects from medications, so this was an alternative.

I missed a lot of school and got detention once for running away and trying to jump off a bridge.

I read a magazine article and called a church in another state that was a cult and had killed all its members to ask if I could come in hopes they would kill me as well. I left my house telephone number and begged them to call me back.

I barely survived high school and graduated in 1999. I went to college for criminal justice in the hope I could become a cop to help people in crisis like me.

But I was heartbroken to learn of laws in Pennsylvania that would prevent someone who was involuntarily committed to a hospital from ever carrying a weapon.

Those words on a piece of paper decide the rest of my life and prevent someone else like me from ever joining the military or police force, even if we recover.

I tried and dropped out of college the first semester due to a lack of confidence in myself. I had the book smarts, but I was my own worst enemy and it seemed all I was good at was failing at whatever I tried.

No one had to put me down; I did it for myself.

The next summer, my father suddenly passed before my 20th birthday. From 2001 to 2002, I spent nine out of the 12 months in a psych ward with limited social interaction, cold food, a shared bathroom with 12 other people, and little hope of recovery.

Isolated from the world was one thing, but I couldn’t hide from my mind that was torturing itself.

At the age of 23, after months of court hearings and meetings for others to decide my future, I was admitted to Mayview State Hospital south of Pittsburgh, which has since been demolished.

Only two weeks later I was told: “You are too high functioning to be a patient here.” Too bad they weren’t in the meetings three months prior, it would have saved everyone a lot of time and money if they had listened to me tell them that in the first place.

I did meet a really nice young person in the hospital who was like me, and I wished him the best to get out of there as well. He gave me his shoes since I liked Converse All-Stars too.

I was discharged to a community treatment team who utterly failed my treatment needs. My therapists, doctors, and appointments were always changing because of staffing shortages and on-call requirements.

Barely able to hold a cashier job at Target, playing softball on Sundays, and ringing in a bell choir at my church, I was at best just existing, just being present.

By 25, I was admitted to COPE, the Center for Overcoming Problem Eating, in Pittsburgh. I had a series of eight feeding tubes that I kept vomiting back up.

I was down to 90 lbs, and my anxiety was the cause of my concerning medical condition, not an eating disorder. No other resources were available that I hadn’t tried already, so the best option medically was to try to stabilize me and my anxiety.

I met my best friend there. We were all we had as there was a lack of family support and understanding in both of our lives.

Over the years, I had a file cabinet full of medical doctors, one folder for each.

In 2008, I found some hope and support at a new local community crisis center that had just opened. I eventually slept in my car in the parking lot when I felt like I was too much of a burden to check in several times a week.

I went to my doctor, grieving the life of my friend I met in the state hospital, who had lost his life to suicide. My doctor told me: “He must have fallen through the cracks.”

“So, is that the cause of death? Is that what you will tell my mother when I also die?” I asked him.

I also learned my best friend passed away from organ failure from her eating disorder.

I lost so many people in my life from suicide, or that had passed suddenly before their time. At a young age, I entered the mental health system for help, and so became dependent on that system to fix me.

People assume you go to the doctor and trust them to tell you what is wrong and then what to do to help yourself. But that’s not what I found in the mental health world.

They have limited facts, since mental illness is mainly thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and no substantive medical evidence like an x-ray or medical proof of what is wrong. They go off what you tell them, which may be distorted.

Many roadblocks exist here in Pittsburgh, such as only one psychiatric hospital with limited beds for inpatient stays. People come from other states and sometimes other countries to receive care at our facility, but it’s just not big enough.

If you come to the ER, you are likely to wait hours upon days for a bed to become available so you can be admitted. That journey of waiting in an ER for a person in crisis can be almost impossible.

But the real journey starts when you leave the hospital and go back to everything that led you here in the first place. The triggers, the relationships, the situations, the environment you’re in.

A few days’ stay just aren’t long enough to help people work through problems that they might have had their whole life.

After my three rock bottoms—the last being the worst—I had to learn to live a different life to survive.

It was clear that, after losing my dad, being sent away to a state hospital, and then having the only option of experimental brain surgery, my journey in the mental health system needed to end.

Being a fly on the wall for so long, you see, hear, experience, and live everything you want to change. The cruel words, the mistreatment, the lack of hope, the grief you wouldn’t want anyone else to ever experience.

I couldn’t understand why a faithfully religious person who had a god, and was so much loved by that god, would ever go through this hell.

I learned about a job that can help others like me. A Certified Peer Specialist (CPS), is a person with a mental health diagnosis and in recovery. Towards the late 2000s, I started seeing job postings and more awareness that these people existed and are valued.

I worked in that ER I had frequented for decades. I comforted, passed tissues, and was a shoulder to cry on for people seeking treatment, parents, teachers or people brought there against their will.

But the most helpful thing I did there was tell people I used to be a patient like them. They could see hope sitting and talking to them. Someone who cared and valued their life, even if they couldn’t at the time.

I worked there for eight years, outpatient for two, and now I supervise some younger CPSs as they grow in their lives and roles. This position has helped me grow as a person, heal from my past, and shape my future. I work with doctors who used to treat me and am bridging the gap between providers and patients by sharing my experiences.

I wear those shoes from my friend from the state hospital every time I have a public speaking engagement.

Those shoes are worn out, broken, and unfit to go on. I make sure his life is remembered and those shoes will never be too worn out for me. I march on for him and the others who thought their battle was too much for them to win.

I want to make sure people know that if you have a hard life, if you’re not loved, you have no family, you have no reason to live and everyone has given up on you, that you can still be happy and have a fulfilling life.

You must make it for yourself and it’s not impossible. Very hard—but do-able.

Everyone is the author of their story; you have control, and it is your responsibility. You have the power to change that story and have a happy ending.

It was a lifelong dream of mine to share my story with the world. I was always a writer and sometimes that’s all you could do to pass the time in the hospital. My voice will be heard, and I can convey my message the best through writing.

I am challenged with permanent long-term memory loss due to the hundreds of shock treatments. I can’t remember much during the treatments, which was 15 years of my life

My dad was taken from this world, and he was taken again because the treatments that were supposed to help my depression erased my memories of him. I grieve for him every day I can’t remember him.

I pieced together my past from journal entries and talking with people who knew me when I wasn’t well. I decided to commit to writing my story even after the years of doubt that I could. I was able to make my dream come true.

Nothing in this world makes me happier than to know I achieved my dream by choosing to do so.

The mission of my book about my story, A Dove in the Shadows: My Mental Health Recovery Journey from Patient to Professional, is to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health and people with a diagnosis.

I want people to know it is okay to share their stories and people will listen. I wanted to bring awareness to the amazing things Certified Peer Specialists can do. We are not just “crazy people.”

People with a diagnosis have really big problems they need help figuring out how to recover from.

These are your neighbors, your mailman, your grocery store employees, your friend at the library, the cashier at your favorite store, your classmates, your friends, and family. We are normal people with really big struggles we need support just like someone with a physical condition.

I want to put normal in abnormal. We are not some freaks you see at a Halloween haunting running around with a chainsaw with a striped “Psych Ward” shirt on that looks like a prisoner would wear.

I don’t talk about my diagnosis much; it’s a label and I don’t agree with being defined as a label.

I want to be seen and valued for who I am today. I want others to know they don’t have to live in the confinement of a label.

I do the work I do to empower people to know they can get better if they don’t give up. There are many barriers to wellness but if you keep waking up and showing up for yourself every day that’s a step in the right direction.

No two people’s journey or recovery is the same.

You are your own best medicine. Find what makes you happy or what used to and write yourself a prescription to take a daily dose of it.

Camping in Lake Erie has been my outlet in recovery. I love picking beach glass and making beach glass gifts for the campground and gift shop to sell as souvenirs.

I discovered the beauty in such brokenness of glass. Every piece of glass has a story, where it came from, what it used to be, its journey, and how it became beautiful again.

I believe everyone is broken and everyone can be transformed into something beautiful again. No one has it all figured out but as long as you keep trying you never know that each day can bring you one step closer to your recovery.

You don’t just say I’m in recovery, I’m all better. My challenges are lifelong, I live each day managing my triggers, stressors, and chronic pain so I can stay healthy. I will always be in recovery every day of my life.

Just as one might take a daily vitamin to stay well. I practice my wellness tools and manage my symptoms before they become overwhelming.

I have built a support system since I naturally didn’t have one.

You are the best doctor that’s out there for you. Look no further, just believe in yourself, be your best friend and you are your only limit.

Jennifer Silbaugh is a first-time author whose memoir came out in September 2023 for Suicide Awareness Month. She wrote “A Dove in the Shadows: My Mental Health Recovery Journey” as a way to provide hope for others. Jennifer is a Certified Peer Specialist at UPMC where she uses her diagnosis to connect with others like her.

All views expressed are the author’s own.

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text “988” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.

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