- At the age of 17 I
developed bipolar disorder,
a very severe form.
It nearly cost me my life,
and nearly destroyed my family.
(slow music)
My parents were in the middle of
getting a divorce at the time.
It was a tumultuous time
for my life as a teen,
and I believed that I was
the only one under that cloud,
but that's, that's so far from the truth,
so far from fact.
50 million people around the world
diagnosed mentally ill.
So many more undiagnosed,
but that have the diseases
that are in their brains.
I don't wanna have this disease.
I don't wanna be flawed.
Bipolar disorder, that's not me.
I was a wrestling champion in
the WCL league in California,
there's no way.
My football team went to state,
this is garbage.
And I was in so much denial,
and that denial ruled the day,
until I crashed, hard.
And it was September 24th,
when it all came to a head.
I sat at my desk and I penned that note,
"Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister,
Girlfriend, Best Friend,
love you but I gotta go."
I was gonna go to the Golden Gate,
and I was gonna disappear.
I thought I was my family's burden.
I wish I asked them.
I just wanted the pain to stop.
That's the common denominator
with people who lose to suicide,
they just want the pain to stop,
but what they don't realize
is that their thoughts
don't have to become their actions.
Their thoughts don't have to take over,
if you can recognize those thoughts
as flawed and illogical
because suicide is an
irrational state of mind.
You think you have to die,
but you don't really want to.
You know I found myself in my
father's room that morning,
I startled him awake, he looked at me,
he said, "Kev, what's wrong?",
like with parental instinct.
I said, "Nothing Dad,
I just want to tell you that I love you."
It was for the very last time.
He goes, "I love you too Kev,
but it's six in the morning,
and I don't gotta be to work til nine,
go back to bed."
I walked around to the
other side of the bed,
I sat on the carpeted floor,
and I rocked myself
back and forth in tears
begging myself to tell the one man
who loves me the most
in the world the truth,
but the voice in my head said,
"Be quiet Kevin, you have to die."
And that's what took me to
the Golden Gate that morning.
I took a bus there, and on that bus
all I wanted to do was
scream and beg for help
and live,
but the voice became so loud.
I sat on that bus in the
back row middle seat,
I'm crying my eyes out like a baby,
mucous dripping from my nose,
people staring at me now,
then I'm yelling aloud
at the voices in my head.
I desperately wanted someone
to say, "Are you okay?"
I would have told them everything.
(soft music)
Fear.
Apathy.
There was a guy to my left,
said to the fellow next to him,
while pointing at me with his thumb,
"What the hell is wrong with that kid?"
with a smile on his face.
Apathy, that's his or her
problem but it ain't mine.
The bus got to the bridge,
I sat there crying.
Bus driver turned, he stood,
he looked at me and he said,
"Kid, come on, get off
the bus, I gotta go."
I walked across the walkway
of the Golden Gate Bridge
for 40 minutes, up and
down, back and forth,
crying like a baby.
Bikers, joggers, tourists, runners,
they all went by me.
Police officers searching
for suicidal people
went by me twice.
I'm leaning over the
rail crying like a baby,
they went by me twice,
nobody cares.
And the voice in my head said,
"Jump now", and I did.
At the millisecond that
my hands left that rail,
instant regret for my actions.
And the absolute recognition,
that I just made the
greatest mistake of my life.
You know falling head first,
right as my body accidentally landed
in a position that wouldn't kill me.
On the way down I said to myself,
What have I just done?
I don't want to die.
God please save me.",
and then I hit the water.
I went down 70 feet beneath
the water's surface,
but I opened my eyes,
my legs I couldn't move.
I had shattered my T12,
L1, and L2 lower vertebrae
into chards like glass.
I had missed severing my spinal cord
by two millimeters.
I swam to the surface only using my arms.
When I came to the surface,
bobbing up and down in the water,
swallowing salt water,
kept going down, couldn't stay afloat.
A woman driving by in her
red car saw me go over
and she called her friend
in the Coast Guard.
The reason the Coast Guard got to my body
within less than the time I was hitting
hypothermia and drown,
was because of that woman
making that phone call.
The Coast Guard arrived,
they fished me out of the water,
they put me on a flat board,
they put a neck brace around my neck,
and they started asking
me a bunch of questions.
The guy looks at me, he
leans in, and he says,
"Kid, do you know how many people
we pull out of this water
that are already gone?"
And I said, "No, and I don't wanna know."
And he said, "Well I'm gonna tell you.
This unit has pulled 57 dead
bodies out of this water,
and one live one."
(slow music)
I looked up at my dad and
I said, "Dad, I'm sorry."
And he looked down at me
and with great conviction
he said, "No Kevin, I'm sorry."
And waterfalls flew from his eyes.
He put his hand on my forehead
and he said words I've never forgotten,
"Kevin, you are going
to be okay, I promise."
And that got me through the night.
Now I had this opportunity to recover.
And a lot of people think
that I went from this incident
and was like, "Oh, I'm
so much better now."
You know, oh great, it's all gone.
No, this was just the beginning.
(soft music)
In the first three psych
ward stays, involuntary,
forced in against my will.
But those next four, I
found self awareness,
I found the ability to say,
"I'm gonna accept that
I have this disease,
I'm gonna fight it tooth and nail,
I'm gonna beat it one day at a time."
And that's what I've been doing.
Exercising everyday,
eating healthy most days,
educating myself about bipolar disorder,
being able to utilize all of those things,
work them into a regimen, a routine,
that helps keep me here.
The common denominator of recovery from
mental illness is routine.
There are so many things we can do
that are not clinically based for all the
people that don't get clinical care.
If you can train your body
and your mind to wake up
at the same time, go to
bed at the same time,
take your pills at the same time,
if you're on medication which
helps some people, not all.
Train your body and mind
to eat at the same times,
roughly within a two hour period everyday,
workout even as simple
as 23 minutes a day,
that leads to 12 hours of better mood,
your 8 second hugs wherever you can,
8 second hugs release
endorphins in the brain
that make you feel better.
I thought that I had one chance,
one choice, one burden to take care of,
I had to die, and I was wrong.
Learn from me.
Know that your thoughts
don't have to become your actions.
You were not meant for this world,
to leave it by way of suicide too soon.
But one thing you can never do,
one thing you should never do,
is silence your pain.
I silenced my pain for years,
I buried it deep down inside me
like so many people do,
and I lost myself.
And it came out in a burst of rage
against myself that led me to attempt to
take my life.
I want you to learn from me,
suicide is not the answer,
and you deserve to be here, for you.
But your pain is valid, your pain is real,
and your pain matters because you do.
No matter what you think
about how you aren't valued
or you're worthless, it's not the truth.
You have to find a way
to turn back to logic,
logic says that, "I do get to live,
you matter, you're
beautiful, we need you."
Please, be here tomorrow.
