My journey with mental health began slowly. During the 2020 COVID-19 quarantine, I would wake up with an overwhelming feeling of sadness in my chest. It felt like my heart was slowly sinking down through my body, as though it weighed 100 pounds. I didn't know what was making it so heavy. I would furrow my brow and tell my mom that I just felt…sad. I sat on the couch and watched Friends for hours on end, accomplishing nothing but distraction. My dad would approach me gently after emerging from his home office, give me a fatherly pat on the leg, and teasingly ask me the same question.
“Have you done anything productive today?”
I’d glance at my mom, she’d send back a flicker of concern, and steer the conversation another direction.
I returned to my junior year of highschool to sterile classmates. I stopped smiling under my mask as I passed people in the halls. I stopped trying to talk over the plastic barriers. I began to walk out to my car during lunch and eat alone with my thoughts in my frosty Honda Civic.
Softball became an agonizing task. I dreaded going to practice everyday. Tears flooded my eyes as I put my uniform on, but the culture of my sport made it clear that a break was not an option.
One cold day in November, I noticed something strange during the daily lunch trek to my car. As I passed the highschool's band hall, I mentally swatted away the thought of walking in front of a car on my way to lunch. I was usually able to push those thoughts away without much effort, but this time felt different.
Swelling and multiplying, the thought rose up from the floor of my consciousness with a vengeance, veins threatening to burst from its skin. My mind began to slash at itself, brain matter collecting under its nails, screaming at me to do terrible things to myself.
For the next six months, this monster was my constant companion.
Every second of my day felt like someone was screaming into my ear to hurt myself.
It permeated my mind when I was eating dinner, washing my hands, talking to my best friend. As I drove, it would take over my hands, twitching on the steering wheel, threatening to drift into the oncoming traffic. It got worse when I played softball. Finally after a bad softball game, I stormed into my mom’s room and admitted how I was feeling, still in my dirty uniform and sobbing through every word.
My performance on the field so directly affected my fragile mental state that my parents begged me to take a break.
I couldn't. I knew that taking a break for my "mental health" was not a viable option, and there was no way I could return to my team if I did. So, I pushed forward.
In the depths of our shared struggle with mental health, I found an unexpected companion in one of my closest friends. Together, we sought solace in the quiet corners of a desolate parking garage. Perched at its peak, we watched the sun set behind our town.
One fateful evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, my friend turned to me and uttered words that would forever change the course of my life.
"Carsyn," he said, "if you ever did anything to leave this world, I think I would follow you."
I battered his shoulder with my fists and told him how ridiculous he sounded. As we sat there and watched the last of the sun slip away, a promise formed between us. In the back of my mind, I knew how dangerous these sorts of commitments were, but I was blinded by the darkness I was living in. As long as one of us fought to stay alive, the other had to stay with them.
There was no abandoning one another, but, if we did, the other would follow.
Within the locked layers of my phone, a ‘just-in-case’ note exists with his name on it.
At the time, I was blinded by my overwhelming emotions, and I didn’t understand the danger of this mode of thought.
Over the last year of high-school, life gradually pulled us into different paths. I valued his friendship deeply and hoped that we would be able to reconnect after starting college.
The summer before we left for college, that friend made the decision to end his life.
When I found out, my heart stopped beating and denial flooded my mind. I frantically grasped for an explanation as to why this couldn’t be true.
But his eyes stared up at me from a memorial website listing the service information.
My knees gave out, and I fell to the floor. I put my hand over my mouth, containing my stomach, which threatened to launch itself out of my mouth. My lungs stopped taking in oxygen. A lot of that day was a blur, but I remember frantically calling my mom and returning to the same couch where my mental health journey had started over quarantine. It felt cruelly ironic.
I kept replaying that evening at the parking garage and the moment we made our promise. I am reminded of our pact every time I see a sunset and sometimes slip back into that unhealthy mindset, irrationally questioning what kind of friend I am for not upholding the other side of our promise.
After going through therapy and processing this experience, I’ve realized how dangerous our promise was to my well-being. While I am better than I used to be, I still have ups and downs. But now that I have personally experienced the effects of suicide on those who are left behind, I am able to fight back. I often think about how my parents, sister, and grandparents would feel if I gave in to my struggles.
I am no less of a competitor because I deal with mental health challenges and choose to talk about them.
Athletes who deal with mental health are not "soft" for wanting to "talk about their feelings." But, athletes hear that dialogue from coaches and teammates all the time. It has to change. In recent years, suicide has beena huge component of college softball. Lauren Bernett of JMU Softball ended her life in 2022. It was an event that shocked the entire softball community and changed the lives of her teammates forever. Student-athlete suicides have become an epidemic. The friend I lost played sports for most of his life. In the first 5 months of 2022, 5 collegiate athletes took their own lives. Silencing our voices is killing us.
Suicide is the third leading cause of death for collegiate student athletes. Athletic culture has to change and protect student athletes.
To anyone struggling: You deserve to be here, and your life is worth so much more than you think. My recent experiences with suicide have taught me a hard lesson about the effects of suicide on family and friends. As an athlete who struggles with suicidal thoughts, I want to share my story and help other athletes realize how much they are needed in this life. I want athletes to know that it is okay to not be okay, and that you don't have to be in a perfect mental place to advocate for others.
I'll leave you with this: Stop telling student athletes they are weak for struggling.
I allowed the culture of my sport to tell me that a break was not an option which made my mental health issues exponentially worse. Because I failed to prioritize my mental health, I now experience trauma induced panic attacks in game, where I flashback to my final years of high school. If I had coaches, teammates, and administration standing up for my health, I would have felt more confident in temporarily stepping away.
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