Today, I am free

Trigger and content warning: suicide/addiction

Recently I’ve been getting a lot of feedback around my vulnerability, both online and off. A few people have expressed to me how naturally being transparent and simply not giving a f&$$ seems to be for me. Sometimes, this feels like an insult to my struggle, yet I can’t help but realize I’ve never been vulnerable enough to share it.

Here’s a story, a story most of you do not know.

Two years ago today I woke up on a hospital bed in a psych ward. I had walked myself to my own edge, and decided to leap. It was the first time in my life that I had made a plan to kill myself.

There was a few times I had tried to reach out for help, yet was always met with “do you any idea how loved you are?” My immediate reaction was always “Why yes? But do you have any idea how much pain I am in?”

My suicidal ideation was never about not feeling loved, which I think is one of the most common misconceptions around suicide. My suicidal ideation was about the expansive debilitating pain that was slowly eating me alive. A pain I always carried and had no idea how to set down. Frankly, I didn’t know I could, it felt stitched into the fabric of my being. Where did I begin and the pain end? The pain of divorce, the pain of a broken family, the pain of being beaten by a lover, the pain of being raped, the pain of numbing and abusing my body, the pain of being a young teen who’s friends were dying all around her, the pain of watching all of the impacts of each one of these tragedies continuing to create even more toxic disconnection in the relationships I had now, and most of all, the pain of each one of these stories repeating themselves over and over again, with no awareness around how to change my perception or reality.

My depression and anxiety had become increasingly crippling since going into recovery 2 years before. I hadn’t realized how much I had been self medicating with intoxicants prior to that, and refused to become “dependent” on another prescription medication once I got sober. I thought ssri’s were for the weak, and those who couldn’t handle “feeling the pain”. Per usual, Michaela wanted to go to the opposite extreme and white knuckle life, again thinking there was something I had to prove to the world.

In the psych ward I was put on an SSRI against my will and forced to face the complexity of my relationship to them. That thing helped save my life.

When I was in the hospital I didn’t tell anyone that I was there. I was in the middle of finishing my last semester of college and could not bare to quit right before the finish line. I lied to my professors and friends and continued to keep the toxicity trapped inside of my body. I didn’t want people to think I was crazy, and most of all I didn’t want people to think I was no longer dependable. So I continued to carry on with the facade of “Yes Man” and “I’m a bad ass who can handle everything”.
*Note to self: Literally no one can handle everything.

The truth is, my inability to be vulnerable was slowly killing me.

Two months after getting out of the hospital I finished my last semester of college, and ran. I left literally every single piece of “me” behind in the hopes that I could discover what was hiding underneath for so many years. I ran as far away as I could (4,500 miles to be exact) and ended up in the desolate arctic of Northern Alaska.

For four months straight I spent every single day in -20F to -50F weather running dogs in the Alaskan wilderness with almost zero human interaction. Although this part of my life was glorified through social media and a few newspaper articles, at the time, it felt like the only thing keeping me alive. It was here that I was able to start sharing more authentically on social media about my journey. Again, at many points it didn’t even feel like a choice, more like something I had to do to stay alive.

Alaska was the beginning of a journey for me, the search for the end of struggle. It was from Alaska that I found a tiny little island in the Mediterranean called Gozo. I took a leap of faith and took a plane out there to volunteer for two months.

Maybe this place had the answer.

Those two months quickly turned into twelve.

It was there I first discovered plant medicine, a beautiful invitation to change my suffering, once and for all.

Ironically enough, exactly one year after waking up in a psych ward, I found myself packing my bags to embark on a weekend ceremony with a beautiful plant called Iboga. Again, one year later, another death, and yet the most beautiful rebirth I have ever experienced. I was given a chance to take control of my life and start living it.

After my journey with this medicine is when I was finally able to see and receive all of the gifts around me. Ecstatic dance, circling, 5 rhythms, shamanism, Tgroup, sublimewe, Tantra, radical honesty, radical intimacy; all some of the most profound gifts of connection I have ever encountered.

There’s no one thing that healed me, if anything, it was me simply saying yes to me.

You see, not giving a fuck isn’t about not caring about impact, it’s about sharing what’s true for you regardless of it. If you can hold space for the impact on others, great, if you can’t, great. Your only job is to just show up.

Being able to authentically relate and show up unapologetically is a path, not a destination you will ever reach. It’s a muscle that you make stronger by using it, if you don’t, it atrophies, but it is always there waiting to be used.

Vulnerability is a choice, a choice that you make every single day. A choice that saved my life.

Are you dedicated to doing whatever it takes to stay in connection, with you, other, and life?

I am vulnerable in order to stay alive, to stay connected, and to no longer feed the delusion that my feelings and truth create disconnection. Why are you vulnerable?

Today, I am free.