Last week I shared with you all the fact of my 13 year anniversary of my attempted suicide.

It was gratifying to receive the support that I did, on the Lace on Race Page, on the website, and on my personal Page.

Because of that, I want to address the issue that has been on my mind very carefully. I do not want, in any way, to seem to dishonor those who went out of their way to honor me. Still, I think it’s an important issue, that goes way beyond my own personal story, and that informs a lot of how we see each other, and how we work and walk with each other.

Most of the comments left by my gracious and good hearted friends and followers spoke of the good I have done since the attempt, and spoke of the good I will do going forward. A lot spoke of my making the world a better place, and, extrapolating, that I should keep on living and walking so I could do more of the same.

Make no mistake. I am glad I have made a difference. I am glad that I have moved the needle in a positive way–a way that, it must be said, was happening before the attempt as well as after. I am glad that people see my worth. I am grateful for all of that affirmation, and, I assure you, I will indeed keep doing that thing I do, hopefully with the same relentless reliability and resolve–and resilience–that I exhort you to.

Still. There is something quite unsettling, for me, in this framing. It put me in another crucible in fact, far shallower than the one I found myself in 13 years ago, but still lumpy in the traversing.

It lead to questions; hard ones: what if I had not made the world better? What if I weren’t an inspiration? What if I had not been as resilient (by sheer and brutal necessity) than I had been? What if it had indeed broken me, and I did or said or wrote nothing more? What if I had become worse? What if I could no longer work and had to be supported by the State? What if I had turned angry and overtly bitter and mean and, crucially, unsympathetic and emotionally and socially unattractive? Would my life still have value and import?

And despite my past and present achievements, what if I stopped? Is being a walking talking Hallmark channel now my price to pay in perpetuity for ‘permission’ to stay on this earth? Put another way, will I have to sing for my supper till my demise because I, for a snapshot in time, found this earth unbearable? And am I only allowed to be here because I then dedicated myself to making a world which was (and in many ways still is) untenable to me thirteen years ago more bearable and tenable for others? At what point do I lose the ‘right’ to approbation and admiration and become, like most with overt mental and emotional challenges, an object of contempt?

Think carefully before you answer.

I do indeed think these things, and of course I pivot. It’s what I do.

I pivot to those who were indeed marginalized by trauma and mental illness who were not as ‘lucky’ as I was. Who did not have the fortitude–not because they were unworthy, or lazy or deserving of the pain endured in their own personal snapshots of time, but because their pain was different, but no less valid or crushing, than my own.

I pivot to those who didn’t know the attending psychiatrist who was as surprised to see me in the ICU ward at Mesa Vista as I was pained and embarrassed and mortified to be there. I am lucky that my trauma and pain has been of the sort to compel me to reach out rather than to contract in. I am lucky that I knew the right answers to the questions that David, after 10 minutes of ‘WTF’ from him, was mandated to ask me, that we both knew I would answer ‘correctly’ so he could spring me after a 20 min consult. I was lucky that I had a home to go to, and a car to drive to work two days after my one and a half day stay in the ward, where people mistook me, with my perfect bun and sunny yellow day dress, for staff. I am lucky I am pretty, or at least pretty enough. I was lucky that I know how to code switch to ‘normal’, much like I know how to code switch to make dominant culture comfortable. I was lucky that they let me keep the lipstick that made me look like I was just there for the garden salad.

I was lucky that I had threads of a life that could be rewoven, tattered threads; threads with knots and frays and faded colors, that could be, eventually made into something workable, and even more eventually, something beautiful.

I was lucky that I had just the right amount of anger–not so much as to consume, but just enough to propel. I was lucky in that I had just enough fictive imagination for myself that I could envision a life that might never be what the world would call, in its vapidness, ‘happy’, but certainly meaningful, and productive, and valid enough to the world that it would meet my eyes again. That I had work to go to, and meetings in the evenings for various social justice commitments, meant that I had promises to keep; obligations to fulfill; people who depended on me.

But what if I had none of those things? What if I had ended up in a group home, wearing that same yellow flowered dress till it was in tatters? What if the tight bun had slowly become looser and looser till my hair was as wild and dry and tattered as I saw my life to be that Saturday morning? What if I had not become Lace on Race, but rather the unresponsive patient in room 6 who drew stick figures and showered with supervision once a week?

What if I could no longer act, could no longer speak, could no longer write–what then? Would I still have been worthy of hearts and likes and gratitude that my attempt failed? Or would I have become just another forgotten burden?

Be very very careful with your answer.

So yes, thank you. For the encouragement, for the affirmation, for the, well, for the celebration of the life I have forged over the last 13 years, and that I pray will continue. But don’t encourage me because of outward worth. The worth I hold as a human on this earth is enough. See that.

If you do, you truly see me.