Darian Gerald shares story for suicide prevention day

Wrangell High School held an assembly last Monday afternoon for a special guest. September 10 is "Suicide Prevention Day," and the entire month of September is dedicated to suicide prevention. Darian Gerald came to the high school to talk to students, as well as parents and staff members in the crowd, about her own story.

"I've actually only ever shared this story with my mom, my therapist, and my husband," she said.

Gerald is an alumnus of Wrangell High School, having graduated in 2015. She said that her struggles with mental health began a few months into her freshman year. She and some of her friends, she said, went separate ways and she did not know how to properly handle that situation at the time. This split lead to what Gerald described as a strong sense of isolation, which she covered up by getting heavily involved in sports.

"I focused all of my time and energy there, and my schedule was crazy," she said. "So my schedule was wake up in the morning and go to school. Right after school I'd go to cross country practice, and from cross country to JV volleyball practice, and right after that I would do varsity volleyball practice, and then I'd finally get home."

Gerald said that she started working out during her lunch hour and in the mornings before school, as well. She put so much energy into sports that she would miss meals, and eventually lost her appetite and developed an eating disorder.

"I actually didn't know it was an eating disorder, I didn't see it as an issue. I was working out, I would eat a granola bar every now and then."

The issue didn't come to a head until her volleyball coach asked her one day, on a trip, if she had eaten anything that day. When Gerald said she hadn't, the coach asked about the day before, and the day before that. Gerald said that she was made to sit out of the game and eat a bowl of leftover rice.

Her parents were told about her problem with eating soon after. Gerald's team also began to keep tabs on her, constantly asking if she had eaten. She said that the team did this at the request of her parents, she later learned, to try and help her. While she is grateful for it now, she said that it infuriated her back then and made her lose some sense of control in her life.

"That lack of control actually brought me down deeper, and eventually I slipped into a darkness, and that's the only way to describe it," Gerald said. "It consumed me, I couldn't think straight, I didn't really know what I was doing. It brought up issues I didn't even know actually bothered me."

Gerald sank deeper into this darkness until, she said, she hit rock bottom and began to contemplate suicide. However, she reached out to her mother for help at this low point, and she made Gerald promise not to attempt suicide. That promise, Gerald said, kept her going and she began to seek treatment.

"Mom told Dad, and we went to the doctor," she said. "They put me on medication and they arranged for me to go to counseling ... and I was also diagnosed with depression and anxiety disorder that day."

At first, Gerald said she was embarrassed about going to therapy. It was something she was ashamed of and did not want others to know about. The counselors at SEARHC, however, worked hard with Gerald to keep things as discreet as possible and helped change her mind about therapy being something to be embarrassed about. The therapy and medications helped a lot, she said. After about a year, Gerald stopped going to counseling and stopped her medication for the rest of her time at high school.

However, this was not the end of things for Gerald. She said that mental health is something she works hard on every day. Gerald also said that she cannot play sports anymore because of her anxiety. Recently, she was asked to participate in an alumni sporting event and this brought on what she described as a major panic attack. This lead to her seeking counseling again, and she was recently diagnosed with OCD.

"I deal with my anxiety disorder every single day in many different ways," Gerald said. "I work really hard on it. I'm not good with crowds; actually people who really know me know I'm not good with any more than about four or five people in the room at one time. I've had to prepare for this talk for many months, mentally, to even be able to stand up here with a crowd this huge."

Before concluding her talk, Gerald said that there were four things she wanted people to take away. One, people should discard their stereotypes surrounding mental health and suicide. Two, people should be mindful about what they say, as many people around them can be silently struggling. Three, be there to offer help and support for others. Finally, do not be afraid to seek help.

"I know it can be really hard to see a future, I 100 percent didn't see a future, whatsoever, for myself," Gerald said. "Find someone you trust. My mom was there at the time and she was someone I trusted, and I confided in her. Out of everyone that I mentioned that has helped me along my journey, the one and most important person in this story is me. I'm the one who asked for help and thankfully had the support to help me get to a healthy spot. But I am the one who works every day to learn the tools, and better myself, and try to hold onto the reins of what's going on."