Today marks one year since I wrote my suicide letters. I never told anyone I wrote them. I did not want anyone to try to stop me. I did not want anyone to know how much I was suffering.

It is pretty haunting to look back at these letters now. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about how miserable and hopeless I was a year ago. I was so close to giving up.

This past year, I worked harder than I have ever worked in my life. Although I did not give up on myself, I did have to give up certain aspects of my life. I had to give up my privacy until I was able to prove I could be trusted again. I had to sever ties with toxic people. I had to quit drinking, and I had to take yet another leave from school.

The one the thing I am still working on is the most frightening part—giving up the beliefs I have about myself.

For as long as I can remember, I have believed that people do not like me, and that I am uninteresting and invaluable. I have also convinced myself that I am incompetent, unintelligent, directionless and unmotivated.

It is incredibly difficult to give up the things you have been telling yourself for your entire life. It is pretty unsettling to suddenly abandon the beliefs you have accepted to be facts and start labeling them as fiction. At the same time, I know that all these beliefs are only doing me a disservice and are holding me back from living my life to the fullest.

The fact that I am alive today is enough evidence to prove that I am not unmotivated. And after everything I have gone through this past year, I am able to recognize just how may people I have in my corner.