#BrookeUnbroken

Happy Pride month! A month dedicated to the LGBT community to celebrate love, seek understanding and solidarity, hoping to one day be able to live in a world where their lives are valued just as much as the heterosexual life. If you know anything at all about me, you know this sits near and dear to my heart. As I watch so many friends celebrating this month, I decided to take a walk back in that time in my life and share what “that side of the fence” as most call it, was like for me. I’m finally at a place where I can talk about my life with her, and semi-not-cry.   I still get the question a thousand times...”how did it happen?”. How did I fall in love with a woman you mean? It’s hard for many people to even say that out loud, and that’s ok, because it was just as hard for me at the beginning too. It wasn’t something planned. It just happened over time. We had been friends for years; since high school. Years would go by, we would see one another and hang out like we had never m

What’s the most important thing you’ve done this year? For me...it’s that I survived. One year ago today I sat in the garage, put the keys in my ignition, turned it on, and sat there screaming in sheer pain. Calling out for her, but she never came. I sat and pounded the steering wheel, grasping at my chest because it hurt so bad. The physical pain...it was just too much for me to take, and I wanted it to go away. This was my only answer. But as I sat there, uncontrollably crying, something made me turn off the ignition and open the garage door. It wasn’t that I wanted to live, but whatever it was, it was stronger than me or the pain.  For me that night...I was desperately trying to end the pain and conquer my problems. I could not bare to live my life without her. It was simply unadulterated desperation.   Depression. It’s living in a body that fights to survive, with a mind that wants to die. The suicide attempt(s) have become a trauma that I have had to learn to deal wit