#BrookeUnbroken

I spent almost two years of my life buried in a very deep dark hole trying to fight depression and suicidal thoughts on my own. I stared death in the face. Just the two of us sitting in silence, looking back at one another on three different occasions. Luckily I found the strength to walk away from him. I laid in bed more days than I was out. I went through days without even remembering how. Cried more tears than a body could produce. Sent calls to voicemail more than I could count. It was a silent fight. Because until I wrote and made it public, no one had a clue. It changes a person. It changes their heart, their mind, their soul. And you don’t go back. You don’t go back to who you used to be. Those scars, whether physical or emotional, they are there forever. The bruises heal. The aches go away. But the scars...they stay forever. You never forget the suicide attempts. You never forget the places, or the dates. You never forget the meaning of all those songs, or the sm...

The day she sat across the table from me with a completely emotionless, empty shell of who she used to be, she starred straight through me. I was hysterically crying , unable to contain my brokenness. She didn’t even blink an eye. The judge handed me a tissue, and told me it would be ok. A month ago I was delivered the envelope of papers I thought I’d never see. The official “closing of the book”. She got their wish. I got a twist to the knife that was already sticking in my heart. A twist that would kill every feeling I had left. I have been completely empty since. A few tears now and then as a memory races through my mind, but then as I realize what’s happening I quickly wipe it away. Quite the contrary to where I had been the past two years when I allowed her to hold the key to the very breath I breathed. She lost...not me. She lost the only person in her world that loved her unconditionally. She lost someone that would fight until death do us part. She lost someone tha...

Ever hear one of those songs that you can’t stop listening to? You keep putting it on repeat and it takes you somewhere you don’t want to leave. I found one of those a few days ago and it could not explain me more. It’s a prayer that I pray consistently, yet in a song. It makes the tears well up in my eyes, I lose my breath, I drown in my own tears and it makes my heart ache in a familiar way that I hate. So why can’t I stop listening to it? When I try and look back over the past 20 years of my life the good times are so clouded by the hurt that I can’t even see it. The pain has changed who I am; some for the good, and some for the not so good. I used to be a firm believer in “Things Happen For A Reason”, but not so much anymore. Some people are born to love and I know that the intensity in which I love someone is not something that can be found very often, if even at all. It’s one of my best and worst traits. Others are born to hurt. Even when they have been hurt themselves...

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve put my feelings into words. I saw this post this morning upon doing a little soul searching and I couldn’t help but become confused.   I’ve been in both places. Grudges. The old me...circa 2016 and back...100% held a grudge. It’s all I knew. Or maybe it was what I was forced to know. What it did was cost me my first marriage, and countless mistakes after that. Then one day my wife (new marriage) told me it, along with my bitterness for life, it was one of the things she hated most about me. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Along with the wondering why she married me to begin with, so many questions flooded my existence. Circumstances had made me that way. The many years of continuous hurt and betrayal from so many people I had given my heart to had turned me into stone. What a reality check and more importantly an awakening.  And so I committed to myself, and those I loved, to change. And I did. I absolutely changed. I let all the ne...

Be sure to check out Rashawn’s video below before you read ⤵️ Rashawn Copeland He talks about the emptiness feeling...and explains it unequivocally well. It’s the words that I’ve searched for in trying to explain that lowest of low feeling that I feel so often. Just to make people understand...those people that have judged my suicide attempts. Or anyone else’s for that matter. Those times when all I want to do is not feel...period. It’s never about the actual problem. It’s never about the people you love. Or being selfish. It’s about the pain...and wanting it to simply stop. One of my many faults is the profoundness in which I feel. Whether it’s love or sadness, I feel passionately. It’s never just on the surface. It’s fiercely, almost uncontrollable. And I hate that about me! I get so sick of people trying to tell me that I need to change the way I feel. Like he says...people telling you to just “be positive”. Listen folks you can’t just change the way you feel! If it could be...

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 nev...

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...