Ten years ago, I died.

Twenty-four years old. In a university office. With a nice job title. Six packets of off-brand Asprin on my desk. A montage of my favorite Facebook photos on loop in my head and guesses on which one they’d use on my funeral program. Frank Sinatra’s “I Did It My Way” humming through computer speakers. A handwritten note.

I swallowed the pills two at a time. Crying. Certain. Waiting for it to end.

I want to say doubt died in that office.

I want to say fear died in that office.

I want to say hopelessness died in that office.

I want to say that I lived happily ever after.

That I spent the weekend in a psych ward and it was fine.

That I lost my nice job title and was underemployed for two years and it was fine.

That I terminated two pregnancies that year and it was fine.

That I moved back home with my mother and it was fine.

But nothing was fine and I had to breathe through the not fine-ness.

Nothing was fine but I therapy’d and loved and laughed and wrote and sexed and drank and danced and cried and road-tripped and dreamed and read and yoga’d and studied and dropped out and fell apart and patched up and fell apart and patched up and nine years after I died, I am alive.

And whenever I get lost in who I am not, what I have not accomplished, what I don’t have, what I didn’t say, where I haven’t been…

I remember the year I raised myself from the dead.