Note: This post talks about suicide, suicidal ideation, sexual assault, and substance misuse in detail. Please use your discretion.
A story told and lived by Tony Mikel and written by Courtney Sloan.
June 27th, 2018. It’s another cloudy, yet hot summer’s day in Texas.
I wake up and take a nice, long, and hot shower. The warmth of the water as it hits my skin feels surreal like I won’t get another chance to experience it again. I brush my teeth, shave, and then put on my favorite Deathly Hallows shirt and a pair of jeans.
I put my dog in the backyard, fill the bathtub, and stare at myself in the bathroom mirror for what seems like hours.
I’m not exactly sure how this whole process works, but I know it’s time.
I start writing my suicide note to my family and friends. Today is the day.
Now, how the hell did I get here? I think it’s important we go through that first.
Oh man, what a fucking journey we’re about to embark on together.
As a queer Swiftie, it’s only right that I categorize my journey up until this point through my own Era’s tour called My Mental Health Era (Tony Mikel’s version), with T-Swift album-themed sections for each chapter. *Taylor Swift voice*: Are you ready for it?
Oh, and don’t worry, it has a happy ending, we just have to get out of the woods first (another T-swift reference in case you didn’t catch it).
The Fearless Era
Firecracker is the best word that I could use to describe little Tony. As a toddler, singing and dancing to Selena Quintanilla on TV while wearing my mom’s high heels was my favorite hobby, I was in my element. I felt free to be who I wanted to be—100% myself behind closed doors when I was in my own company.
Easy, right? No one can judge me if they can’t see me.
My home environment switched up a bit during childhood; I moved cities & began the journey of being part of a blended family. No more dancing and singing freely in front of the TV while I got to wear my mom’s high heels and play with my sister’s Barbies. The next era of my life was one that I genuinely would be okay with forgetting, forever.
The Don’t Speak Now Era
Growing up was about to get harder for little Tony with less accepting folks all around and more judgment on who I was. Kids always poked fun at my voice, my interests and passions, and even my personality. So much so, that I got into trouble when I was caught “acting like a girl” or “being a sissy” (we love some good ole generational toxic masculinity, right?).
Can you imagine getting punished for being yourself at such a young age? I’m sure many of us can relate to the conditioning of repressing these parts of ourselves for our own safety when we are young. I had to play small in order to survive. Don’t Speak Now was my life motto at this point.
However, there was one form of escape that I got to experience from the everyday hell that was bestowed upon me: when company was over. When company was over my family was actually nice to me. Specifically, my step-brother’s friend was nice to me. Wow, I felt like I mattered for once. I was going to take advantage of these situations and bask in them as much as I could before I had to go back to the reality that I became immune to, this felt like heaven.
The one friend in particular who was extra friendly to me and would be the first of many male figures in my life who would take advantage of me. Shy, young, and innocent 5-year-old me was sexually assaulted by this 13-year-old boy.
I had no idea what had happened. All I knew was that I felt wrong. I was far too young to process the emotional damage that had been placed inside of my body, my logical reasoning wasn’t even developed yet. It wasn’t until I explored the internet at around 12 years old that I realized what had transpired.
I’m gross. I’m broken. What the hell was I supposed to do now? Who do I tell? Will anyone believe me? No, I’M the gross one here. I can’t tell ANYONE.
This first sexual assault led to a slew of other assaults throughout my middle school and high school years. From my two older cousins to a “friend” at a sleepover, a camp counselor, and even just a random stranger that I met on a night out.
What was wrong with ME? Surely, there was something inherently wrong for these things to happen. What was I doing to deserve this?
Everything that was once little firecracker Tony, was now suppressed and locked inside. I buried it deep down far enough to where I couldn’t look at it any longer, but I knew it was there, even if I threw away the key. I hated myself. I hated this thing that my own family made me feel awful about, and that I was constantly made fun of for.
I would get asked if I was gay all the time at school. Honestly, I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know how to answer that question. There was a big question mark in my brain trying to figure out the supposedly missing pieces of that puzzle, but they were too scattered from all of the trauma I had experienced and was continuing to experience at that time.
Then, I met a boy.
He was the first boy who put the pieces of the puzzle together for me. He was my first crush, my first kiss, my first real and wanted experience that I had with a boy. He was the first boy that ever made me feel seen. Feel good. He actually liked the hidden parts of myself that I tucked away. He liked me.
Eventually, though, he moved away, and I felt lonelier and more isolated than ever. He was the only one who gave me that sense of validation again to be myself since I moved away from my mom and sisters. Now, he was gone.
I protected myself by playing “Mr. Cool” in high school. I knew everyone’s name and they all knew mine. I wore a nice, clean, heteronormative mask on the outside, but was screaming to remove it on the inside.
My internal scream must’ve been loud enough because it caught the attention of one of my teachers. This teacher convinced me he saw the internal battle that I was fighting and that I could confide in him about my struggle with my sexuality. In reality, he was another adult who preyed upon my vulnerability.
I didn’t know how to escape or release the control that he had over me. This kind of control that he exerted on me lasted four years, all the way up until I graduated from high school.
Being stuck living like an imposter where I wasn’t fully living on the outside how I felt on the inside was something that I vowed to leave behind after high school. I decided that I was going to fully come out of the closet, I was finally going to tell everyone who I really was.
Loving Him Was Red Era
Once I came out as gay at 17, I decided to leave the house. I had nowhere to go, so my dad helped me move to college early to begin this new chapter as the now openly gay Tony. My time had finally come to start embodying this new identity. I was ready to begin making some new friends, but there was one problem…
I had zero social skills. I lacked the social experience that I never got in high school. I never drank alcohol or smoked weed or did any kind of substance that our culture bonds over. Instead, I always bragged about being the straight-edge kid in high school. But I wanted college to be different. I wanted to finally escape the closeted Tony era and begin this new era as a different Tony.
This new identity was the fun Tony. The one who never had that in high school, and this new, fun Tony was going to do drugs and drink lots of alcohol to prove this. I learned really quickly that alcohol made me feel bold and do really stupid things. Weed wasn’t as impactful, yet I continued to use it every night in college because that’s what I felt like I was supposed to do.
My new alcohol and drug use didn’t stop the bullying, though. The bullying was non-stop in my percussion music studio class. Another male student would take every jab he could think of about my appearance or my sexuality.
This era of my life taught me some pretty hard lessons, the most important one being that people can be really cruel and that not everyone nice to you is your friend. I was also ignorant of the fact that people can talk about you when you’re not in the room, no matter how nice they were to you before you left the room.
But, there was one good thing that came out of my first semester in college. I met a boy in my psychology class who had that firecracker energy like me. He had beautiful brown hair and the most piercing green eyes, truly a dreamy combo. He was like a Disney prince in real life.
That boy was also caught up in a college life that resembled the show Euphoria; lots of alcohol, lots of weed, lots of drugs, lots of lost people trying to escape reality. He wound up killing himself and four other friends in a car accident on the highway after my first year of college. He was drunk driving.
A Cruel Summer and a Bad Reputation
After that boy died in the (Cruel) Summer of 2013, I transferred colleges so I could be closer to my family, specifically my mother. My partying urges were still largely in effect, actually stronger than ever. All I wanted to do was wake up, smoke, and feel free to be myself and talk to boys. I wasted all of my college money on drugs and other frivolous things, I skipped eating so I could use that money to buy more alcohol. I drove around town while drunk and got into lots of trouble. My relationships with my mom and sisters started deteriorating, and anybody who once knew me didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. I was a party kid with a bad reputation.
I was living in the fast lane where the road was full of boys, booze, bud, and blues. I was addicted to the way drugs and alcohol made me feel because I didn’t have to feel. I could be numb. I could avoid my feelings and my trauma when I wasn’t sober, even if it wasn’t in the healthiest way.
I ended up officially dropping out of school in the Spring of 2014.
Unsurprisingly, my partying lifestyle attracted low-vibrational people and situations. I continued to club every night, I was at every rave and began adding psychedelics into the already-chaotic-alcohol-and-drug-lifestyle mix. My mental and physical health were at an all-time low, I was out of control, but that felt nice to me at the moment. The escape from reality was all I knew.
The one (and maybe only) thing I felt like I could control was my body and sexuality, and I did so by having sex. Often with strangers. But that control slipped through my fingers during a spur-of-the-moment trip to El Paso for a rave with some friends. I ended up blowing the rest of my money, tripped on drugs, and partied into the morning. The experience got worse when I woke up to being sexually assaulted by someone I didn’t know in our hotel room. By the time I could get to safety and call the police, the person was already gone.
Folklore & Evermore
I spent too many years unconsciously carrying all of the undealt with trauma and pain, my system was getting overloaded now. I was past the point of breaking. I became bitter. I couldn’t hold a job. I wasn’t able to be the friend, brother, or son that I hoped to be.
Seeing beyond the veil where happiness and hope were a common presence in my life was non-existent, it felt like a comical fantasy to even think that those things were possible. I thought I would never be free from this trauma cloud that blocked any sunshine from entering, the fog was far too thick. I saw others as worthy of living a happy life and saw myself as the exception. Even as a kid, I remember praying for my existence to end. I had been depressed my whole life.
What the fuck does true happiness even look like for me? What does it feel like? How am I supposed to know if I’ve never even experienced it? Where the hell could I even start with moving forward?
It all seemed so impossible.
This was the last photo taken of me before my attempt.
And this finally brings me back around to June 27th, 2018, the day I tried to take my own life. The reason why I am even able to share this story with you today.
I woke up to my dad screaming. He had found me in the bathtub following my attempt. He pulled me out of the tub and wrapped my arms in towels before putting me in his pickup truck and rushing us to the hospital.
I didn’t fit this part into my plan. The part where someone found me before it was too late. I was mad that I didn’t consider this part. I was mad that my plan fell through. But beyond my frustration, I grew scared as I looked down at my arms.
At the hospital, the physicians and nurses took good care of me, helping my body to heal the physical wounds. I still thank them to this day for saving my life. My emotional wounds, however, still needed healing.
Everything that I thought I knew about life was changing. My family and friends stopped talking to me when I felt like I needed them the most. I felt even more lost than I did before the attempt. I could choose to fall back into that version of myself that got me here in the first place, or I could choose differently this time. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I knew I needed to just start somewhere.
I needed to give myself a chance at life like I never had before.
I used the To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA) FIND HELP Tool. They provided me with resources for low-income mental health treatment options. From there, I started therapy for the very first time. It was pretty rocky, to begin with, processing all of the pain and trauma that I had minimized and endured, but I eventually began to find my groove and even got a job again, one that I could actually hold this time.
When it came to incorporating healthy coping skills in place of my self-harming thoughts, I had to choose a hobby. My therapist had suggested trying meditation, knitting, or playing music, but I already knew exactly how I wanted to transmute this energy, and that was with running.
I always had a passion for running. I loved the isolation I felt from it when I did cross country in high school. Being able to listen to music and allow the beauty that I felt within to physicalize and take precedence. Just me and the present moment without the incessant stream of thought. I began running again about three months after my suicide attempt, and I haven’t stopped since.
Midnights: A Happy, Healthy, & Self-Loving Tony
Running and sticking to therapy did absolute wonders for me. I dug through and processed all of the shit from my childhood, and cleared the trauma cloud to make room for creativity again. I met high-quality people and began making more authentic connections and friendships at trail races and half marathon events. Although I had never known what it felt like before, I knew that I was happy. ME. Tony Mikel. HAPPY. AND HEALTHY.
So allow me to reintroduce myself:
This Era is one where Tony goes to therapy.
I practice self-love and care. I’ve had the same job as a barista for three years now. I have a beautiful dog named Bailee. I volunteer at the animal shelter and other organizations in my free time. My dad and I are closer than ever, and he is one of my biggest supporters now. But most importantly, I am proud to say that I love and accept my authentic self fully for the first time in my life.
I am not a victim, I am a survivor. My suicide attempt was an attempt for a reason. I am alive today for a reason, and that reason is to help people the way that I needed to be helped.
I am currently training for a marathon to raise money for the same organization that saved my life just six years ago : TWLOHA. I want to continue to run more marathons and raise more money for this organization so they can continue to save lives. I may be a barista today, but my true calling is to work in suicide prevention and continue telling my story to help others and show them the light beyond the veil because it’s there for everyone, even if they can’t see it. I owe it—to little Tony, depressed Tony, and survivor Tony—to live at my fullest potential where I am helping someone every day.
I hope that by reading my story, you can see that glimmer of hope that is inside of you, and inside of thousands of others going through the same thing. We have a job to do and that is letting others know that help is here and that thriving instead of just surviving is possible.
All you have to do right now is just be alive tomorrow.
With love,
Tony
To follow Tony’s marathon story & activism for suicide prevention — you can follow along on Instagram or Facebook.
Whatever you are facing, there is always hope. And we will hold on to hope until you’re able to grasp it yourself. If you’re thinking about suicide, we encourage you to use TWLOHA’s FIND HELP Tool to locate professional help and to read more stories like this one here. If you reside outside of the US, please browse our growing International Resources database. You can also text TWLOHA to 741741 to be connected for free, 24/7 to a trained Crisis Text Line counselor.