A lot of things will change you. A quote you read walking back to your hotel at 11:30pm in London. A raw conversation you have with your best friend after a night of one too many. A lecture you’ve attended every Monday and Wednesday for the last 8 weeks at 2:25pm. Damage to the very organ that controls every waking second of your life. That last one is the thing that really struck a chord with me. It was October 11, 2024 when I was sat at a lovely, intimate dinner with my best friend Kate — in Montreal, Canada. Only to look down and see a message from my neurologist, that she had found ‘something’ on the brain MRI. She said she would be in touch after the holiday weekend to discuss the next steps and to enjoy my weekend. “What the F***” I manage to blurt out to Kate, almost laughing. I don’t even remember what she said next.
Fall 2023 and Forward
Something was wrong. I didn’t even realize how much of a hole I had dug myself into. I didn’t even stop to think about the fact that I was unhappy, in every aspect of my life. I was unhappy with myself and my own actions and every decision I had ever made. I isolated myself while living in a house with 6 of my best friends. But this time it was worse, this time I was extremely depressed for the first time ever. Pitying myself, hating myself, feeling sorry for myself — I wasn’t doing well mentally, yet again, and it was all my fault. This time I had really pushed myself past any point I had ever been before. I was only 20 years old and I felt like this. I have loving and supportive parents and I felt like this. I have two siblings who I adore and look up to even though we fight constantly, friends all around me, a loving boyfriend of over 4 years. And I still simply didn’t want to do it anymore. All I could think about was how lucky I was, how grateful I should be, how I have everything I could ever possibly need or want, but that didn’t cut it.
Retreat is a common response to anxiety, and I may as well be a master of it. I didn’t leave my house for over 3 days at one point last winter. Every single day was the same painful wake up, willing myself back to sleep for as long as I could until laying there got too excruciating. I would call my mom into my room and confess, “I don’t feel well,” hoping she would somehow read my mind and understand what I really meant. She would console me the best she could and say “what do you mean, honey? Like sick?” I couldn’t tell her that I wanted to die, I felt so much pain, regret, loneliness, and loss – so much mental pain it began to feel physical, it felt so real. But I didn’t even want to accept that myself, so I never out right told my parents that those were my everyday thoughts.
It was never ending. I woke up like that every morning for months, and I hated myself for it. One night, I stood leaning against my kitchen counter and pleaded to my mom, “I have no idea what is wrong with me. This is not me. I have no idea who I am or what is going on, Mom. I’m serious,” and she did the best she could. She comforted me and she was in pain seeing her youngest daughter like this but there was only so much she could do. Burying my face into her chest only provided a millisecond of relief. And then I would wait until it was time to go to sleep. I was stuck. I felt that there was something extremely wrong with me or I had to be having some sort of mental breakdown — but alas, I was clinically depressed and struggling with my usual severe anxiety disorder.
I decided to start running. Not like normal physical activity, quite the opposite. I was running away from my problems. Reflecting back on this time is agonizing. Groundhog day; dragging every fiber of my body out of bed everyday and going through the same painful feelings. I didn’t know what to do anymore. I missed who I used to be, and had no idea how I lost myself this drastically. Even at this point in my life it is so fascinating to look back on that time because I was truly a shell of myself. I needed to do something, or I was not going to come out of this. So, I decided to book a one way flight to Barcelona — the city I was supposed to move to for a semester on January 7th, but canceled my flight on January 5th. I sobbed to Kate as she got ready to get on that flight, without me. I was letting her down, my family, myself, and my boyfriend — I was giving up, “I’ll be better when you get back in April,” I told her, “I’m really gonna try.” This destroyed me in a way I never could have seen coming. I hated myself more and more with every day that passed that I was supposed to be in Barcelona. So, my last ditch effort was taking my online classes to Spain, and that would make me feel better, “I need to be with my friends, my family doesn’t know what the hell to do with me right now,” I thought to myself. So I decided to take my mental health crisis abroad.
Arriving in Barcelona was one of the scariest things I had ever experienced to this day. I was paper thin and felt like a walking dementor. I was running from everything at home and it came right with me across the Atlantic. I missed my Uber to the apartment, and I couldn’t for the life of me make my way around the airport to find the exit. I was in a state, a really horrible state of confusion, sleep loss, and anxiety. It followed me like a cloud of disgusting black soot, as it always does. I wouldn’t wish this kind of disoriented feeling on my worst enemy. I was convinced I was going ‘crazy’. I finally got to the apartment and I felt so out of place. Everyone was excited, smiling, hugging me. And I was numb. I had zero emotions, and I so badly wanted to be excited, but I was slowly realizing that I still wanted to die. “Shit, I can’t get rid of this, can I,” I thought.
My first night in Barcelona was an ugly one, from what I can remember. I just kept drinking. More than I had in 6 months. Nothing mattered to me anymore. I was living the ‘dream’, except I was still stuck in my own personal hell. Everything felt like it was in slow motion, and the word “suicide”, that I liked to call the “S” word, kept flashing into my head. I kept myself at bay by convincing myself it was probably OCD or some other mental illness and that I was just very depressed right now…I hope? This wasn’t me, I had never had thoughts like this before. I used to be put together, organized, productive, intelligent, beautiful, and now I saw myself as the most disgusting, awful human being on the planet. But, this was not the time to deal with any of this. I was going to try to make the most of my time here, and I was determined not to miss out on any more memories with my friends. So, on my second day in Barcelona, I decided to run farther, and I booked a weekend trip to Morocco with two of my best friends and my boyfriend.
I didn’t think it could get worse, I was wrong. My boyfriend had arrived in Barcelona to spend one week with me while I got settled. He took care of me, he lost sleep over the way I was acting and I didn’t know what to do with him anymore. I wasn’t in love with him anymore, but I loved him so much. This wasn’t something I was ready to admit to myself. It was him — the love of my life — my closest friend and the one person who truly knew what was going on in my head, and he got it. He just got it. I couldn’t lose that or else I wouldn’t survive.
We boarded the plane to Marrakech and I clutched onto him for dear life. I was quite literally hallucinating and hearing things. I had a whole conversation with one of my best friends, Caroline, only to realize she was never really there once I opened my eyes. We were still on the plane, heading to Africa, “holy shit, this is bad, ” I thought, and truly questioned how much longer I could take this. At least I was going to be the first one in my family to visit Africa! And my dad, my biggest supporter and the most loving father, was “so proud of me,” so I had to keep going. At this point I was running on maybe 5 hours of sleep, since I left Boston…3 days ago. The next few days were nothing short of a fever dream. Three hours of sleep in the hotel and then we were off to camp overnight in the Sahara desert. Dissociation started to run its course. I have no idea who this person is looking back on all this. The duality of this trip is something that still strikes me to this day. I was in awe of the African culture, the kindness of the Moroccan people, the food, the landscapes, the precious children enamored by an ivory skinned woman with red hair and freckles. But I still couldn’t shake the mental torture. We spent one night in the Sahara, and had the opportunity to gaze at the stars. We trudged up the 50 ft sand dunes and laid there, gazing at the stars. And even under the stunning moonlight of the African stars, I couldn’t get away from it, “if I see a shooting star I won’t kill myself,” I thought. And then I saw a shooting star, right above me. But as quick as the star disappeared, so did my few seconds of relief. No wish upon a star was going to shake this horrible, dreadful doom I was feeling. I then got up and left my friends on the top of the sand dune and walked back down to my tent. It was time to retreat.
I spent the next few months in Barcelona. Laughing, smiling, eating, crying, drinking, self-loathing, running farther and farther. I would message my parents all the time that I couldn’t come home, “there is nothing for me there,” I would say. “Of course there is,” my mom would reassure me, “you have your family.” Already tried that. They didn’t understand that I forced myself to come to Barcelona because nothing was working for me at home. No amount of therapy could take away the fact that I’ve had suicidal thoughts. Now that I’ve had them, it felt like they were stained on me forever – in pitch black ink that would never come off. So I kept running, to Portugal, up and down Spain, to France, Monaco — each time returning to my apartment in Barcelona with the same deathly ill feeling. My boyfriend and I were drifting apart. All we ever talked about was how much I was struggling, because he was the only one who would listen, and he was the only one that truly understood. But I was ruining us. I was ruining what we had built for 5 whole years and I didn’t even know it.
As much as I tried to avoid going home, April 25th was fast approaching, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t go back to the place where I turned into this person, and I couldn’t face what was waiting for me at home. The panic was building, the worry was mounting and it was all coming to a head. Clear as day, I remember one morning in Barcelona when I told my mom I think I might need to come home. I felt like I was going to “do something”. I was indescribably panicked. One of those feelings where even though you know you survived it once before, you truly don’t know if you can endure it again. It still scares the shit out of me to this day. I don’t know how but I buried it. I ran back to my apartment, convinced myself I must’ve had one too many cups of coffee that morning and assured my mom I was “actually fine now and I was going to stay!” I carried on with my trip, still made lifelong memories with my best friends, and trudged through the pain. I didn’t know how it got this bad, but it was important for me to act as ‘normal’ as possible, because maybe that would help me start to feel better. Of course, the panic surfaced again, and my boyfriend, being the only person that truly knew how I felt, urged me to confide in my parents so they could be ready to help me when I arrived home. I was scaring him badly, and it was at the point where he couldn’t be the only person that knew what was going on cause…god forbid. It is an awful thing to do to someone. It was awful of me to put all of this on him, but I was so out of this world depressed that I simply didn’t care. I don’t know a single person on planet earth that would’ve put up with me like he did, and I’ll always be grateful to him for that. I told him he was free to leave me and that he should move on and find someone that will treat him how he deserves to be treated, but he refused. It was painful, both of us wanted to be us again. He taught me what love looked like at the young age of 16, but everything was so different now.
It was time to head home. Leaving Barcelona was sickening to me — I’d failed. It was April, and I was nowhere near better, like I had promised Kate. I loved this city but was traumatized by everything I felt while I was there. I always say, I know Barcelona means so much to me because when I think of my memories there, it feels so heartfelt and precious, yet wrapped in a layer of black hot lava. And just like that I was back in Boston. I was exhausted, I wanted it all to end. I remember one night my mom came to lay in my bed and at this point I had ‘confessed’ to her what I was feeling before and while in Barcelona; I couldn’t form the words myself so I sobbed into the phone and told her to “guess” how I was feeling. And she did. She said the words for me so I didn’t have to, as I sat there on a park bench in Barcelona choking on my tears, nodding and saying “yes, that is what I feel like.” And then my dad called me, I could hear it in his voice. He didn’t want to accept or believe what my mom had frantically called and told him, “how long have you felt like this?,” he asked, “a while,” I replied. I was ashamed, utterly ashamed. I couldn’t feel like this, I had to convince myself that I didn’t feel like this. So that’s what I kept trying to do.
I’d sat with it enough time to know that it was probably time for me to let go of my long time boyfriend. I needed to tell him that we needed to break up because I knew he would never do that to me. So I did. The most heart wrenching experience I have ever gone through. I couldn’t function without him. I had no idea what to do with myself. It was God awful. So we got back together, I loved him so much, and I wanted it all to work out. So I tried to let myself soften, and fall back in love with him – and I did. For about 3 weeks, we had a few days where we felt like us again, I wanted it to work so badly. But then those feelings that had swarmed my brain for so long came back to the surface. I realized what I was doing. I was avoiding everything. I knew I needed to completely focus on myself. So we finally broke up for real, on July 24th, 2024. Less than 10 days after our 5 year anniversary. We left each other with so much love, so much mutual understanding and so much care. And yet again, I was on the run. I couldn’t bear this pain, I can barely fathom how I made it through all this. I was manic, clawing and grasping at every opportunity to get out of my own head. So I finished my summer internship, went out every night I possibly could, drank to drown my sorrow, but not enough that others would notice. I was always craving a night out like a drug because I could ‘let loose’ without feeling guilty – take away some of the pain without looking like I had a problem. Honestly, I’ll give it to myself, cause no one really noticed what I was doing…at least I think.
And now it was time to go back to school. For my senior year. The existential dread weighed down every waking moment, not to mention I wasn’t eating, taking care of my body or sleeping correctly. Yet again, I didn’t realize how deep of a hole I was digging myself into. At this point, I think I sort of subconsciously accepted that there was nothing I could do. I was a hot mess, like something my friends and family had never seen before — making my way into every bar in downtown Amherst and drowning everything in fun and drinking. But things were ‘good’, I was meeting new people, having fun, doing my very best to keep up with my classes, and I was determined to not let all of this consume me yet again — my depression was slightly better, so maybe it would all lift soon? My ex and I had ended on good terms and I found comfort in the fact we couldn’t be with each other right now, but someday — the classic “both of us needed to work on ourselves” for a while.
And then it got worse. I started to notice a constant tingly, burning pain on the right side of my head, what I had been describing to my therapist as a ‘brain stretching’ headache since January 2024. It was getting worse. I truly questioned if I was faking it, making it up, lying to get attention. I was tempted to scour the internet and look for every possible explanation. It was probably all in my head, right? I just had to make it through this semester so I could graduate on time, if it was the last thing I did.
Little did I know Kate was keeping an eye on me, as she always has. My best friend, my everything. I didn’t care anymore, I had stopped researching because I simply didn’t care anymore, I had accepted it. There was no ‘quick fix’ coming to save me and I was convinced that it was probably never going to get better. September 9th, 2024 I sat on my porch in Amherst and wrote in my journal, “don’t strip yourself the luxury of seeing yourself fight, grow, listen, love, eat, feel, make it out – just because you don’t believe it’s possible.” Then Friday September 13th, 2024 came along – Kate gave me the biggest glimmer of hope I’d experienced yet. Basking in the New England fall weather, sitting in bright red adirondack chairs on the UMass campus. She asked me if I had ever heard of the movie, “Brain on Fire,” and explained that it was a true story about a girl struggling with strikingly similar symptoms to me and she ended up being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that was attacking her brain. I was so hesitant, I had thought before that there was something really wrong with me, but I dropped it. I was firmly told time and time again by my therapist, psychiatrist, parents, etc. that there was nothing wrong. They didn’t know any better, I could barely put into words the physical, never mind mental torture I was in so how were they ever supposed to know.
Then my toes started to go numb, spreading across both feet. I needed to make sure I was actually feeling this, so I went and got nail clippers and poked my left big toe with the sharp edge. I could barely feel it. I poked another part of my body and it felt normal, “is this actually fucking happening?,” I had not a clue what to do. I decided to tell my therapist. I felt like I was going out on an extreme wim, but Kate believed me. One person on planet Earth believed me. My ex-boyfriend wasn’t there anymore so Kate was all I had in these moments. She was telling me to advocate for myself, so I did. I told my therapist, about the pain, about the similarities to “Brain On Fire”, recognizing how crazy I sounded and she didn’t stop me in my tracks and say, “Listen Niamh, there is nothing wrong with you. You need to stop looking for a ‘quick fix’, because that is going to make it worse,” as everyone else had. She too gave me a glimmer of hope, the tiniest sliver I could’ve ever asked for. She told me she believed me and everything I was feeling. She said it was okay to reach out to my auntie Kate, one of the country's best immunologists, and explain it to her as well. My aunt somewhat knew what had been going on with me the past 8 months but I needed to explain everything. I called her while I was in the car with Kate, because based on how extremely stressed and forgetful I was, I would blurt everything out and not remember a word she said back to me. And she believed me, she assured me she would help me figure out what to do next and in an effort to explain this to my parents in some sort of comprehensive way, we called my Dad on a joint phone call and he was now on board with the testing too. Now 4 people believed me. My aunt got me in to see a neurologist, at one of the best hospitals in Massachusetts and I went, literally shaking in my boots. I almost couldn’t believe people weren’t calling me crazy, as I had referred to myself many times.
On September 25th, 2024 I spoke with Dr. I, MD, PhD, for an hour and a half. I explained to her my painful battle with mental health and concern of a more serious mental illness starting to rear its ugly head, the new physical symptoms I had been having, and everything in between. She listened to me, validated me, believed me. 5 people. She ordered a brain MRI, a cervical spine MRI, and took 14 vials of blood that very day. As sick and twisted as it sounds, I was smiling leaving the hospital. I realized what I was feeling was immense relief, that was lasting longer than a few moments. At the same time I was consumed with guilt. I felt like a horrible person for hoping that there was something wrong with me, but I guess that shows how truly desperate I was. I decided to call my ex-boyfriend, check-in with him as we had agreed to do and let him know that I was never ‘crazy’ after all. It felt good to hear his voice, I told him that I wanted to tell him because he had gone through all this hell with me, and he was of course sweet, encouraging and told me he appreciated me calling and that he would check-in after I got my brain MRI done. So this was the start of my diagnosis, as well as the agony that he was about to put me through.
Amidst all of this, he was involved with someone else. I was blindsided, unknowingly embarrassing myself every time I called him to check-in. On October 6th, 2024 he messaged me to let me know he was about to start a new relationship, with someone he’d known since the first week of college. Someone I got to know every time I visited him at college. He decided to tell me himself, a week after I told him I was scheduled to have 2 MRIs, because he thought it was the right thing to do. I knew he didn’t mean to hurt me. I hoped he didn’t want some sort of revenge for what I put him through the last year of our relationship, but it destroyed me. The depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, etc. was nothing compared to this. Objectively he did the right thing, he was honest and told me what happened and asked me to leave him alone from now on. But I couldn’t take that. He was still the love of my life and I couldn’t bear knowing he was moving on from our 5 year relationship with someone I knew, in a matter of weeks. It was unbearable and excruciating. Sometimes I don’t even try to explain the damage this has caused me to those around me. It’s hard to put into words, and explaining every detail of our conversations that followed him dropping this bomb on me was hell. I couldn’t move past the fact that he did this to me. Him of all people. This was a side of him that I had never seen in my life. I was sick to my stomach for weeks. He refused to have a phone call or see me to have a civil conversation for months and then it started to get messy. I blocked him on everything. I had panic attack after panic attack. Doctors appointment after doctors appointment. All while trying to keep up with school because, again, I was going to graduate on time, if it was the last thing I did. I was barely holding on. This felt so different from what I had gone through in the Spring. I was exhausted, I truly felt like I had a 100 lb weight tied around my neck and that is how I was going to feel for the rest of my life. My sleep was horrible and my drinking habits were no better than they were in Barcelona. Although I was going through a different kind of pain, I had an extra sliver of hope in me because of my pending diagnosis. It was something to hold on to, and I promised myself that I would hold onto it and keep going.
And then I got the message that Dr. I had found “spots” on my brain MRI. As backwards as this sounds, this was a huge sliver of hope to keep me going. She said I had to come into her clinic as soon as possible for a lumbar puncture, as she had to collect my cerebral spinal fluid for further testing. I went to all of these appointments by myself, because as supportive and loving as my family was, they hadn’t quite joined the club yet. The little club I made in my head of people who actually believed me. So I kept collecting evidence to build my case to them and everyone else around me.
As I stared at the 4 vials of my CSF sitting on the bedside table I noticed Dr. I was pulling up my brain scans. She wanted to show me the “spots” she was referring to, medically known as lesions of the brain. She blew up the image 10x the size, and clear as day I remember her saying, “these lesions are typical in shape, size, and location of multiple sclerosis.” Time stopped, “oh shit,” I thought. Guilt spread over my entire body. How could I have hoped for something to be wrong with me, and now it’s possibly MS? I wanted to take it all back. I wanted to go back to one year before this and pull myself out of the depths of my depression and live my life and go to Barcelona when I was supposed to and take care of myself and tend to my relationship and fucking pull myself out of it. I laid back down on the table for the nurse to take 8 more vials of blood and then I looked up to her and asked, “what is MS?” She thoughtfully explained this terminal disease to me and told me to “start treatment right away” as it has gotten so much better in the 25 years since she started working at this world renowned clinic; the MS Clinic of UMass Memorial Hospital. They then assured me she would call when the results from the CSF came back and sent me on my way.
I hobbled to the car, where one of my best friends, Enaya, was waiting to drive me home. I was wincing in pain from the lumbar puncture and slowly inched my body into the car. I called my mom. Immediate tears. All I could blurt out was that I didn’t want to have this terminal illness, but it was all starting to make sense. I didn’t want to have MS, I wanted to be normal, I wanted to have fun, I wanted to go back to 20 minutes ago when I was hopeful that I had something curable wrong with me. I was being suffocated, over and over again it felt like. But, I kept my humor and went home to my 8 other roommates; my lifelines as I call them. I wanted to call the one person that I truly needed, because he always said “anytime of day, any place - call me. I will come straight home,” but I couldn’t. And it just made everything even more excruciating. I laid down to rest and promised myself I would get a good night's rest so I could attend “Oktoberfest Amherst” the very next day – sober, might I add.
Nothing was definite. I still had no idea what was ‘wrong’ with me, but I still had something to hold on to. I waited for 10 days to receive the lumbar puncture results. Finally, I received the call I was waiting for from my doctor, while running afternoon errands with one of my best friends, Elexa. The preliminary tests for MS were negative but I still had several unexplained white matter hyper-intensities (WMHs), commonly referred to as a type of lesions of the brain; “negative? But you said that the lesions you found were ‘typical of MS in shape, size, and location, correct?” I asked Dr. I, hesitantly, in case I really was crazy and this was some sort of sick joke. “Yes, that's correct. For now there is no diagnosis. These lesions could have many different causes, so for now let’s focus on what we can do to make you feel better.” She then told me I had to take things “extremely easy”, absolutely no drinking or drugs of any kind, only do what is absolutely necessary for school and life – for at least the next 6 months – “Let’s see if slowing down a bit and really taking care of yourself improves any of your symptoms,” she said, “It’s about improving your quality of life, because unfortunately these lesions are likely going to stay on your brain for the rest of your life.” I felt sick to my stomach. Improving quality of life? I’ve heard that phrase in several different contexts, but never referring to me. I was left a confused, shocked, and unsure of what to do next. I called my parents to update them and began to process my new normal. I went completely sober on October 27th, 2024 – ironically, only 4 months after my 21st birthday.
So from there, it was all about gathering myself together and processing how I was going to handle all of this. The pain in my head only got worse and soon I was having chronic migraines, trying medication after medication, and investing a lot more time into taking care of my health. At the same time, I felt like my mental health started to improve. I still had really hard days, grappling with my new normal and almost grieving my old self – pre brian injury. But even still, the fog started to lift. I realized that my need to run away from everything that was happening to me was never going to make things better. I was forced to stand still for a moment – and this was the very thing that saved my life. I took a step back and realized that I was strong enough. I did get myself through something huge. I advocated for myself like my life depended on it, and maybe it actually did. I still went out with my best friends every weekend, known by the bartenders as the girl who always got a soda water with lemon. It was painfully slow, but I started to feel like myself again – my lights were starting to turn back on. I couldn’t believe it.
I am proud to say I finished the semester with all As and one B in a class that I was advised to medically withdraw from when I told my professor everything I had going on. This was huge for me. Huge. I was always a good student but everything I was going through really affected my performance in school and ability to focus, yet somehow – I pulled through. I will always remember leaving my last final of fall semester senior year and feeling so proud of myself. I did it – this was the biggest sliver of hope that I had experienced yet. This was something I could hold onto for the rest of my life – I got myself through this, and no one could ever take that away from me. I may have been known as the bubbly, crazy, out of pocket, all over the place, unstable girl for the past year, but I didn’t care anymore. I was the only one who truly knew what I went through and at this point, other people’s perception of me had nothing to do with how I viewed myself.
I didn’t write all of this to brag about my strength, or get sympathy from anyone who reads this. I wrote this because a story like this is something that would’ve kept me going in the depths of my depression. Something that I would’ve stored away in my little toolbox and gone back to when I was nothing but numb and wondering if I could go another day feeling like this. I wrote this for you, whoever you are, wherever you are, to put into your tool box. Simply put, someone who was truly at her wits end, got up another day and put one foot in front of the other. I did it by keeping myself active, social, engaged in my school work, reading Matt Haig’s “The Comfort Book” everyday for 3 months, and letting myself feel what I was going through. I didn’t want to accept what I was feeling most of the time, but the only way out was through. So I did it, I accepted that I had experienced suicidal thoughts, a sentence that would’ve made me retreat even further if I had forced myself to accept it before I was ready. I realized that those thoughts were never going to last forever, and it was very possible to feel better. It was possible to go through this period of immense suffering, and come out of it so extremely grateful and having learnt so much. I had ambitions again. I discovered my dream PhD program, and actually applied. I didn’t shudder at the thought of my 22nd birthday coming around, because I knew I would make it there alive. I planned trips, connected with my extended family in Ireland, made the solo trip of a lifetime to spend precious time with my grandmother, always stopping to admire purple flowers along the way. I couldn't wait to be a mommy someday again. I feel so lucky to have gone through something like this, especially at such a young age. It changed my life tenfold. The duality of life is something so incredibly special. One would never know the feeling of happiness if they never felt despair – it wouldn’t hold the same significance. Suffering adds meaning to life, and emerging from the suffering is a very special thing. Now I know that when I go through something hard again, I can always look back to this time and all of the little slivers of hope I gathered throughout my journey.
January 2025 and Onward
Nowadays, I’m dealing with the effects of my brain injury and trying to find a sustainable lifestyle that will help manage and hopefully improve it, as well as the never ending cycle of mental health, but it feels different. It feels like I have a better grip on myself. Like I’ve proved something to myself – that I am stronger than I thought and everything is a lesson learned. Nothing is stronger than those little silvers of hope that keep you going, so find them, and hold them so very tight.
A very very very special thank you to my family, immediate and extended; I’ve found a newfound appreciation for your support through all of this.
My girls, my lifelines, my sisters; you will never truly know how much you mean to me and how thankful I am for each and everyone of you.
And a special thank you to my KK. I always knew you were my special twin flame – ever since we sat next to each other in Señor Bosco’s Spanish class sophomore year of high school. You saved my life. I don’t care how cheesy it sounds, I will never stop telling you that. I have no idea where I would be if you didn’t believe me. You are going to be the most amazing doctor someday, and I will vouch for you till the ends of the earth. Thank you.
If you read till the very end of my very first blog post…thank you too! I will keep writing whenever I feel the urge and I can’t wait for this to become my little journal of life. If you are able to donate anything at all to Noah Kahan’s “The Busy Head Project – A non-profit mental health foundation founded by Noah Kahan aimed at raising awareness, reducing stigma, and providing resources” that would be so amazing!
Love always xoxo,
Niamh Saoirse Fitzgerald :)
Niamh, you are truly amazing! I am so proud of you! Everyday! Never give up red you got this!!!