There’s something magical about fireworks. It’s this big explosion of light and color that paints the night sky. It’s beautiful. Fireworks are for celebrations, like 4th of July or at an amusement park during vacation. In my mind, fireworks are always associated with happy memories filled with the people I care about.
This week is Suicide Prevention Week. September 10th was actually World Suicide Prevention Day. I tried for the week leading up to it to write a blog post specifically for it, but nothing felt right. I follow several nonprofits that focus on raising awareness for mental health and addiction on various social media sites. To Write Love On Her Arms is the biggest nonprofit that I follow. Their theme this year was “Stay: Find What You Were Made For.” I kept seeing all these posts about why people choose to stay. I thought that would give me some inspiration, but instead it just made it harder.
The problem was that I kept trying to write about something that I did not really feel. Between classes, work, and attempting to have some semblance of a social life, I barely have time to eat and sleep. I enjoy all of the things that I am involved in, but it can still be a lot to handle at times.
A lot of my social media feed has been about staying alive and why people choose to keep fighting. At one point, I made that decision too. The thing is, this past week, I could not see past the craziness to remember why.
Then, once life had finally calmed down a little, a friend asked me to tell her my happiest memory. And everything clicked.
I went to Disney World my senior year of high school with my choir during Christmas break. I had the excitement of a little kid. My friends didn’t know what to do with me. They had never seen me act like that before. We sang in the Candlelight Processional at Epcot one night, but the rest of the trip was spent enjoying each of the parks. After we sang, we stayed at Epcot to watch the fireworks show. If you have never been to Epcot, it is a circle with a huge lake in the middle, and there is a globe in the lake. The fireworks, from where we were standing, were above the globe over the water. They played music and had a voice-over during the fireworks show. I don’t remember much of what was said during the show, but I remember how it made me feel.
I had just finished singing about the Christmas Story, so the emotions from that were already in my head. Then the fireworks started. The main message behind the show was everyone from around the world coming together and loving one another. I stood there, eyes glued to the sky, and I was filled with hope. It was really like I was a little kid again. I got to feel all of the hope and wonder and innocence of a child again for a few minutes. I even cried a little bit. I saw the beauty in life again, for the first time in a long time.
That moment did not by any means “fix” everything I had been going through, but it did give me hope. Hope for the future. Hope that life wouldn’t always be that hard. Hope that fueled me to keep fighting. Hope to stay and find what I was made for.