She started having suicidal thoughts at 11 or 12. She didn’t know the words to name it. She had no idea what it was, but she consistently had these urges to end her life. “I just wanted to be dead,” she says.
One night when she was 24, and already long diagnosed with clinical depression, she succumbed to the feelings. “I couldn’t suppress these thoughts anymore,” she recalls. “I had thought about ending my life for eight straight months. “I texted a friend and said, ‘It would be better if I wasn’t here.’ That friend did not know that I had already taken substances in the hope that I would go to sleep and not wake up. And while I was waiting to die, the police showed up.”
T-Kea Blackman, now 29, survived that attempt and dedicated her life to helping others navigate the darkness of depression and mental health crises.
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