Matthew Kresal

Ain’t it beautiful? Welcome home, Artemis II!

The 10th of September is . Not an easy subject to ever broach and one with a lot of stigma still attached to it. But I've come to believe that if telling my story might help someone else, it's a worthwhile thing to do. So here's my story.

It was 2007 and I was 18 years old. It was my senior year of high school and, like so many of us at that age, I thought I had my life figured out. College, film school, finding a girlfriend, you name it. It was all right there in front of me as the year began.

Then it all fell apart. I ended up having to drop out of high school, my parents marriage came apart at the seams, and I suddenly realized I was trapped at a job that I'd reluctantly taken to appease my parents except now I had no immediate way to escape from it. Or, really, from any of the circumstances I found myself in. I felt trapped in an endless now of misery, yelling, and gloom.

Then came the night in the middle of it all when the straw broke the camel's back. a particular manager who hated my guts decided to pick a particular evening to give me a verbal pounding for all I was (or wasn’t, in their eyes) worth about something that was ultimately a non-issue. Terrible and insulting things were said, so much so that a coworker many years our senior had to step into the conversation. In another time and place, I'd probably have stood up for myself. Instead, I left quietly, depressed. And saying to myself five simple but horrible words:

“I can't do this anymore."

With those words in my mind, I drove a short distance to the nearby Guntersville bridge and pulled over once I reached the top. I turned the engine off, leaving the keys in the ignition, and got as far as opening the door before a thought occurred to me.

What stopped me, you may ask? Of all the things it could have been, it was the fact that I had just a couple of days earlier on Amazon I had bought the out-of-print 1998 Doctor Who novel The Infinity Doctors by Lance Parkin. Having spent nearly $30 to acquire it, it seemed a terrible waste of money to buy it and not read it.

So I closed the door, turned the key in the ignition, and drove home. Doctor Who became the piece of driftwood in a restless sea that kept me sane, and with the Big Finish audios becoming perhaps the thing that kept me from losing my mind at said job as I could listen to them once we closed every night, tuning out the manager who'd nearly made end my life. Years later, as she was getting ready to leave once and for all, I told her what had happened that night. Her response?

"If that's all that stopped you, you must not have had much to live for."

Maybe not. But it was enough and, sometimes, that's all you need. Even if it takes you years to come to terms with a brief moment in time or to message the author of the book and hope they don't think you're crazy. Thankfully, Mr. Parkin didn't and in the years since has said that he's proud to had played a small role in the evening's events.

It's been a little over 18 years since that night. I'm now roughly twice as old as I was then and it's hard not to think about the things I almost missed out on. Both that Mr. Parkin and I ended up in an anthology together a few years ago but also smaller things including, just a short time from when I typed these words, taking my four year niece to a favorite playground. And more besides that I wouldn't have wanted to miss for all the world, thanks to a book based off a TV show made an ocean away from me.

So if you're struggling, if the clouds around you (and all of us) seems dark at the moment, know that it won't last forever. Find yourself a lifeboat wherever and whenever you can. Live a day at a time if you have to because it's better than not being here at all.