“Through my films, I’d like to support non-profit organizations and bring attention to certain causes. Because I lost someone to suicide, mental health and suicide prevention are really important to me.

“Mario Arturo Valverde was my cousin. We were born a month apart. I’ve never been privy to the details. It’s just too much to unpack. To open that wound would be too painful. It broke me down. I was lost for a very long time. I delved into everything I could to cope. I felt a lot of complicated emotions, like ’it should have been me.’ His suicide affected our family profoundly.

“He was only 15 when it happened. I vividly remember hearing the news and driving to his house, where there were sirens and lights from the ambulance and cop cars. It felt unreal then, and it still does.

“I wasn’t as close to him when we entered high school. Our families drifted apart, and we grew apart. I regret that I wasn’t there for him. Even if it was always going to happen, I just would have wanted more time to spend with him.

“It’s affected everything in my life — who I want to be, and how I want to help others in need through films and stories. That’s what helped me understand and convey those really complex emotions, and deal with my personal mental health struggles.

“‘For You’ was the only way I really knew how to remember him and honor his memory. It will be the most important and meaningful film I will ever make.”

— Sergio Valverde

“For You,” a short film produced by Pink-Eye Pictures, features Sergio and several of his cousins.

Related:

• Movie lover inspired to make his own films

The post Cousin’s suicide changed filmmaker’s life appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“We lived in a house in Spring with no neighbors around us. We were there since I was born, so a good 16 years. It was me, my mom, my dad, a younger brother and a sister.

“We were renting from this company, and they shut down. All of a sudden, in the middle of my sophomore year at Klein High School, they told us we had to move out. My dad asked if we could wait until the summer so that we could finish the school year. Luckily, they agreed.

“We ended up moving to Dayton near my grandma. She has a lot of land, and she gave us like half an acre where we built a new home. It was a culture shock, moving away from my hometown, starting over at a much smaller high school, and living out in the country. I really missed the city and all the people I knew. One of them was a childhood friend, all the way from kindergarten until I left.

“Back in January, I was on the phone with someone. We were just playing games or whatever. It was really late, like 4 a.m. And I got this call from an unknown number. I answered, and it was the mom of my old friend. She wanted to let me know that he had committed suicide.

“It was such a shock. It came out of the blue. I had never heard of any problems he was having. I thought he was doing fine.

“It was pretty hard to deal with. It’s like, you feel so sad, and you don’t really want to do anything. You don’t want to go to school. You don’t want to go to work. You just want to stay in your room 24-7.

“Then one day I woke up, and I was just kind of talking to myself. I don’t remember exactly what I said. But it was like, ‘Hey, if you can hear me, know that I will never forget you. And I’ll do my best to impress you.’ So when it comes to work or college or anything else I’m involved in, that’s what I do. I try my best. I try my best.”

— Christopher Hernandez

Christopher is a freshman at Lee College. He is studying business, and he hopes to become an accountant.

The post He tries his best, following friend’s suicide appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I have a personality that’s kind of funny. It’s like, I could have everything, and I still wouldn’t be happy about it. I’m always wanting more. I think my worst fear is just being average.

“When I was in elementary school, I was in what they called the resource room. I was in all the special education classes. I barely got out of high school, just because I wasn’t really interested and didn’t feel like I was learning what I wanted to learn. I figured the only thing I could do was military. So I joined the Army. Served four years as part of the 82nd Airborne. Didn’t think I would ever go to college.

“I got married really young, at 21, but it didn’t last. When I got divorced, I went through this deep depression. I felt like a loser. I was embarrassed.

“About that same time, I had a buddy who committed suicide. It was totally out of the blue. One of the nicest guys you could ever meet. He was a cop. Getting married the same month. Just went home and shot himself. That really took a big toll. But ultimately, I think it’s what led me to go to college and put me on this path that I’ve taken. It was kind of like revenge. I said, I’m going to make something of myself.

“When I earned my bachelor’s degree, I got in the honor society. Same with my first master’s degree and the next one. Then I was like, well, I may as well get my Ph.D. I’m just finishing the dissertation now.

“I think it’s the work ethic and the drive that makes the difference. If you really want something, you work your ass off to get it. I learned that through everything I’ve experienced in life.

“I love a challenge, man. If you say I can’t do something, I’ll do it.”

— Zack Field

Zack, 31, is executive director of The Waterford at Baytown. Before moving to Texas with his wife, he held leadership positions with several companies. He also is a fitness/nutrition coach and a champion bodybuilder.

Related:

• Individual aspect of bodybuilding appealing

The post ‘I think my worst fear is just being average’ appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“Anytime I hear about a suicide, it really cuts me deep. Because I’ve been there.

“I don’t think people realize that person fought so hard to try not to do that. They just weren’t strong enough.

“I have an acquaintance whose mom recently killed herself. And I know that she’s blaming herself. That’s what people do: ‘I should have seen the red flags. I could have done this. I should have done that.’ But people need to know there is literally nothing you could have done to stop that from happening. You carry no blame. I need that little girl to know that she could not have saved her mom, no matter what she could have done.

“I need people to know that the person who eventually did not make it tried really hard. They didn’t just take the easy way out. They didn’t just give up. They tried really hard not to do it. They just couldn’t.

“I’m very blessed to never have lost anybody to that. I know it’s the most torturous thing ever. But there’s nothing you could have done. Because that chaos, that fight that’s inside their head, you can’t get in there. People want to call it selfish, this and that. You have no idea until you’ve actually wanted to end it, and like repeatedly; not just that you’ve had a really shitty day. Until you’ve lived that in and out for years, you just have no idea.”

— Sheena Gordon

The post When suicide leads to the blame game appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I’ve always had anxiety and depression. Even as a child. Throughout my life, I’ve been in and out of therapy, on and off antidepressants. My depression has always been weird. I’m a very joyful person. But every once in a while, I’ll get depressed, and life sucks for a minute. That’s the way it’s been for years. What happens now when I get depressed is that it usually comes out of nowhere. It lasts anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours, and then I’m fine.

“Almost always, the next day it will happen again for the same amount of time. Then I’m good for another week. It helps that I know it’s going to pass. But when I’m in it, it feels horrible. It feels like your skin is on fire. You really believe that you will never be happy again. It doesn’t make any sense, but you just want to die. That’s not going to fix anything. But you don’t care. You just want out. It’s hard. It’s weird. It’s complicated.

“People ask if I’m having suicidal thoughts. I do at times. But I know there’s no chance I’m going to kill myself, for lots of reasons. Mostly because my mom couldn’t handle it. A long time ago, I decided I would never do that to my mother. For years she has kept me alive because I was like, I can’t do it, no matter what.

“People are scared for me, and I get that. For people who don’t understand depression or suicidal thoughts, suicide is a scary-ass word. It’s an emergency word, like, we need to get you help now. If I’m being honest, sometimes I kind of feel like dying. But I’m OK. It’s just how I feel in that moment. When I say that, my best friend knows not to be scared. I just have to express how I feel.

“For people who don’t have it, it’s hard to explain what it’s like. And I guess I’ve been very blessed because I’ve always had open-minded people in my life. They’re like, ‘OK, I don’t understand it. But I believe you, and I know it’s a huge thing.’ Fortunately, I haven’t had to deal with a lot of people who’ve told me to just get over it or just power through it. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. It’s not that simple.”

— Sheena Gordon

Related:

• Sexual abuse as child continues to haunt her

• Keto at center of her weight loss journey

• Talking about your mental health is key

• When suicide leads to the blame game

The post Suicide — ‘I would never do that to my mother’ appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I think my background has a lot to do with developing a passion for helping kids. I went through a lot when I was growing up. I left home when I was 18, and I never wanted to go back. Twice in my life, I wanted to commit suicide.

“I got involved in modeling. I was trying to escape who I was, so that kind of allowed me to be somebody different, to get into character and become a different person. I worked at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida, and was on this show called ‘Out of the Blue’ and another one called ‘SeaQuest.’ The acting part was a lot of early mornings and late nights. It was very draining. So I started working as a Marlboro girl, going to different places and handing out promotional items. Then I was a Hawaiian Tropic girl, so it was all the runway stuff.

“After that, I got into trade shows. I learned about different products and got to talk with a lot of people. I really enjoyed that. That’s when I had moved up to Ohio, where it was such a different culture than Florida. I got to know people on a different kind of level.

“After being very sheltered growing up, I became much more open. That experience helped open up a whole new world for me. I feel like that’s kind of when I really started living.”

— Cissy Clearo

Cissy helps lead a program at Old River Baptist Church called The Landing, where she provides guidance for teenage boys and girls.

(Photo by Olivia Garza/Liv’s Looking Glass)

Related:

• She helps teens deal with bullying and much more

The post She has to escape past to start enjoying life appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“We met in high school. I had him in a couple classes, and we just started talking. Before long, we became real good friends. We would hang out together, usually riding around on our bicycles or playing video games. It was the ‘80s. If you didn’t have a car, that’s about all there was to do.

“Well, I didn’t see him at school for a few days. His mother worked there. So when I finally saw her, that’s when she told me. He committed suicide. He used a shotgun.

“It was about a girl, of all things. You know how people get so wrapped up in a boy or a girl, then they break up. When you’re so young, it can be pretty traumatic. Or, at least, you think it is. But at that age — he was only about 16 — you really don’t know anything.

“When you’re close to somebody like he and I were, it’s just difficult to comprehend why they would take their own life. It was pretty hard for me for a good while. It put me in this real low place. I kept thinking that if only he would have said something like, ‘Hey, I’m going through this. Do you think you can help me?’ But I guess some people don’t realize that their friends and others are willing to help. So when they’re going something and decide to keep it to themselves, then it’s too late.”

— Richard Vargas

The post High school friend’s suicide continues to haunt him appeared first on The Baytown Project.

I

Cancer wasn’t a stranger to the family. In 1991, at age 74, Suzanne’s father was diagnosed with small-cell carcinoma. In a matter of months, the aggressive form of lung cancer had spread and taken his life.

So when Suzanne was diagnosed in 2017 with the same type of cancer and at the same age as her father, the family knew her time was limited.

The brain lesions affected her the most. She had constant nausea and had become so unsteady that she had trouble writing.

“Around Nov. 1, I got a call from my mom. She told me I needed to come out to see grandma. I knew what that meant,” Rebecca said.

Before boarding the plane from Houston, Rebecca received another call from her mom. It was bad news. The cancer had spread to multiple organs, and surgery was no longer an option.

“On the flight over I prepared myself, knowing that this would probably be the last time I was going to be able to see my grandma before she passed,” Rebecca said.

And she was right. But in no way was she prepared for what would actually happen.

‘A bad day’

Rebecca was surprised to see her grandma still awake when she arrived at her home late on Nov. 7.

“Right away I could tell she was not well. She always had this presence when she walked into a room like, I’m in charge and I know it. But the woman I saw was frail and tiny,” Rebecca said.

Extreme nausea kept Suzanne from getting any sleep that night, and the next day wasn’t much better. 

“I tried to spark up some kind of conversation with her, but she really wasn’t having it. Mostly, we just sat in silence,” Rebecca recalled.

Later in the day Rebecca’s mother left the house to pick up her son from school, and her grandfather went to a meeting.

Rebecca had made plans to grab dinner with a friend that evening. So she went upstairs to ask her grandma if she could use her car.

“She said, ‘Of course. My car is yours while you’re in town.’”

But that was the extent of their conversation. 

“I could tell she didn’t want me in her room. So I said that I was going to leave once grandpa got home,” Rebecca said. “I told her that if she needed anything, she could text me and I would come home. That last part made her angry. I could see it in her face.

“She looked straight ahead, avoiding my eyes, and said, ‘Leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to you.’”

Holding back tears — Suzanne had this rule that when it came to her diagnosis, family was not allowed to cry in front of her — Rebecca ran from the room and went downstairs, where she called her twin sister.

“I cried to her on the phone. I didn’t understand why grandma couldn’t just let me help her. I loved her, and I just wanted to help,” Rebecca said. “I spent the next 45 minutes feeling sorry for myself because my grandma was ‘mean’ to me.”

Just after 5 p.m., Rebecca was washing dishes when her grandpa came home and started helping her with the drying.

“He asked how she was doing, and I told him what she had said to me,” Rebecca said. “He gave me a hug and said, ‘She has good days and bad days. Today just happens to be a bad day.’”

Less than a minute later, they heard the shot.

Worst fear realized

After a frantic search of the house, Rebecca’s grandma was nowhere to be found. 

“Grandpa thought maybe what we heard was the front door slamming. Maybe she went to her friend’s house down the street, and we just didn’t see her go out the door,” Rebecca said.

When he returned from the neighbor’s home, Rebecca asked him to check upstairs again while she searched further downstairs.

“I found nothing, and returned to the front door. As I did, grandpa yelled, ‘Rebecca, call 911!’”

He had discovered his wife in the master bathroom.

“When I got there, I saw him kneeling by the bathtub. He was rubbing my grandma’s back, saying her name and trying to get her to respond,” Rebecca said.

It was too late. Suzanne had shot herself in the head. The gun was beside her in the tub.

Remembering grandma

Instead of a funeral, the family decided to hold a celebration of life.

“Grandma had started saying, ‘I’ve been to way too many funerals lately.’ So my mom knew she wouldn’t have wanted everybody to gather around and mourn her,” Rebecca said. “Instead, we had a margarita punch bowl and just a little celebration of life.”

Dealing with the suicide has been quite challenging for Rebecca. But she realizes why her grandmother did it.

“It wasn’t that she was battling depression her entire life or anything like that. She had watched her dad die, and that was very painful for her. So in the end, she didn’t want that for the rest of us. She couldn’t live the life that she wanted. Her body wouldn’t allow her to. So she figured at that point, there’s nothing else for me here. All I’m going to do is cause everybody else, including myself, more pain if I stay.”

There was no suicide note, but her grandmother did leave a message of sorts. She had always worn a necklace that Rebecca’s mom had given to her. It featured the name Suzanne, which also is the name of Rebecca’s mom.

“She never took it off. But afterwards, when my mom was going through her things in her room, she discovered that grandma had placed it right there on the bedside,” Rebecca said. “I guess that was her note to us. She was sort of passing the torch.”

Reminders

To help keep her grandmother’s memory close — and to ward off that haunting vision of her in the bathtub — Rebecca got a tattoo on the inside of her right arm showing a hummingbird in flight with pink wings. Underneath the image are the words, “Your wings were ready. My heart was not.”

“My grandma had a huge window in the front of her house, and she hung a hummingbird feeder there. She had a couch right under the window, and she would just sit and watch them come and feed,” Rebecca said. “Her favorite color was pink, so that’s why I chose pink for the wings.”

Dealing with the memory of the suicide is a daily challenge for Rebecca. She joined several online suicide support groups to help her cope, and to help others who have experienced similar tragedies.

“Especially with younger people who have lost someone to suicide, they feel like they have no one to reach out to. In some cases, they end up taking their own lives,” Rebecca said. “One of the major things I’m aiming toward is that there’s no further loss of life after somebody commits suicide.”

Rebecca also started a blog, The Real Aftermath of Suicide. It’s a place where she is very open about her experiences and feelings related to her grandmother’s death.

“I realized early on that if I didn’t talk about it, if I didn’t find some kind of release like writing — even if nobody reads it — that this was just going to get worse as time went on. It’s allowed me to keep it manageable,” Rebecca said.

“This is something I’m going to have to deal with for the rest of my life. The tattoo helps, but I’ll never be able to get that image out of my head of seeing my grandma in the bathtub. With time, it’s going to become a little bit easier. But I’ll still have those days where it hits me like a brick wall. That’s when you just have to go throw plates against a wall or something.”

AUDIO EXTRA: Rebecca Crenshaw is open, honest about grandmother’s suicide

The post Her final visit with grandmother turns tragic appeared first on The Baytown Project.

Related:

• Her final visit with grandmother turns tragic

The post Dealing with suicide in an open, honest way appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“Back in 1999, I got really sick. I spent 10 days in the hospital with extremely excruciating stomach pain before they figured out what was wrong with me. It’s a condition called porphyria. I’m missing an enzyme in my blood. There have been men who have gone in the crazy house over it because it affects their mind. For me, it was in the form of severe abdominal pain. I couldn’t eat. I got down to 87 pounds. I was suffering from insomnia. This had gone on for months. And that’s when I decided I was going to end my life. I just couldn’t live like that anymore. I was just like, I’m done.

“That night, I was crying in the living room, telling my husband at the time I was sorry for what I had to do. I told him that he had to take care of the boys and explain to them that it’s not their fault. When he went to work and the kids went to school the next morning, I was going to kill myself. But this is how I know there’s a God, and he won’t give you more than you can bear. Because that night, I actually fell asleep. And when I woke up, I was pain free.

“Although I’m still missing the enzyme, the condition has never come back. But that whole experience really gives me empathy for people who suffer with some kind of acute illness. What I went through, I wouldn’t wish on anybody.”

— Anne Stewart

Related:

• Woman carpenter proves she can do the job

The post Painful condition caused her to consider suicide appeared first on The Baytown Project.