"Wouldn't kill you to have a little faith"

I was suicidal during my first year of college. Up until tonight, I have never even admitted it to myself for a number of reasons, but looking back now I can finally call it what it was. Then, that January, I started watching the Walking Dead, and very close to the beginning there was a young teenager named Beth Greene who, out of the desperation of knowing just how broken the world had become, tried to commit suicide. During her attempt she realized that she'd made a mistake - that she wanted to live. As soon as she made that choice, her group saw her transform from a scared teenage girl to a beacon of light and hope in a long, seemingly unending tunnel of darkness. She became their humanity, smiling and singing and homemaking in a world where none of these things were welcome anymore. Even when everything she had was gradually (and then very suddenly) taken from her, she remained hopeful and reminded those around her to have faith; after everything, this bird with broken wings could still find it in her heart to sing.

We, people from all different backgrounds, fell in love with her, and even though she was "just a character on a TV show,” she has become so much more than that to us. She was the connecting piece for all of us, something that we all related to; a young girl, not so different than us, who chose to keep fighting despite the horror that her world had become. At least for me, meeting all of these new people, these new friends, simply because we shared the same adoration of some "character on a TV show" was, quite possibly, a life changing relief. I started talking to people at school more, started opening up to my family again, and, inspired by her bravery, I took chances that I never would have imagined before, but have now changed my life forever.

Because when Beth Greene proudly proclaimed to her captor-turned-murderer that she was still resilient and strong after everything she had been through, she made us believe that we were strong, too. Up until then, I had simply been going through the motions of life, but seeing a character live in a world of unimaginable sorrow while retaining so much hope and humanity, proved to me that each and every one of us could not only survive, but learn to sing again.

So I just wanted you all to know that even after everything that’s happened since, I don’t regret a single second. To everyone in the Bethyl community, I owe you everything.

Love,