I Almost Killed Myself at Brandeis University

“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it” — Zora Neal Hurston

It has officially been a decade since a certain series of events occurred. For all of these years, I’ve tamed my tongue and my pen — too afraid to testify about what has been the darkest and most traumatic experience of my life. I’ve finally mustered the courage to write about it openly and in depth. Writing about this experience serves as a ritual of sorts — a cathartic act to release the psychological heaviness that has been weighing me down for so many years.

In 2011 I entered Brandeis University on a scholarship through the Transitional Year Program. A program dedicated to making quality education accessible for low-income youth. I fit the bill, so I applied and I got in. I was super excited when I got accepted into Brandeis. I had always wanted to go to college, a “good college”. It was a dream of mine. Throughout high school, we poor black kids were told that going to college was the only way to make something of ourselves. Like many of the lies I believed as a youth, this was one of them.

Brandeis University is known for its rich legacy of social justice activism. Named after the first Jewish justice of the US Supreme Court, it was founded in 1948 by the American Jewish community. It quickly emerged as a prestigious university earning Phi Beta Kappa accreditation. The University prides itself on being a beacon of free…