Trigger warning: there will be some sensitive topics in this post.

Hi, all. Or at least, hi to anyone who’s reading this in the event that I’m not just speaking into the void.

I know I haven’t really said much to a big audience in a while, but this is a posting that is going to be pretty meaningful for me personally, and I hope for others who have been or are currently fighting a similar battle to the one that I have been.

It may seem out of character to those that know me for me to say this, but even as someone who was a writer for a living until the middle of last year, I never felt like I had a personal voice of my own. I had a platform, yes, but I didn’t feel I could speak up for myself in any way.

Everything that follows here is my attempt, for the first time, to change that for myself.

For starters, my therapists say that the only way for me to start moving forward again in life is to acknowledge where I’ve been.

This week marks one year since I first entered inpatient hospital care and left the motorsports world due to a suicide attempt. It’s not the first time since that day that I’ve said those words out loud, but it is the first time I’ve said it that openly outside of my own family.

I’m proud, at least, of the fact that a year later, I’ve made enough progress that I’m no longer suicidal. I’m not “fixed,” and I may never be completely over the things that got me to that point, but I’m alive and I hope that counts for something.

I don’t know if I’m ever going to be the same person that I was before my suicide attempt. I’ve gained a lot of perspective from all the treatment, therapy and situations that I’ve been in over the past year, but I do feel like I’ve lost some attributes of myself that I’ll never fully get back. Some of that is a good thing, and the rest of it … I’m not sure how to describe just yet.

What I do know is that there are three aspects of my life that I have started to understand through the last 12 months. I’m going to share those here, because going forward, I want the people that choose to be around me to be able to accept me for who I am now – nothing more and nothing less. If I can’t have that acceptance, then what am I doing, really?

1. I am learning to live with the effects of borderline.

If I’m being straight up, the most frustrating part of the past year has been the realization of the concrete parts of my borderline personality disorder diagnosis. Largely, my frustration comes from the fact that BPD is both one of the most-stigmatized mental health diagnoses in the world and, also, one of the most difficult to treat.

BPD is a chronic illness. It’s going to wear on me, at times, for the rest of my life. I don’t like that, but I have to accept that and be open about the fact that I’m going to have days that aren’t going to be positive. I’m going to have periods where I need extra emotional support. And I’m going to struggle with inter-personal relationships greatly because emotion processing isn’t something that I can do well at all. It’s one of the most common symptoms of BPD and it’s one of two that effect me more than any of the others.

Part of the reason I’ve closed myself off from most people right now is because I’m trying to learn how to live with some of my BPD symptoms in a way that isn’t self-destructive and doesn’t drag down everyone close to me in the process. That’s something that I can admit now has been a problem I’ve had a lot in the past, because I didn’t know how to function through most of what I was dealing with.

To everyone I’ve hurt over those periods, I apologize. I’m trying to learn to live with that guilt – and let some of it go – as well.

It’s hard to explain how this diagnosis hits me from day to day. There aren’t a lot of great words to describe those emotions because BPD hits everyone affected by it somewhat differently. That’s also what makes it so difficult to treat. I’ve changed medications a lot over the past year because the doctors I’m working with are still trying to figure out a combination that will best lessen the symptoms that I’m feeling most often. It’s a work in progress and one that I wish would happen faster, because I’m not the most patient person, as many people know.

My biggest struggle right now is isolation. I know there are people who care, but the most debilitating part of this for me is that my social energy is drained. For most of my life, I’ve always been the one who put out extra energy to reach out, check on people and make sure they knew they were cared about. But as I’m fighting this battle, I don’t have the energy I once did to reach out to people I miss hearing from and do care about. I know I’m still battling, but please don’t be afraid to reach out. The support helps me more than anything in this time.

All I can say right now is that I’m trying. And for those who want to support me through friendship, all I can ask is for you to please be patient with me through the rough days. They’re still happening, a lot more frequently than I’d like. But I am trying for positive growth.

2. I am part of the LGBTQ+ community.

After more than 15 years of grappling with who I am internally and quietly with family and some friends I trusted through the years, this is me finally ripping off the Band-Aid and saying it out loud in a place that the rest of the world has access to.

It’s also the hardest thing I’m putting into this post.

This is not something I’ve wanted to talk about. Heck, it’s STILL not something I really want to talk about. But I’m exhausted from holding my heart in a box, deep enough down that I feel like I’m pretending to be a person that I’m not in reality. And now that I’m not regularly working in motorsports right now, it’s the first time I feel comfortable saying so out loud like this.

For the eight years I spent regularly at race tracks, I not only felt like I couldn’t be myself, I felt like there was an expectation on me to “fit the mold” and be the kind of person where no one would ask questions or suspect that I was anything less than what they saw on the outside. I recognize the stigmas that come with being LGBTQ+ in regular society from day to day, let alone some of the added stigmas and negative pressures that have come from being LGBTQ+ in the sports world – motorsports or otherwise. So I bit my tongue and kept my mouth shut.

I’m opening up today not just for myself, but for anyone out there in any walk of life who feels like they don’t have the power to just be themselves, free of judgment. Take it from someone who has been there and done that: the power is inside of you; sometimes you just have to look really deeply in order to find it.

I’m not going to clarify which parts of the LGBTQ+ community best fit me because, first, that’s something that I still feel is private and I’m not ready to discuss for now. Second, I don’t want “a label” to define who I am now. This is a part of me, yes, and it’s something that I want those who are around me in the future to be able to accept. But I’ve spent more than half my life feeling ashamed, depressed and out of place because I felt like this part of who I am DID define me, and I want to finally start breaking that cycle once and for all.

I recognize that saying this out loud might also mean that I’m not welcomed back to motorsports in many or all capacities going forward, because as I touched on previously, I recognize the kind of stigma that opening up about this carries. But if that’s the case, then I’d rather go forward and find whatever place will best accept who I am fully than to keep myself stuck somewhere that I can only be part of myself.

3. My recovery is a lot slower than I wish it was.

I know I asked for patience earlier in this post, but I’m going to reiterate those words again here because they’re relevant to my last point.

It’s been a year since I started on this path to try and find a better me, but also to heal from a lot of trauma in my past that has affected who I am – both currently and previously – in many ways.

When I first went into inpatient treatment, I didn’t understand why my psychiatrist chuckled when I said I had a goal to be predominately recovered within a year. I get it now, though.

Fifteen years of baggage and mental-emotional strain doesn’t just go away overnight. Those wounds don’t heal in a month. And, as I’m finding out now, they don’t always heal within a year, either.

I’ve made some steps forward since my first day in the hospital last summer. But I recognize that I still have a long way yet to go before I can feel like I’m functioning at a level close to where I was before my breakdown and suicide attempt first happened.

I also want to add this: even when I do finally get to that point of functioning again, I might not come back to motorsports.

I’ve had a lot of people, who – while they are trying to be supportive of me in my recovery – have spoken like it’s an expectation that when I’m feeling well enough to write about race cars and come back to a race track again, that I will do so and things will “go back to normal.”

Those kinds of assumptions or insinuations are doing me more harm than they are good.

Right now, I don’t know what my place is, beyond what I’m doing from day to day. I do have a stable job again; I’m working in a management role with a company that actually used to be involved in racing as a sponsor for a major NASCAR team. I’m content with that for now.

I’m not ready to think about my long-term future yet, but I do know that if I ever do come back to motorsports – whether as a journalist or in a different capacity – I want it to be because it was MY choice to come back, and because I’m in a healthier place – not because it’s something that was expected of me by others around me. I’m not there yet, and I may never be. I just don’t know at this time what that future holds.

I had originally planned to quietly make the trip to Atlanta last weekend for the NASCAR festivities there. I wasn’t going to tell much of anyone that I was going; I was just going to get there and see how I felt. I ended up choosing not to go because I realized I’m not yet ready to be back in that kind of environment, and I didn’t want to risk taking several leaps backward in my treatment process just to go down there.

I don’t know when I might try again; I’m trying not to put any expectations on myself in this journey right now. The less pressure that’s there from day to day at this time, the more I feel like I can start to work through some of my demons and get to a better place overall.

Thank you to those who have been there for me and been as understanding as possible through all this. I couldn’t do it alone.

I’m not going to say that this is a “new me,” but this is me as I am now, and I hope those who care can accept that.

Much love to all of you, and hopefully I’ll be able to see you guys down the road.

Jacob