Notes

Hi ACE 22,

Congrats on making it to Christmas (as defined by retail stores and radio stations)! With the December retreat coming up soon, I wanted to let the rest of my cohort in on something that I've been keeping private for a while now.

Some of you might have heard that I was in a car accident in September. That accident was the endgame of a plan that I had made in a state of mental illness. Fortunately, my bodily injuries were unbelievably mild given the nature of the crash. I'm well past my crisis point, and I've been in treatment on a regular basis since then. I've been living back with my family, and they, along with my friends in Indy and ACE staff, have been extremely supportive.

I made the decision to withdraw from ACE, for the sake of safety and giving myself time to decide what to do next. So I won't be in Austin this weekend. I'm mostly revealing this now to make things a bit easier for my housemates, who have been honoring my request to keep the details of my situation private.

How could I make this post helpful? I think, as a group, we do a really good job of keeping an eye out for one another, as the design of ACE communities intends. I would just say that some of the symptoms of depression that can be noticed by others are very subtle. The only ones that I noticed for a long time were slight sleep and appetite changes. Once I started to believe lots of things that weren't true, I started to hide my feelings (very effectively) from anyone who could have helped me. And, yes, I believe now that stress was one of the factors that triggered my illness, and you guys will understand better than anyone what the source of that stress was.

And now, let's have a positive ending to this note. I know for a fact that I was not depressed this summer. That was one of the best times of my life, and I want to thank you all for the opportunities I had to work, to learn, and to have fun with all of you. I wish I could be there this weekend, and I will continue to pray for all of you regularly. Please continue to be great.

Alex

(Feel free to share this information with your 21s or your adoptive self-contained 21s. I would just ask that this link doesn't go anywhere more public than that. ACE staff will likely already know about this.)