A picture can say a thousand words. Now, imagine you being the person in this picture. Lost. Confused. Broken. And your only way out is to find yourself at the top of the Golden Gate Bridge and you’re about to plunge 245 feet to your death.
Well, on March 11, 2005, at the age of 22, that was Kevin Berthia’s dilemma. That’s him in the picture. He suffers from a genetic depression disorder, and he thought he had no other choice that day but to take his life. But that outcome was not to be after hearing the voice of a highway patrolman, Officer Kevin Briggs, call out to him. Officer Briggs stood there listening and compassionately conversing with Berthia as he expressed his inner pain for 92 minutes. Finally, Berthia decided not to jump.
Surprisingly, not only did he attempt suicide that day, but he also tried 21 other times in other ways to take his life. In his words, he said, “That’s the reality, I’m just supposed to be here.”
Meet Kevin Berthia. He is a suicide survivor and prevention advocate, and this is his incredible story.
I was blown away when I first read about your story. You were on the Golden Gate Bridge about to jump when an officer intervened. Thank God, you’re still here. Take us through your life growing up and what led to that moment when you were going to commit suicide.
I’m an adopted African American man from Oakland, California, which speaks volumes because being adopted you’re a unicorn when it comes to the African American community because somebody picks us up, like somebody in the family. So, that by itself made me feel alone and it was a huge struggle of mine because we identify who we are by what we look like. And I knew I didn’t look like my mom and dad but because they were African American, I could fit in. But I knew I didn’t look like anybody so that was a struggle that I struggled with my entire life.
I was 5 years old when I started having suicide idealizations but I didn’t know what it was. My younger life was hiding from the idea of what was really going on inside. I couldn’t explain it to anybody. I was like fifteen when I saw a man cry for the first time. So, we’re not taught to express these emotions. So, when you saw me there on the bridge, that’s 22 years of me combining every emotion that I had suppressed, and I acted like it didn’t exist.
I read that you survived 21 failed suicide attempts, tell us about that.
People think the bridge is just this one, that was probably number eleven of twenty-one. It was ten before the bridge and ten after. That’s how it kind of worked. So, it was a combination of different things. The ten before the bridge was because I was struggling with accepting who I am and accepting all these different things. And the ten after is because I went to the bridge and I was exposed.
I spent my whole life trying to make it look like the person who went to the bridge had it together. You gotta realize I was the jovial guy. I was the popular guy, and everybody knew me to be this type of way. Nobody would have bet their life that I would have gone to the Golden Gate Bridge.
Now, I was trying to figure out who I had become. I spent all this time trying to figure out this person, and this person had failed me. So, it was a balance of trying to figure out who I was and that caused another ten attempts. Life happened; my grandfather passed away. I went through a divorce and child custody. I mean so many things that I’ve experienced in my life. I went to the bridge and still didn’t accept that I had a mental health condition.
I don’t know how you do that but that’s what we can tell our brains. Whatever you tell yourself, and you start believing it, regardless of what reality is it doesn’t matter because you create your own reality. Some ways I’ve tried are by cutting, alcohol poisoning, and driving off a cliff. Everything outside of a gun. I’ve overdosed on pain pills. I used to look up stuff; I’ve tried drowning. Anything I thought could work at that moment. I’ve been on the freeway in the middle of the night trying to swerve off the freeway, and somehow, it doesn’t happen. That’s just the reality, I’m supposed to be here.
It didn’t get easier when I found out I’m supposed to be here, I just had to get stronger. Life is harder today, right now at this moment, than it ever was on March 11, 2005. That’s what I want people to understand, I’m in it but somehow, I can’t let it define who I am. I still have things that if I ponder on them for too long, can take me to a place. And that’s why I choose not to think about them.
That’s the reality, certain things I can’t hold in my brain. It’s not about making everybody else feel a certain way, it’s about who we are to ourselves. I know I can’t handle this so it’s not about what you think about me, it’s about me not taking on the stress I know I can’t handle. And you can’t handle this for me. You can’t be me to handle it. You can say how you would handle it for me, but you’re not me.
How has your life changed since you decided to live?
A lot of people don’t realize life doesn’t change. Like, everything that took me to the bridge still exists today, March 28th,2022 at 8:05. To be honest, it’s worse. So, it’s not that life changed, it’s just that I got the resilience and the strength to understand that no matter what life throws at me, I’m going to figure out how to get through day by day. And I take on the day, and not the week and not the year. So, like today is Monday; I’m taking on everything that Monday brings. So, that is what I had to learn how to deal with. Once I try to take on Tuesday, a day that doesn’t exist, or even yesterday, a day that’s not here anymore, that’s how I get overwhelmed.
So, how do you handle the inner issues?
It’s day by day. You know like, I can’t do the same thing every day. I used to think I could do this today and tomorrow… no, it changes because the world changes. Things happen that I have to be mindful of. I have resources and things in place for if things do go left or things do go right. I keep things in motion, that way I’m never out of it completely because if I do get to that dark place again, I have something to pull me back. And I learned you gotta have self-deposits. Like, I gotta deposit enough self-love inside myself so that when I do go into that dark place, which is inside myself, it’s not just shame, envy, hate, rage, and all these bad things inside, there are some pieces and parts of love. And you gotta have a support system but you can’t depend on that one hundred percent. It’s good to have but self-deposits have to come from self-first.
Suicide is a form of mental illness. Based on your experiences, what do you want people to understand about suicide?
The problem is that we don’t understand what we’re up against. Since you’re interviewing me and I have the platform to where I can say what I want to say, suicide to me is a spiritual battle. We think it’s something easy. Anything spiritual is not going to be this easy thing we can try to just brush off because we’re not acclimated into understanding what we’re up against. That’s why it overwhelms us and that’s why it’s hard for us to reach out to people and it’s hard for us to help people because we don’t know what we’re getting into. We have to understand mentally that nobody in their right mind wants to kill themselves. That’s the reality but we don’t realize that decisions come from reactions and emotions. When you get overwhelmed, it’s a reaction. And until we understand what we’re up against, then we’re not able to help ourselves and help people around us. This is literally every walk of life, every nationality, every race, every religion, everybody has faced this plague. This idea of suicide is everywhere.
Can you offer advice to anyone who may be thinking about giving up?
You gotta accept where you’re at. We want a better life but we don’t want to accept exactly where we are in that moment. And when you don’t accept where you’re at in that moment, you don’t allow yourself to get the help that’s available for you in the world. See, the world is aligned for you to accept who you are. When you accept who you are, it doesn’t define you. You don’t have to say, “I made all these horrible decisions and this is who I am.” No, you made all these horrible decisions and they brought you to this point of realization. Now it’s time for you to go to another level but everything you did to get to that level; you can’t take it to the next level. You have to be willing to make the real changes. If you’re unhappy with your life and you want changes, it has to start within. Then, you gotta start making environmental changes, things around you have to change. If all you see is what you feel, then you’re never going to change.
Why is it important to take mental illness seriously?
Mental health is important because the mind controls everything. We don’t realize how powerful our brain is. It tells us everything to do and everything not to do. Everything to be afraid of. It tells us everything; it dictates our whole life. You can’t do anything without thinking about doing it. So, mental health is important because the brain controls everything. You can’t live a happy, successful life unless you take care of your brain. You can’t change how you look at life until you take care of the things that are vitally important to your thoughts, how you look at things, and what you tell yourself. How you interact with people depends on how you interact with yourself.
You are a public speaker, what messages do you speak on?
The most important part of my message is listening, not just people listening to each other, we have to listen to ourselves. And it’s not as difficult as we think the process is. Like, listening to yourself is accepting where you’re at in life. People in a dark place have to accept they’re in that place. That doesn’t define them, but there’s help and resources out there as long as they accept where they’re at. So, they have to open up so they won’t feel like they’re alone in this.
Tell everyone about your company and your mission.
The Kevin Berthia Foundation started last year. The dream started a couple of years ago because I’ve been able to travel this world, for the last 4 or 5 years, and hear what the need is and I realize our planet doesn’t have what we need to connect with people in this dark place. And until we connect with people in that dark place, we’re going to keep losing people, 1 every 40 seconds. That’s the reality of it until we connect with these individuals and make sure that they’re not alone in their fight.
The mission is to give a voice to every individual who suffers in silence because it’s so many people in the world that don’t talk about it, and act like everything is okay. So, that’s what the mission is, to give people who suffer in silence alternative hope and a platform to talk about their issues. Eventually, I want to get some clinicians, therapists, and doctors together; and I want it to be a one-stop-shop place.
What upcoming projects do you have?
I’m working on my book. It’s hard to put all my stories in one book so my first book will be targeting teens 13-19. I will be talking about my teen life. That’s who suffered the most during the pandemic and who suffers severely now, boys and girls. They need something that can sustain them. It can’t come from a doctor. It can’t come from a clinician. It has to come from somebody who has lived the experience, somebody that they’ll identify with and who they can listen to and respect.
You can reach Kevin Berthia by clicking these links: Instagram │Facebook │ Website
On all other platforms, he can be found as @kevinberthia
Writer, Debbie Stokes is a contributing writer. You can follow her on Instagram @iamdebbiestokes
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