The Voice of a Phoenix

By Zylkia Swensen

The Voice of a Phoenix is a very personal book. It took me a long time to finish it because I still feel the pain of my “darker times.” Writing The Voice of a Phoenix helped me immensely because I was able to understand my pain. With every chapter I wrote, I learned things, discovered so much about myself, and applied anything that could be beneficial to my own life. Pain is part of life; you can’t learn without it, step-by-step, but never stop. Life is worth living and worth fighting for no matter how many times you must start over. A phoenix never dies.

“Suicide is never an option” (Zee).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781636309156

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The Voice of a Phoenix

Zylkia Swensen

ISBN 978-1-63630-914-9 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63814-814-2 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-63630-915-6 (Digital)

Copyright © 2021 Zylkia Swensen

All rights reserved

First Edition

Proofreading by Ken Swensen

This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy.

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

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www.covenantbooks.com

Table of Contents

Into the Dark

Growing Up

After I Died

Becoming a Mother

Let Us Try That Thing Again: Second Marriage

Homeless Mother of Three

I Am an American Soldier

Third Time Is the Charm?

Walking Dead

Resurrection

One life lost to suicide is way too many. Look around; there is beauty everywhere. There are many angels around you. You just must look up. Are you paying attention to this? If you are a veteran in crisis or you’re concerned about one, free, confidential support is available 24-7. Call the Veterans Crisis Line at 1-800-273-8255. We can all help prevent suicide.

A queen knows how to build her castle with the same stones that were thrown at her.

—PJ

Introduction

Hello, everyone! My name is Zylkia Swensen. I am forty years old and a mother of six kids. I started writing this book as a source of getting relief. I had everything bottled up inside, and my heart could not take any more suffering. I’m the weird kind. I was not very popular, and if anything, I was the antipopular, not the center of attention, ever. My hair was a mess, and I had an ocean of moments where bullies would humiliate me. It did hurt me. I too wanted an out, but contemplating suicide is never the option, although sometimes it seems like a quick way out. I know; I have been there. However, I chose different every time. Life was painful and humiliating. I felt like I was dragging chains on my legs going upward along on a forty-five-degree uphill. Join me, and you will see that no matter how bad everything goes, there is always a silver lining. You came to earth to live, and sometimes living hurts. That is okay. It is a part of it. How can you ever truly appreciate the good times without the bad ones?

I see life as an adventure. Like if I am high up in the air and ready to jump into whatever it is, this is what it really means to be human. Could we restore the faith in humanity? Sometimes it feels like the fall is full of bumps and jumps when others glide over the clouds. However, if your soul is full of It’s not fair! and you can’t focus on yourself, if you are wasting your time thinking over the things that others have and that you don’t, then stop. Think again. Life is not meant to be fair; we all need to learn different lessons. You must focus on yours. Don’t quit on yourself. Live, learn, wipe, and restart as many times as it takes until the moment to return home with our heavenly Father. Life will end on its own. So why miss out? Why count the bad times when you can count the good ones? If you are thinking about suicide, there is always someone you can talk to about your problems: friends, spouse, therapist, or the bus driver!

Call National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255 or the Military Helpline (get help) 888-457-4838 or text MIL1 to 839863. We want to see you shine.

Into the Dark

Have you ever left a piece of fresh meat in the refrigerator? Days later, it is burned with the cold, and it smells like a decomposing animal. That is precisely how it feels when you are at the bottom of the hole called depression. You have been hurt so many times that you got used to it. You do not know how it is to feel otherwise. It does not bother you as much. Your hair is not brushed, and you don’t remember the last time you used a toothbrush. Who cares? It is not like someone is going to get close enough to notice. You are quiet most of the time because you are torturing yourself inside your head. Everything is going wrong.

What else can you send me, God?

Food has no flavor, and I am happier in bed sleeping because at least I can think and imagine a better world—a world where someone would love me, for me, or at least escape the one I am in.

Society focus on respecting other’s feelings. Think about how they feel. You are not the only one that has problems. There are others with bigger problems. But we never validate ourselves. We don’t teach our children about pain and suffering. We try to mask the ache with happiness instead of learning from it; we learn how to move forward. Because like it or not, without high, there’s no low, and without losing, there is no appreciation for the gains.

Eventually, after time does his job, you begin to feel free. Others never reach freedom because they give up. They give up just too soon. I was down there where you might be right now. I know the pain; I have felt that pain—the pain of a broken heart. You can’t walk; you can’t breathe. You wish you could grab that cold/sharp pain and rip it from your heart but you can’t. You are weak, full of rage, full of pain. At that moment, your world has ended. I felt this pain way too many times.

After your heart is broken, people expect you to get over it quickly. Your friends ask you not to talk about it. You start to get the hint that they don’t really care like they say they do. So you do what you do best: pretend that you are okay. That way, you are not killing the mood, and everyone is happy—everyone except you, but you are used to it, so you keep quiet. You go with the flow, but indeed, you too know that only a dead fish goes with the flow. You need to be a salmon—push against the flow and do what you must do.

Months go by, and you feel worse every day. Your body hurts, and you don’t have any energy left in you. However, you have been getting better at pretending. In fact, you are so good at it that you start to believe in yourself. That is the reason why after two weeks of trying, you trip and fall. Everything starts feeling foggy again. You take a few deep breaths to collect yourself. However, you know you are falling through the cracks with no one to hold your hand. You want someone to notice, but you don’t say a thing. You want someone to understand. Your friends are starting to go out without you, and you feel alone, naked in ice, shaking in pain; all you want is for that feeling to go away. Some of us don’t come back from that trip.

As a former soldier, we brief many times about suicide. They give you tools, and they offer a hand. However, it makes me wonder whether we should brief everyone—middle school, high school, life? Often, I hear people saying, Ah…it will pass without a hint of compassion for your feelings. Others want to help without knowing what to do with the best intentions.

I have to say, being so close to the edge helps me see that the first thing we want is that we would matter to someone and yearn for that someone to notice—someone to notice enough to offer their hand, someone to be there for you, picking you up every time you fall, not letting you touch the ground. I might have said the total opposite, but what I really wanted was for someone to notice me.

My hero, the one that saves me from that edge when I was seventeen, was my eleventh grade math teacher, Mrs. Melendez. I was lost inside my head, but she saw me. I wasn’t doing anything wrong; in fact, I was just walking to the trash can to sharpen my pencil.

She stands beside me and said, Zylkia, I have noticed you been a little blue. Your hair is a mess, and you are walking on your socks, leaving your shoes behind at your desk. You are not wearing makeup, and you are way too quiet. Is there anything I could help you with?

Notice, not precisely the word that most would expect but a powerful one. She noticed, and not only that, she even gave me examples of how she noticed, and that validated everything. I did not have to say anything. She clearly noticed. If someone notices, that means someone cares. Someone that cares enough to say something. She didn’t have to do anything, and it took her a few seconds to do it. She probably does not know, but that day, she saved a life. It is not always that simple; others need more than that.

There is one lesson I have learned—that is, when the cup is half full or half empty, it does matter what you choose. A person that sees a half-full cup will talk to their loved ones with the biggest respect, and this changes the dynamic of everything.

A human being can be both: amazingly humanitarian with compassion and selfishly desensitize to human suffering. Compassion is what makes us want to be kind to others and a major path to happiness. It is defined as the feeling that arises when we witness other people in distress and want to help stop their suffering (December 5, 2015, Sandi Schwartz). I can’t help but wonder, if compassion is in nature, then why are we, humans, so mean, cruel, despicable with one another? Or is it the feeling of human desires and fascination with pleasure that stands in the way of nature? All I know is that humans are capable of the most despicable with one another; I have seen it. I have lived it, and I felt it too many times. However, I also got up, I better myself, and I kept trying and will keep trying.

Growing Up

To understand, you need to know my story. Only then will you be able to understand that it does not matter how deep in that hole you are; you can get up. It does not happen as fast as you think though. It took me almost two years to be able to see the light, to thrive as a person, to comprehend happiness, and to get myself back into my journey, leaving behind all the scars and growing brand-new flesh.

I was born in a hospital in Brooklyn. My mother was a high-achieving lady and a baseball fanatic. There are only a few things that I remember with details. I remember living in a big house somewhere in Connecticut like it was yesterday. I’m the oldest of three, and by the time I was four, I was already changing the diapers of my brothers because my mom was busy at work, and Dad was just watching the game all the time.

He was always a big fan of baseball. It was always his number one thing. It still is. I literally grew up in a baseball park. We played at the back of the park all the time. We ran and climbed trees all day. Playing with dirt was always our favorite thing. The best option for Mom was to do a weekend job where she would work three days a week with twelve-hours shift. We were always hungry and dirty. My dad’s money was only for his beer. So we developed a plan. Every time during the match, when any team took a break, we would start asking for food in front of one of his friends. My dad would rather die of embarrassment, but often, his friends ended up buying us something to drink or eat. He used to feed us at home, but when you have breakfast at 8:00 a.m., it is obvious that anyone would be hungry by 5:00 p.m.

His drinking was always a huge problem for him and for us as well. I remember my brother was only seven years old when he used to drive my dad’s pickup truck because Dad always thought it would be cool for him. Also, he was often too drunk to drive anyways.

Baseball was a thing at home. I was a girl, so obviously, I was not allowed to play ball. So my dad always made me run the books. Trust me. I have deep knowledge of this sport. If you have any questions about baseball, I know all about it.

On my island, women (social rule) were not allowed to work anywhere except for the job as a teacher, secretary, and nurse at that time. After that, a woman was only responsible for running the house and the kids. Anyone who failed in that job was frowned upon. I had worked as a nurse, secretary, and teacher. However, I was never accommodating to those social rules, just like my mother. Although it does not sound like it so far.

My father always used to say to me all the time, You are just like your mother! A loser, a dirty woman that won’t kiss my feet when I come home! and many more things that I don’t want to bring up or even to remember as well. Up to this day, my only relationship with my dad is only limited to one thing: that is that I carry his last name. That too was because of a worldly ritual. One day, he and his friend were drunk and at the house. His friend would not stop talking about how I need to go to college. He was just trying to give me some good advice. That’s when my father said, Don’t waste your words. She is a nobody, and she will remain a nobody like her mother.

My mother has always been my superhero. I saw this woman work overnight for us. Sometimes, she even took two jobs to pay most of the bills and our everyday expenses like clothing, shoes, and food. You see, my dad is supposed to be the provider of the house. However, in this case, he only gave the minimum to fit in the role of the provider. However, he still managed to have money for his weekend beer. He would do a job only for $50 in groceries and a package of four rolls of toilet paper for the week for a family of five people. He would buy the nastiest juice because in his logic, it would last longer. Also, he would go insane