Editor's note: This is part seven of the Ending the Stigma series on mental health

NAMPA, Idaho – Jordan Pinson is in a long, dark hallway.

The lights are flickering like in a horror movie and there are large, heavy wooden doors on each side of the hallway.

To open them, Pinson has to lower her shoulder and bust her way through.

This is the nightmare she lived every day of her sophomore year at Northwest Nazarene University.

Pinson, a junior on the Nighthawks women's basketball team, struggles with depression, anxiety and panic attacks related to sexual abuse that happened to her as a young child.

"I felt like every activity or event I had throughout the day – whether class, practice, waking up or eating – I felt like I had this hallway of locked doors and I couldn't just open them," she said. "I had to make myself wake up and eat. I had to make myself be presentable to take on the day.

"Everything I did was exhausting and I felt drained all the time."

The 5-foot-3 guard from El Paso, Texas, felt her life spinning out of control. Her grades were plummeting, her minutes on the court lessening and her relationships with friends, family and teammates were disintegrating.

"It was obviously super hard. I felt like it was never going to end," she said. "I started to try and prepare myself for how bad the week was going to be, which didn't help because I assumed things would get bad and then when they did, it made it even worse."
 

Pinson kept her abuse a secret and bottled up in her subconscious until her senior year in high school.

She had long had nightmares, and sitting in geology class one day a demonstration and a remark from her high school teacher sparked her memories and made her realize what had happened.

She told only one person – her best friend, Marialsmeria "Pretty" Moreno.

"I had no idea. We were coming back from lunch one day and she said she had something to tell me," Moreno said. "She told me what she was remembering and she wasn't really sure about it. I was always cautious because I didn't know how much she wanted to share."

Pinson and Moreno didn't talk much about it after that.

The best friends then headed to Nampa, Idaho, to attend college together. Pinson played on the basketball team, while Moreno was a team manager.

Pinson enjoyed a stellar freshman season, averaging 6.5 points per game and was second on the team in 3-point shooting percentage at 42.6 percent. The Nighthawks advanced to the NCAA Division II national tournament and won a game for the first time in 16 years.

The point guard, though, didn't get to enjoy life for long, though.

She continued to have nightmares and more memories of the incidents were coming back. Pinson opened up to her family about it the final week of her freshman year.

"They didn't question me at all," she said. "They said they were so sorry and they immediately put me in counseling. Being able to talk about it helped me."

Her sophomore year started out OK, but after three games everything went dark.

She couldn't make shots, leading to fans asking her parents – who attend nearly every game – what was wrong with her. Her playing time diminished, she struggled in practice and she suddenly found herself in that long, dark hallway.

"People would judge her for not doing her work, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't her choice to not do it," Moreno said. "She was trying so hard. She was struggling so much. She felt like it was a shameful thing and that was bringing her down."

Pinson powered through the season, helping the Nighthawks go back to the national tournament.

Before they played a game though, the tournament and eventually school was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

That turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

"Quarantine helped me a lot because I was able to go home and speak to my counselor some more and my parents some more," she said.
 

After six months at home, Pinson returned to Nampa for her junior year and decided she wanted to share her story to help others.

"I feel like I had a hard time trying to come out to my parents and others about it because there is a stigma," she said. "I think that sharing my story and being vulnerable is going to help all the people who feel the same way. It really sucks to be in a place like that. If there is anything I can do to help someone, I want to do it."

Pinson got a tattoo on her left forearm that says Survivor a week ago. The day she got it, a girl at the shop asked what it meant and Pinson told her. They ended up having a long talk about how both of them had been abused.

"This doesn't define me," she said. "I want that to be for everything – having panic attacks, depression, being on medication. It's so common. Coming to college I realized everyone struggles with all of these things and it's OK to be open about it because being open is going to help you in the end."

Pinson still has days where she feels like she is in that hallway, but she also now has days where she feels like she can turn the handle on the door and it just opens;