In the fall of my sixteenth year, I took an intentional overdose of pills to end my life. My visit to Bryn Marr the year before and the outpatient therapy following hadn't changed my homelife.
That day was strangely a very good day to start. I don't recall if I was in a depressed state. It was a weekend though and we had been invited to a party. I wasn't looking forward to the party because I was usually the only teenager there. My father would get slovenly drunk and pick at me. So, I didn't want to go. I took my mother aside and asked her if I could stay home. My sister didn't want to go also, and we were surprised when our mother said we could stay home. We had to clean but we were glad for it.
We had a ball. So much fun despite the cleaning. I was flying high because I wasn't forced to go and be publicly humiliated. And when my parents and brother arrived home, Jenn and I felt absolutely lovely...Until..
My father stormed into the house with this angry drunken bullying intent. He came right up to me and started to yell at me about how he was embarrassed that I hadn't come. How selfish I was for staying home. How failing I was with family duty for influencing my sister to stay home also. He tore into me about how horrible I was at even the most basic cellular level.
It didn't matter that my mother had given us permission. It didn't matter that had I gone I would have sulked for having a miserable time which only would have led to being yelled at for being a horrible person. It didn't matter that I really wouldn't have been missed.
My mother stood there listening to his tirade. She never defended me. Never piped up that she let us stay home. And not once did my sis get any of the rant. I was alone in my humiliation.
When he finished yelling at me, my father and mother walked outside to talk to the neighbors. I was left standing there, finally allowed to cry in my solitude (if you cried in my household during a punishment, you would get beat and humiliated more). And the self hate came rushing forward like a mad man. I was tired of being shit. I was tired of supposedly causing all this pain and turmoil in our lives.
The next moments happened so quickly. Walking through the house like a schizophrenic who finally splintered from the real world. Emotions flooding me and making everything incoherent. And this frantic search in the rooms for some sort of resolution to all the pain. It was then that I found myself in the kitchen, standing at the counter. And I saw them. My medications and some other pills. And I swallowed them all.
In this hateful fury, I went to the outside door and yelled out, "I hope you're happy. I won't bother you anymore. " I was crying and yelling and lost. I went to my brother and sister and told them I was sorry and how much I loved them. And then I laid down on the bedroom floor. I cried and apologized and waited.
My parents had returned and I remember my mother standing there at the bedroom door with this look of fear? on her face. My father was angrily yelling about my stupidity. My brother and sister sat there stunned, frightened, crying. And I just kept mumbling my apologies and regrets and self-abusing mantras. My mother finally said something about needing to take me to the hospital. My father wouldn't let her. It seemed like forever before she convinced him that I needed to go. I don't know what was said to me to convince me to get up, but I walked to the car on my own.
I had pulled a rose from the bush in front of our house and pulled it apart the entire time I was in the ER. When my mother checked me in, we sat and waited in the lobby for almost 45 minutes. Evidently, she never told them that I had just swallowed an overdose. And when she finally checked on how much longer the wait was going to be, she told them my complaint. I was rushed back immediately. What I had taken and the amount wasn't enough to cause death. For my attempt I was rewarded with vomitting and another visit to the mental hospital...and much less faith in my parents.
Why this today? I woke up weepy today, crying at commercials, news stories, and a host of other stimuli. In particular a segment on the Today (hopefully, the site will update and have the article on it soon) show left me teary-eyed and wanting to release about teenage suicide and musicians like Good Charlotte helping out with messages of hope.
I can't even begin to explain why there is the preoccupation with death. Michelle, my therapist asked me once when it began and honestly, I dont recall. Always had this fascination with death and wanting to die was sort of "just there" since times in elementary school. My homelife was unbearable and it greatly impacted my way of thinking. I've got alot of shit to get over. Sometimes I feel like some weak-ass whiner that needs to just get on with her life. It's really not that easy.
Suicide isn't the best resolution. I'm not an idiot. I know this. And I get angry for ignorant or unsympathetic people with their platitudes and apathy towards people with the dark thoughts of hurting themselves or ending their lives. We should just get over it, right? If it were that simple, I would have. I battle more often than not feelings of hopelessness and wanting to just disappear. And I'm echoing as much as those heartless people that I should just get over it. Something I'm working on. But the need to give up is pressing me.
It goes through phases...I am at times actively suicidal, as I like to call it. Am I thinking of driving my car off an interstate overpass? Am I too enchanted with knives, pills, my mother's gun? Am I actively thinking about taking my life?
Or am I just tired and want things to stop? Am I just frustrated. Do I want my life to get better and just don't know how to make it so? Am I sick of the pain?
I am struggling. I'm alive. I don't want to die. I want to love myself. I want to live to be an old woman sitting on my patio with my babbling old man beside me. I want to be able to get over it and just enjoy my happiness.
I get sad every time I hear of someone successfully committing suicide. I think about who failed them. Who didn't reach out and save them from falling over the precipice. I get angy at their family and friends. I know it's harsh. But I know the heart of those people who succeeded. I've stared out from the bottom of that well unsure if that pinpoint of light above is real or just imagined hope. In the deepness of that dark, you can't be your own guide. You sit in panic and fear and hopelessness and loneliness. You sit in this overwhelming thick darkness. And you can't save yourself.
So, I get angry at those people were supposed to rescue them. Those people outside the darkness. There's no excuse. You can't tell me that you don't notice when someone you love is sinking...is disappearing. If you pay just a small attention to who they really are, you see them change. You see them withdraw. You see them cry out for help. And it's your choice whether you notice or not. You don't have to be their all-encompassing hero on a white horse. Whether it's calling a doctor saying you don't know what to do or calling on that friend who suddenly disappears for days in a row, it doesn't take much to be their rope back to the top.
According to the segment on Today, teenage suicide has tripled over recent years. The leading cause of death among our teenagers. In a society where there's a mad rush to get the flu shot or buy masks for our past encounter with SARS, we have an epidemic of teenage suicide. Mental health comes second or last to fear of bioterroism. We have children in dire need for mental health intervention. We have children killing themselves and others because of the instability within their emotional worlds. We skim over depression, anger, violence, and mental health but overindulge ourselves, greedily eating up newstories on West Nile, Mad Cow, and the reintroduction of the smallpox vaccine.
There's a need for a fucking reality check, people. Examine a small neighborhood. The one you live in. The one I am part of. How many of us on the greater scope of things are going to be exposed to Mad Cow? Compare that to the number of us that are exposed to alcoholism, depression, sexual abuse, neglect, post-partum depression, domestic violence. We sit here ignoring the needs of our people. We have this flippant reaction to our mental health needs. And then we wonder why our society is so full of fucked up people.
I don't worry about my chances of being bitten by some infected mosquito. I worry about some 16 year old who wakes up oblivious to the Bird Flu because her mind is preoccupied with drinking the bottle of valium down with her parents' scotch because the heaviness in her heart is now too much to bear alone. She's in a well, folks. Who is going to save her?
Hold on by Good Charlotte
This world, This world is cold
But you don't, you dont have to go
You're feeling sad, you're feeling lonely
And no one seems to care
Your mothers gone and your father hits you
This pain you can not bare
But we all bleed the same way as you do
We all have the same things to go through
Hold on....if you feel like letting go
Hold on...it gets better than you know
Your days, you say they're way too long,
And your nights, you can't sleep at all
And you're not sure what youre waiting for
But you dont want to no more
Youre not sure what youre what youre looking for
But you dont want to no more
But we all bleed the same way as you do
We all have the same things to go through
Hold on....if you feel like letting go
Hold on..it gets better than you know
Don't stop looking you're one step closer
Don't stop searching its not over...Hold on
What are you looking for?
What are you waiting for?
Do you know what you're doing to me?
Go ahead...what are you waiting for?
Hold on...if you feel like letting go
Hold on...it gets better than you know
Don't stop looking you're one step closer
Don't stop searching its not over....Hold on
Hold on...if you feel like letting go
Hold on...it gets better than you know
Hold on
