For those unfamiliar with my story, Screwed Up: My Life, please start at the beginning here. The purpose of me writing this intimate account of surviving a difficult childhood is explained here. This story in its entirety can be found at Blurb.com and is available for purchase for $12.95 plus shipping and handling.
This online chapter is edited from the book version.
At one point the depression became all encompassing. That was the day I attempted suicide.
It was not the first time I had tried to kill myself. There were other times. There was the time I lived with my mother in her apartment with her boyfriend in Indianapolis. I wrote a lot of poems when I lived with her, including this one, which describes how I felt my mother didn’t love me. There was also a very deep and black poem I wrote describing how I wanted to kill myself and leave this world. I was fourteen. Mother’s Day of 1995, I had taken a belt and attempted to hang myself in my bedroom closet. I refused to leave my room and I would constantly bang my head against the post of my bed. I don’t know why I would do it, except it felt good. Cutting felt better.
Making the decision to kill myself wasn’t something I thought about on a whim. It took weeks and sometimes months before I would come to the determination to end my life. As I mentioned before, I was a pansy for pain, so I usually stuck with cutting myself. It was an easy outlet. All it required me to do was sneak a knife from the kitchen and hide it under my pillow or under my mattress. Then when life got too mentally and emotionally hard for me, I would shut my bedroom door, lift my shirt sleeve up, and begin marking myself with the knife. Usually, I wouldn’t break skin but a couple times with each episode. Honestly, it is surreal to remember myself doing that.
This particular time that I attempted suicide had taken months to present itself. I often wondered if this family loved me. I constantly wrote about my insecurities in my journal. I often assumed I was hated by them. I didn’t have a reason to think they hated me–I think it was because I hated myself. The week before I attempted to kill myself, I had written my best friend, Dee, a letter telling her what I wanted to do. She had told me not to do it. I don’t think she ever thought I would attempt such a disturbing thing.
Then one afternoon, as I left for a walk alone, I grabbed a nearly full bottle of over the counter pain killers. A big bottle of ibuprofen. Little by little over the course of the walk I downed the entire bottle. As I walked, my vision became blurred and the world around me began to slow. I felt dizzy. I wanted to lay down and sleep. I wanted to die. I wanted to go home.
I don’t remember how I got home after that walk. I still remember sitting in my room and not knowing how I got there. No one ever knew. No one ever asked. I never told anyone…until now.
The depression didn’t end. The unexpected happened.
To be continued…
