one too many

I wrote this in 2021 for an Ela assignment

Being the black sheep of the herd can be empowering. It can make you feel different from the rest, like you have a destiny placed by God waiting for you in the footprints of life. But sometimes, that small shed of light can become nothing more than the moon's aura, nothing more than the reflection of a candle. And you slowly feel yourself become an outcast of society, the laughing stock of the herd.You feel as if you can’t dance like the others, you can’t frolic in the meadows or feel the euphoria of love. As that slowly slips away, you feel life itself become dragged into nothingness, yet the only escape from that ever cycling reality leads you to the slaughterhouse of the farm. The long lost legacy God left you, was to die a death of meaning, to sing your beautiful song as you're stripped of what makes you your own self being. It takes away the humanity of the ones who care for you, and it shows their true intentions.They saw you as nothing but dead meat all along.

November 25th, 2020, I almost lost my life to a drug overdose on a suicide attempt.

7:30AM

It was a beautiful Autumn morning, my sister had woken me up for school like any other day, and the dead leaves of the trees lay still on my window. I had this day set for weeks, even months, silently waiting for the right time to slip by. I had continuously documented my days before that morning, seeing if it was worth it. If life would turn for a change. And yet although it was a beautiful autumn morning, and the leaves lay perfect on my windowsill, I opened the drawer next to my bed and gulped down 25 painkillers, then 6 more, then 12. And silently wait still. It was almost as if I knew I was playing with life and death, and yet felt nothing. I could feel my heartbeat, I could see the sun through the blinds, I could feel my feet hit the cold carpet, and yet I felt nothing. I couldn’t let my sister know, I couldn’t tell my friends, I couldn’t do anything about it. I believed this is what was destined to happen to me, so I accepted fate as it was and continued on my path.

8:30AM

I was in such a sudden state of euphoria, I couldn’t even keep my balance. I felt jumpy, and my leg couldn’t stop bouncing under my desk. The muted pain from my bleeding nails, my eyes darting back and forth across the room, I felt as if I needed to get up and move. I could barely stand still. All this pent up energy in my body felt like it could burst any minute now, everyone looked at me like I was crazy. I remember someone asking me, “Hey, are you alright? Your eyes are really red”. I felt the pit of my stomach curl around itself. I couldn’t let them know, it was going so perfectly. Everyone was so happy. I couldn’t be the laughing stock of the herd, I couldn’t be different from the rest. “Yeah, I'm okay. Just a bit sleepy”. It pained me to lie at such a desperate time, my head was going to burst and I couldn’t keep still. But it was okay, because I was okay and everyone was okay and we were all happy, right?

10:00PM

I can’t see anything.

eyes slowly closing and opening each minute, my head almost planted straight into my desk. My body was giving up on me, and my vision was blurry. All I could hear was laughter, the sound of chattering and laughing on and on. With all the power I had in my body, I turned my head to the side to see familiar faces looking at me.

Are they laughing at me? What did I do wrong?

The ticking of the clock had never sounded so loud, so distraught. The smiles on their faces made me sick, my suffering was too incomprehensible for them to recognize. I

don’t blame them, after all, this is what I wanted right? To die a meaningful death? To mean something? There was no time to mourn, no time to make clumsy mistakes. I simply had to wait, and fall asleep at the right time. And as fast as the clock ticked, my head fell into my limp arms, my face slowly turning a dark velvet purple.

And I collapsed into oblivion.

12:00PM

“Danat? Hey, are you okay? You seem really off today”. I could recognize that innocent voice from miles away. I was asleep for almost two hours going unnoticed, but when I heard her sweet voice with such concern, it brought me a pain of guilt that was too much to bear. Puddles of tears formed onto the hard wood I had collapsed on. Ara couldn’t see me like this, not like this. It couldn’t end like this, I had to make sure of it. She was such an angel to me, to see past the laughter and the ticking of the clock, to keep worrying about me as I slept for hours on end, my face turning blue the more I lay still. I wanted to jump into her arms and cry, I wanted to scream for help. I wanted to hear her sweet singing across the room, I wanted to see her sweet smile from the other side. And as miserable as I was, as much as I wanted to tell her about the leaves in my window, or the perfect sun through the blinds, I kept it locked in my lungs.

“I’m okay my love, I just didn’t sleep last night”

The clog in my throat held a river of tears waiting, like I was suffocating on broken glass. It hurt so much.

But this is what I wanted. This is the ending I wished for, and the ending I deserved. This is exactly what God had planned for me, so I had to let it happen.

2:30PM

Escaping in the bathroom was the safest thing to do. I locked myself in, and let my joints collapse on themself. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. All I could do was sit there and cry, the taste of dry blood and vomit lurking in my throat. It was god-awful, and it was painful. But I couldn’t feel it, all I could think about was the sweet angels that tried to save me. This so-called path of redemption through death led me to misery, and they tried to help me. Ara tried to help me, she took the time out of her day to help me. Someone I barely knew, asked me if I was okay. These people thought I mattered. These people believed I was a leader figure, a person who couldn’t break.

I couldn’t recognize myself. This spitting image in the mirror was terrible, it made me want to break it. How could they possibly see through my borders?

6:00PM

Almost 11 hours had passed since I took the pills.

11 hours, unnoticed. I couldn’t tell my poor mother, she wept by my side like it was my last day. That’s ironic now that I look back on it. The shred of terror I felt when those pills came back up. Everything was red, it was all red. My heart dropped into my stomach.

But it’s okay, because this is what I wanted right? To mean something? To have a meaningful death? Even as painful as it was, the greatest poets died horrible deaths. Geniuses died of decapitation and hangings, right? So what difference would it make if I died like this. After all, all I had to do was sleep. The screaming of my mothers sobs didn’t help, I thought this would be more peaceful. A more peaceful fate is what I would call it, and yet it didn’t feel like it. As much as I wanted to disappear, all I had to do was wait, As I fell asleep to the sobs of my mother.

10:00PM

Waking up to a room full of people was weird. I for sure thought that it was going to be the end at that point in time, but I guess it was taking longer. My uncle watched me in the corner, arms crossed and eyes red. Yet I felt nothing. My sister left the room when I woke up, scared to see me vomit another batch of red pills. My brother looked down on me, and at some point our eyes met. Nothing but anger. At this point in time, there was a weird bright light in my vision. The sweet sound of static, the small intakes of air that I let out in croaks. A beautiful black sheep, smeared in its own blood like paint. It was almost mesmerizing, so mesmerizing I couldn’t feel the cuts in my legs bleeding into the silk white sheets. Or the feeling of vomit continuing to lurk in my throat. All I could think about was life after death.

Would it have the same leaves in the window? The same perfect sunlight through the blinds? Would I still hear Aras' sweet voice, or would I have to wait for her on the other side?

At once, I truly felt like a complete piece of art, like a sheep in slaughter.

It was perfect.