I Wanted to End My Life after Being Publicly Shamed

“Sometimes we tolerate unacceptable behaviour from others because we don’t know we deserve better.” — Kia Stephens

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Sitting in the front passenger seat of a packed crew van, on our way to do a ‘quick turnaround’ aircraft clean, the forty-something male colleague, sitting next to me — out of nowhere and loud enough for the other male crew members sitting behind us to hear — unashamedly ridiculed me, in detail, about my genitalia.

In an instant, a dense fog of shock and shame cocooned me, and nausea filled my lungs. The blow of acknowledging his cruel, humiliating words froze my body for what felt like an eternity, as my thoughts scrambled to squeeze through a vice-like grip, to work out his audacity to speak such intimate details about me. At the same time, I painfully craved to understand why someone who had previously been so sweet to me would then wish to shame me in public, with something so sensitive and private, especially to a young teenage girl.

I somehow managed to think through the thickness of my embarrassment: my colleague’s newfound knowledge must have stemmed from my supposed boyfriend, who was working with another crew that night.

At just seventeen, I hadn’t yet gained enough life experience to understand why certain men struggle to keep respectful boundaries. Sadly, this sort of behaviour was something I knew only too well in my personal life. I was just sixteen when I was sexually assaulted by my sister’s partner, on a night when she’d been in the hospital.

He was old to me — fourteen years my senior. He also used to sexually shame me in jest, along with his adult male friends, while they normalised pornography and incessantly objectified women. They viewed women only by the size of their breasts or how their pussies looked.

My primary education about intimacy was to compare myself to these pornographic images, after moving in with him and my sister just before my sixteenth birthday.

And not having experienced a healthy relationship with my estranged and emotionally unavailable father — who had never uttered even one lovely word about me, to me — I was inevitably void of self-worth.

I had left my commis chef position after not only being treated badly and strangled against a wall by a temperamental Head Chef but also hating the long, unsociable hours, to apply for this 7 pm to 7 am aircraft cleaning job so that I could pay my rent.

My ‘boyfriend’ was a twenty-two-year-old jerk, whom I met at this airport job, and it wasn’t even because of attraction. He walked with a stoop, and his face wore a repugnant downcast expression, accentuated by his large nose and messy beach-blond hair.

Still, he was a bad boy — emotionally immature, but loved drugs, and this connected us. My younger me was drawn to certain men who couldn’t love, and I unconsciously believed I didn’t deserve better, lacking the skills to determine healthy relationships.

Albeit stunned, I now knew it was categorically him who had been spreading intimate details about me, as I walked back into our base for our last break of the shift, as the other male workers were laughing about me and making humiliating hand gestures. I felt like some hideous, foolish excuse for a female.

I was crushed, shamed, mortified, and horrified, all rolled into one, and quickly pulled the only decent colleague I could trust into the small dark kitchenette. He confirmed it had been Paul, and I was gobsmacked, although it wasn’t a relationship that ran deep. Why would he do this to me, with twenty or so other male workers? I was unable to comprehend why he would stoop so low — literally, especially as he was anything but sexy, on every single level.

I didn’t even know how to question why I would allow myself to date someone as horrible as him at the time; my upbringing had blindsided my boundaries. I imagine I had been subconsciously trying to fix my father wound that was lodged in the root of my very being. I didn’t say anything to him, and even though I should have shouted at him like a normal person, I didn’t say a word.

I couldn’t wait to finish my shift and get away from them all — I was never going back, and I didn’t even care about how I would pay my rent. I had been ridiculed by my sister’s boyfriend for over a year or more about how I looked, whether that was my Mediterranean shaped nose or my new emerging female body, and so being humiliated by all the men I worked with, felt amplified, and even before my friend, who would generously take me to and from work, dropped me off, I had decided to end my life, after sitting in self-hate all of the journey home.

My mind had never been so made up. I knew there was no future for someone like me — a freak. Every part of me, inside and out, felt undeniably ugly and too disgusting to be loved. One of my all-time drinks at the time was Cinzano and lemonade; I decided I would drink an entire bottle and swallow as many painkillers as possible. As I downed the alcohol, it became more difficult to swallow the multitude of tablets — yet as I reached around thirty, it was just too hard, as I gagged and choked on my tears, pity, and the bitter taste of the pills.

Whatever the amount was, it felt like it would be enough to do the job, and as I drifted off, I looked forward to finally finding out if there really was a place that existed, a place we call Heaven.

After an incomprehensible and ambiguous amount of time had passed, I came around, regaining consciousness. I was surprised to discover I was still lying on my bed in the small room I rented. A wave of confusion washed over me — why was I still here? Yet, as soon as it dawned on me that I was still alive, there was an urgent and overwhelming need to reach the bathroom.

Thankfully, it was only just next door. With some determination, I dragged myself across the floor; my stomach convulsing with relentless waves of nausea. I vomited repeatedly, with a pain so intense it felt as though it would never end. Time became meaningless; it could have been hours or the better part of the day. I had never felt so unwell, so utterly undone — both emotionally and physically.

I hadn’t considered asking for help or calling out for my landlord to grab his house phone and call for an ambulance. Yet my friend, who had dropped me off a couple of mornings earlier, instinctively knew something was wrong; I had been unusually quiet after normally meeting up with him daily. Concerned, he felt compelled to check on me, and as he was let into the house, he rushed upstairs and found me, immediately noticing my lips were still blue. I hadn’t acknowledged the seriousness of what I had tried to do until much later, when I learned how thin the line is between life and death.

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I remember once reading that when the idea of suicide arrives in a person’s mind, for whatever took them to that point, there is a duration of possibility, about thirteen minutes, for them to work through from doing the act, to moving back into choosing to live. I had chosen to end mine; however, whatever divine intervention it was, something chose for me to live. And how blessed am I. It took decades to heal, and even now, after four decades, I am still healing and being mindful to nurture my core.

A friend of mine once told me she felt that people who commit suicide are weak, and I remember rebuking her, saying it takes courage, or rather, true determination, yet sadly, a finite double-edged sword.

I hope we can be a light and help save others, through our own desperate stories of pain, through to healing and transformation.

© Chantal Weiss 2026. All Rights Reserved