Let Me Explain

When I was seventeen, I was sure that I would be dead before I turned eighteen. Sitting here now at twenty-four years old, I am glad I was wrong. Let me explain.

I was supposed to be born on May 7th of 1998. My mother discovered her pregnancy in January. The morning I was born, my father had left for work at a horse farm and my mother had woken up feeling poorly. She could not walk straight and couldn’t see much of anything. She made her way into the living room to call my father and have him come home. She knew something was wrong. She blacked out. Luckily, my father arrived back at home after the client he was supposed to be working with canceled. He found my mother and called an ambulance. The doctors discovered that my mother had been experiencing pre-eclampsia. The doctors made my father choose between saving my mother’s life or saving me as I had gone into distress in the womb. He chose to have the doctors save me. In less than one minute, I was delivered via c-section and rushed to the NICU. My mother fell into a coma, but did pull through and woke up about a week later. I was born on February 16th, 1998. I weighed two pounds and four ounces. The doctors took care of me and kept me in the NICU until I weighed four and a half pounds. After telling my parents that I would not survive the year, I was released to go home. Soon after that, my brothers, who had been in foster care before I was born, were able to come home as well. I was never supposed to survive, according to the doctors. My family was prepared in case I didn’t, but surprisingly I did. When I was one, my little sister was born and about one month later we were all placed in foster care. My brother, sister and I were luckily placed together. When I was four, we were adopted together, officially joining the two biological children and one previously adopted child my parents already had. A few years later, when I was around eight, my parents adopted three more children. I was the middle child of nine growing up.

In kindergarten, I made my first friend, we were best friends. In middle school, I gained three more friends, who I am thankful to still have in my life today. It was around that time that I stopped speaking to my parents.

Growing up, my parents never hid the fact that we were adopted. They never lied to us about the circumstances behind why we were adopted or anything like that. However, it was around middle school when I started resenting them and the fact that I was adopted. I resented my biological parents as well, I got it into my head that they didn’t want me and didn’t love me. I was hurt and angry. I took it out on my parents and refused to speak to them for a while. When my parents noticed that I was talking to them anymore and I was no longer the happy, cheerful little girl they remembered me being, they found me a therapist. I resented being in therapy as well, but I eventually started talking again. I was still not the happy little girl they remember, she was long gone. By then I was convinced that if my biological parents didn’t love me, then no one could or ever would. It made me question my relationships with everyone, my parents, siblings, and friends.

The summer before eighth grade, my therapist decided I no longer needed to come as often, and eventually, I stopped going altogether. In eighth grade, I started “dating” my friend from kindergarten. We had stayed close friends over the years and had I fancied myself in love with him. I still hated myself and couldn’t understand why he wanted to date me and I convinced myself that it was a prank. We broke up just before starting high school. We lost touch for a few months before we decided our friendship was much more important than our mutual breakup. One of my closest girlfriends moved out of state around the beginning of our freshman year. By this point, I had started self-harming. I felt unloved and alone. I couldn’t talk to anyone. I started high school and immediately felt out of place. I did make a few superficial friends over the first few years of high school, although a few stuck around and have become good friends. The spring semester of my freshman year was spent dating an older guy, I was asked to prom, and subsequently cheated on. Again, I felt alone and unloved. It hurt but like an idiot later that summer I started going out with him again.

I broke up with him again at the beginning of my sophomore year after finding out that he, of course, had cheated on me again. That same semester, my parents decided to move from the suburbs to the country. They began looking for new homes and finally found one they loved just before winter break. They bought a home on a massive twenty-eight acres. My mom started homeschooling me for a few months at the beginning of my spring semester. The first week of February in 2014, my sister’s husband committed suicide. We spend a week in Florida for his memorial service and to be with my sister. I decided to stop self-harming then. I turned sixteen a week later. We moved to our new home on March first. I started at my new school a few weeks later.

The summer before my junior year, I started dating my friend again. This time we were more serious about our relationship. We discussed our plans for college and the career paths we were interested in pursuing. We even discussed marriage. On the last date we went on, he bought me a promise ring. It wasn’t the traditional type, but one that fit my personal style, that we had found together in a little hole in the wall shop. I was so happy, it never occurred to me that that visit would be the last time I would ever see him. Let me explain.

Something in him changed just after Christmas that year. We started fighting and he cheated on me a few times. I forgave him every time. I was very much in love with him and had loved him as a friend for much longer. In January of 2015, I finally had enough when a friend of his mentioned to me that he had threatened her. I texted him about it and he went off on me. He started threatening me and mentioned having a list of people he would get rid of if the purge were ever a real thing. I told my parents and showed them the messages. They told his parents. His parents forbade him from contacting me again. Our friendship was officially severed.

I put the whole conversation out of my mind and moved on. I was hurt and felt betrayed, sad and lonely again. I heard from him one last time, on the night of the Superbowl. He asked me to take him back and told me he was sorry and that he loved me. I wanted so badly to believe him, I still cared for him and I was still hurt. I told him in no uncertain terms that he could kindly fuck off. He responded by saying he had been lying about loving me and that no one could ever love someone who swears the way I had. That had been the first time I ever swore at anyone and I was extremely unapologetic. I had poured so much of myself into our friendship and relationship over the years, I was tired of being used and hurt by him. I told him so and proceeded to ask him never to speak to me again. I mentioned to my parents that he had contacted me again and let it go.

Just about two weeks later, I was sitting in church waiting for the service to begin. I was excited for that evening, my friends were coming over to celebrate my seventeenth birthday. I got a text message from a good friend just as the service was starting. She was asking about my ex. She asked if I had heard from him or his family recently. I told her that we hadn’t spoken in two weeks. She apologized and said that might want to try to reach out if possible. I had thought about calling him the day before, as it had been Valentine’s Day. I mentioned this to her and asked why she wanted me to contact him after everything. She told me that she had seen something on the news about someone with the same name. I was confused, so I started searching the internet to find out what was going on. What I found caused me to break down crying in church and texting my mom, who was on the other side of the row I was sitting in, I asked her what was going on. My mom left the church, and I knew then that it was bad. My dad texted me to ask what I had sent my mom to make her leave. I sent him the same articles and screenshots I had sent my mom. He also left. My parents were not the kind of people who would just leave in the middle of church. It was then that I knew it was worse than I had found online. The article I had found showed that he and his parents and younger sister were all dead. I didn’t know the entire story at the time. My sisters who had been on either side of me, held me up while I cried. They didn’t know what was going on, but I don’t cry in front of people, ever, so they knew it was not good. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them, I couldn’t speak. At the end of the service, my parents still hadn’t come back in. I had my sister get a friend of mine, a high school youth group leader, that I knew I could tell, she had been there during the entire breakup. I told her what I knew at the time and she hugged me while I cried and she prayed over me. After that, I went to look for my parents. They were huddled together in a corner, hugging. I knew they were upset because their friends had also just died. My mom pulled our pastor over to talk and he soon came to me, he pulled me aside and prayed with me. I felt minimally better, but enough that I finally stopped crying.

On the way out to my parents' cars, my dad asked, “Does this change how you feel about the monster?” I didn’t know what he was talking about. I asked him. He stopped in the middle of the hallway and plainly said, “He killed them. He’s a monster.” I didn’t know. I didn’t know how to respond, so I didn’t. I started crying again. Driving home, my dad had to stop at the store to pick something up so he and my sister went and I stayed in the car. I called my friend from church and told her the new development I had learned from my dad. I plainly said, “He killed them.” She gathered a group of other youth group leaders and they all prayed over me. I got home a little while later and changed into his old sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants. I found the promise ring he had bought me and started wearing it again. I was a mess. I wanted to cancel my birthday party but my mom didn’t let me. She knew that I would need my friends. So I didn’t cancel my party. Once my friends arrived, I explained to them what had happened. They were all there for me and they helped me get through that day.

Unfortunately, there was a snowstorm that night. We were out of school and snowed in for the entire week. For my birthday the next day, my parents knew I was hurting, so they decided we could have a game day. I love playing card and board games so that’s what we did. We spent the day playing my favorite games, but I was still heartbroken. Not only had I just lost my first friend, my best friend, but the first love of my life.

I couldn’t reconcile the idea in my mind that this boy I had known my entire life could do something so horrific. This was the boy that gave me my first kiss on Valentine’s day in kindergarten. The boy that when he got sick before my birthday party made sure that someone in his family delivered my birthday present. The boy that would move his sleep mat next to mine so we could hold hands during nap time. The boy I talked to in class so much that our teacher had to move us to opposite sides of the classroom. This was the same boy that helped me learn to climb a tree, and who subsequently helped me push my sister out of the same tree because she wouldn’t leave us alone. This was the kid that I watched Barney and Friends with, the kid who taught me how to throw a football and how to play tag. I couldn’t and sometimes still cannot understand what happened. What had changed him so much that he could do this? There are so many different people on the internet who speculate about what happened, what caused him to do this. There are even some who claim to have known him, but their explanations of what they believe happened don’t match up. Some claim that he had found out that he was adopted and was angry that his parents had kept it a secret from him. He was adopted, but that was never a secret. He knew and we had discussed it before. Some speculate that he had been jealous of his sister and that’s why he killed them. I read somewhere that the official police report stated that he was angry that his parents took his computer away because he had contacted someone that he had previously been forbidden from contacting.

Hearing that, I began blaming myself. I started self-harming again. I kept searching the internet for news stories, anything really that could explain to me how this happened. I searched and searched. I found multiple news stories that had the same picture of him, a picture that his mom had taken of the two of us and posted on Facebook a few years previously. Knowing that someone had to find that picture and deliberately cut me out of, made me irrationally angry. Why couldn’t they find a better picture of him? Why couldn’t they leave that happy memory alone? Why did they have to take that happy picture of us and destroy it?

My mom, myself, my little brother, and my little sister attended the memorial service a week later. We got there near the end of the visitation and went to see his brother and sister. Both of whom had been away at school at the time. His sister hugged my mom and met my brother and sister before turning and pulling me into a tight hug. She smiled at me and told me that if I ever needed to talk or needed anything that I could come to her. She told me that she knew how important he and I had been to each other and how close we had been. She hugged me while I sobbed. I had been prepared for her to resent me or not want to see me at all because I reminded her too much of him and what had happened. I had not expected her reaction at all and it broke me. I had been ready to tell her that if she had needed anything that she could talk to me. She hugged me again before her brother took her place and also hugged me and told me the same thing. I never expected their compassion or empathy. I had been blaming myself and hating myself so much during that week that I didn’t know how to respond to them. I simply nodded and hugged them back and told them that I felt the same way. It was during the memorial service that I felt my little sister nudge me and whisper that someone behind us had said my name. I turned to look at the person. This was when I got a reaction similar to what I expected his brother and sister to have had. An older man, I assumed he was in his mid-thirties, was speaking quietly to another man and pointing at me. I don’t know what he said, but it wasn’t said in a tone of voice that sounded very kind. I turned back to my sister and told her to ignore it. I also ignored it. I didn’t even tell my mom. After the service, I met a few of his church friends and they were very nice to me, we spoke for a little while before my mom decided that we should leave.

The next day when I returned to school, I spoke with my Bible teacher and told him what happened. I asked him to pray for me because I was not doing well. He knew I had a past history of self-harm and checked on me. I denied that I was doing it again, I’m sure he did not believe me. He didn’t push me for the truth though and prayed with me.

I slowly moved on and continued to pretend I was okay and that I was getting better. It was around Spring Break when my little sister walked in on me cutting myself. She froze and I froze and I tried to hide what I was doing but she had seen it already. She apologized for barging into my room and left quickly. I couldn’t stop her in time. I hid in my room for the rest of the day. I skipped dinner and everything, trying to avoid her and prayed, begged, pleaded with God that she wouldn’t tell anyone what she had seen. Later that night, when everyone had gone to bed for the night, my parents called me into the kitchen. I knew then that she had told them. My parents were sitting at the dinner table with my sister. She had, obviously, been crying. I stood defensively across from them, glaring at them and my sister. I was angry that she told them, I was angry that anyone knew. I was angry that I wasn’t strong enough to tell someone that I was hurting. They calmly asked me if I was self-harming. I lied. My mom then asked me to show her my stomach, back, arms and legs. I refused. They already knew. I would not show them. They told me that if I decided I wanted help, that I could come to them. I nodded and left the room.

My Bible teacher seemingly made it his mission to check on me. I stopped cutting my arms so I could wear short sleeves as the weather got nicer. He would consistently check my arms when talking to me. My sister didn’t talk to me for weeks. Finally, on May 16th, 2015, I was about to pick up the pocket knife I’d been using late that night when I decided I didn’t want to anymore. I took the knife and left my room to find my parents. They were in the home office with one of my siblings so I waited quietly. When my siblings eventually went to bed, I found my parents again and gave my knife to my dad, and asked my mom to make an appointment with my former therapist. I told them I needed help and they helped me.

I went back to therapy and spent the summer in therapy. I also joined my school’s volleyball team and later the softball team. Keeping active helped me get past my urge to harm myself, and I started feeling better. I started dating again. I went out with a few guys during my senior year. None of the relationships lasted longer than a few months, but I was at least getting past my ex and moving on. I felt a bit happier, freer. I was friendlier to my classmates and got to know them better.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life anymore, I didn’t want to think about college or careers, but as a senior, it was expected of me. So I applied to a few colleges that I had previously been interested in. I got involved with the school drama club again and felt all-around healthier and happier. I still struggled with self-hatred and feeling unloved and unwanted, but it wasn’t as difficult to push my intrusive thoughts aside. I felt like that happy little girl again, the one my parents missed so much. I got accepted to a few colleges, I didn’t choose a major or any possible career paths. I spent my senior year trying to make decisions for a future I still didn’t believe would happen. I stopped going to therapy again, I thought I didn’t need to anymore. I graduated from high school just over one year after I decided to go sober.