Suicide

Suicide is no ones fault.

You cannot go into somebody’s mind, it's so lonely, it's so ill.

In my life, I have witnessed way too many suicides. One is more than enough, I have cut someone down from a noose, I have watched as someone overdoses as I tried to help keep them alive, as well as tried to resuscitate a family member who I watched life leave their eyes. I have seen more dead bodies than one person should that is not in the professions of seeing such things, but this entry is only about those who committed the act of taking their own lives.

You see, I have many times in my own life thought of taking my life as an escape to what horrifying traumas that I’ve been through. I have only been half successful, someone always found me last minute, when I thought I would be alone. I have attempted it three times that were “major” attempts. Then, I couldn’t count on my fingers how many times I have self harmed, and or had thoughts. When I go through depression stages, I think about it daily, even if I have a bad day my mind always races to “Well, If I didn’t exist, life would be easier, life would go on without me and everything, and everyone would be fine.” The truth is, yes, life would go on without me, and everyone eventually after mourning the loss would be fine. Well, not everyone, I have children I know they would be taken care of, but mentally they wouldn’t be fine if they lost the only parent they have left. My attempts were done before they were born.

My first attempt was at the age of 16, I had been accused of sleeping with a friend's boyfriend. The truth was, he invited me to hang out, beat the shit out of me with his skateboard, and raped me in a park. My friend found out because the only thing I could think of to get him to stop was yelling “I have HIV, I have Herpes” both were not truth but those were the only long-term sexual deseases we were taught could happen when engaging in unprotected sex. It didn’t bother him during the act, only later when he asked his girlfriend if it was fact, and when she wondered why he would ask such things, accused me of trying to steal her boyfriend. I went over to my fathers house, I needed medical care, he wasn’t home. So, I went down the hall to my uncle's house. My aunt took me to a doctor, got me the morning after pill, and at the time I was too afraid to come forward with what happened to the police so I didn’t. The next day, my aunt wanted me to tell my father what had happened, and he got angry that I took the morning after pill. I was RAPED. “That could have been my first grandchild,” he said to me. “I would have helped you take care of the baby if you got pregnant” I kept thinking to myself, I was raped, I don’t want a baby with someone who just violently raped me. I was walking around with bruises all over my body underneath my clothing from being hit with a skateboard over and over because I wouldn’t accept these sexual advances knowing that I didn’t want to have sex. This wasn’t the way I wanted to lose my virginity. After this came the fighting with my two female friends. We were a trio if you will. If one of us pissed off the other, then one was left to have no friends until the other two stopped being angry at the one. It was a vicious way to have a friend. That weekend, I went to an internet cafe, where random teenagers hung out each weekend playing COD. I had money given to me by my grandmother, I asked a kid I hadn’t met before, how much ecstasy pills I could get for the amount that was in my hand. He took the money and came back with 200 pills. I left and went to the park. As I ate each pill within a few minutes of each other, I cried. I couldn’t believe that no one was on my side. I couldn’t believe that my own father wanted a baby that could have come from someone raping his child. I felt alone, I felt unwanted and misunderstood. I thought the pills would kill me.

They didn’t, I was high as a kite for about 4 days straight, then found laying in the basket ball court, while other teenagers played around me. I will never forget opening my eyes to a blurry scene of males running, with the bouncing of a ball every couple of seconds and hearing one say “She’s waking up, hey girl, are you okay?”

My second attempt was at the age of 18, I was involved in my first domestic violence incident, he took my head and smashed it into a concrete pillar in an underground parking lot. I was found by an older lady unconscious. I refused when the hospital asked what happened to give up that information right away. They sent me back to my abusers house. I called my mom from a friends house up the street, I didn’t tell her what happened just that I wanted to come home. She said she would pick me up the next day, being 18 that made me upset, I needed her now how could she put me off. I called my cousin, she came instantly to pick me up with her boyfriend at the time. I didn’t tell anyone anything until I got into the car, it just came out like word vomit. We stopped at my fathers house on the way home, and she bought a pot from him. She told him what had happened, my father (also a woman abuser) marched me down to a police station, where I reported my first boyfriend for domestic violence. I was then photographed and the hospital had already given me 90 Tylenol 3 pills for the road rash and fractured eye socket I had from the incident, as well as 120 Ativan for the panic I was having dealing with all of this. I sat up on my cousin's computer speaking to my friends over MSN for two days straight, eating pill after pill until both bottles were done. My cousin and her boyfriend didn’t notice, I just told them I was tired from not sleeping, the caffeine in the Tylonal kept me awake while the Ativan kept me in a fog. The last thing I remember is having a bath, where I apparently cut my arms up, then woke up in a hospital. I was hooked up to an IV, peed the bed as I woke up, and had bandages around my arms. The nurse came over as I was ripping out the IV and she said “please stop, the psychiatrist will see you in the morning. We have cleared your system of all the pills your cousin told us you took.” I looked at her and said “I am 18 now let me go, you cannot hold me here” At the time, I was right. If you were above the age of 18 you could sign yourself out, the psychiatrist had not formed me at the time, and an emergency doctor had no rights to do so back then. Things have changed since then. I left the hospital with a t- shirt, wrapped in a sheet, got into a cab and went back to my cousins at 4 am, where I was told I was no longer welcomed. She was trying to get pregnant, had her own anxiety issues and could not be responsible for me. I called my grandmother, and she came to pick me up.

My third attempt was at the age of 19. I had gotten pregnant by my boyfriend at the time and lost the baby, just before I got pregnant with my first born. He was supposed to be at school, I felt guilty for losing a baby. So I attempted to hang myself from the ceiling fan in the living room of my one bedroom apartment. He came over to check on me as I wasn’t answering my phone, or his messages over the computer anymore. His school was close to where I lived. He found me choking and losing air. He cut me down, and called an ambulance. This was my worst attempt, I got locked up in the ward for a few days. I couldn’t speak for a few weeks properly. When all you want to do is speak of what is bothering you but you cannot because you have caused damage to your voice box with your actions is the saddest thing. I believe it’s actually the reason I write and journal now, because speaking with anyone who came to see me was basically written. They could speak to me, but for the first week I had to write everything down to answer them. I remember after this attempt, I became a full blown cutter. Cutting to gain control of the pain I felt inside my head, as well as physically. I was tired of trying at life, yet too scared to cut deep enough to cause serious harm. I didn’t want to feel pain anymore, and I didn’t want to live, yet the cuts were a way of controlling that. It was painful enough to stop me from attempting to go through with it, and keep my mental angst at ease.

We really don’t know what someone else is going through in life. After these attempts I felt that if I tried this many times without success then why bother anymore, I’m here for a purpose even if I haven’t quite figured that out yet. Yes, I am here to be a mom, a sister, grand-daugher, daughter and friend. The fact is that most people bring themselves into this dark place where they feel they cannot get out. We over think what life would be like without us, or we don’t want to put in the hard work it takes to recover from our own mental health. I have put in years and still have certain anxieties. I call my depression the gremlin on my shoulder that tells me I’m never going to be good enough, but I shut it down each day and live the life that I can day by day. People don’t realize that you don’t have to have your whole life figured out. That sometimes you do things slower than others, that relationship you want will happen when you are ready, not when you rush into it. The job you want is there if you apply even if it’s more than once. Sometimes women cannot have their own children but there is always a human who will carry that baby for you. If you wrap yourself into a box of this is my life and I cannot do anything to help myself then you will end up feeling that darkness more than you need to.

Once you figure out what causes that darkness inside you, and you heal parts of yourself that others may have caused when you were younger, you will have an understanding and you may have those thoughts of suicide but you won’t act upon them. I could be the happiest person, and those little words “your not going to be good enough” can arise at any time, but if you flick them out of your head as you would a bug off your shirt, you will feel a sense of freedom from those words you are telling yourself. I wish the people in my life who commited suicide just knew how important they were to me, how much I cared about them, and how much I would rather be listening to their problems than at there funerals. I also hope that people feel the same about me when I go through these moments. I have some of the most supportive people who know that I suffer silently because I don’t want to bother anyone, but they also know when to ask me if I’m okay, and notice when my behaviours change. When I disappear.

I used to think that suicide was selfish, and the easy way out. I now realize that for some it is the only way out of their own head. The same brain that tells you that you are in love with someone is the same brain that tells you that you need to die. I am grateful that my attempts were not the end, because since the age of 19, I have had more trauma than I can understand at times, but the amount of people that I can help out of situations where they feel the way I did, gives me a sense of pride. I have had so many strangers look to me for guidance, and I always keep to the one saying I believe in “You are in control of YOU, but you cannot control others.”

To my survivors, I am so proud of you. To the ones who are feeling this way, talk, find one person to talk to, no judgement. We are here for a reason, even if we haven’t figured it out yet, we have our lives to get there. Never give up.