My Suicide Attempt at age 15.

Note: I am hoping this post gets lost in the rush of the Holiday season.  I wrote the draft almost two years ago and felt it was too much to have out there in the void of the internet, but what happened to me when I was 15 years old is affecting me now.  This posting is very personal and I don't want to hurt my family members with this story, but I think the lesson I learned has given me a different perspective on the illness I have now.  Read what happened and I will explain what changed inside of me.

How did I cope with the constant abuse coming my way?

To be brutal honest with you, not very well.  I had one close friend, her name was Rosa.  She was so sweet to me.  I guess she liked me because I did not judge her or her family. I found out later that the home her family lived in was a stop on the Mexican Underground railroad, so I finally understood why they were so protective of their home.  Rosa's family would not let me inside the house for about a year.  They lived across the street from the Jr. High school, so we would hit a tennis ball on the courts at school and talk.  We talked and talked, until the sky darken.  We spoke mostly about nothing.  It was great.  I didn't care about the cultural differences.  Those seemed to disappear when we hung out and did normal stuff.  I am as white as they come, but I was so desperate for some social interaction that there was no room to be judgmental.  It took years for them to trust me, but it was so fun when they did.  The whole family would come out when I visited.   I loved being with all of them.  Oh, I was so bad at Spanish!  They laughed their heads off when I tried to speak it and I had my first tongues stew at the house.  They gave me a bowl and told me to guess what the meat was.  The tongue was very squeaky and they just laughed and laughed.  But it was good laughter.  It was fun and I needed something to keep me going.

7th grade was a bit of a reprieve from the constant abusive attention.  More elementary schools funneled into the Jr High, so everyone was in shock to be in a different place with different expectation of them.  Bothering me was put on a back  burner.  I actually liked 7th grade and regretted not getting a yearbook.  I can honestly say that was the last time I felt that way.

The problems really developed for me when Rosa disappeared.  After the Christmas break everyone returned to school except Rosa.  I was alone.  No one to hang out with during lunch and no where to go after school.  That was when the cruelty filled me.  Their wasn't anything to offset the things being said to me.  I experience full force how unwanted I was.  I felt and still feel that my very presence is offensive.  I was told how disgusting I am by my peers at every turn.  I am shy and quiet, so the people around me won't be poisoned because of interaction with me.  Even now, my reaction to people is fear.  Rosa did come back after months away.  Her family had gone to visit Mexico and then decided to stay.  They did that to Rosa all through High School and I didn't have her to depend on.  I would wake up and Rosa would be gone.

Medically, my life had become a living nightmare.  I was not told of what the symptoms were of my syndrome because I don't think doctors knew much about the poly cystic ovary syndrome at that stage.  Puberty hit me like a freight train.  I was having trouble with my menstruation cycle, which in my house can not be mentioned.  I found that part of life to be horribly embarrassing and I wasn't going to talk to a male doctor who yelled at me about my problems.  The hair on my face became noticeable at this point.  I had more of a beard than the male kids my age and that compounded the mortification.  Nothing worked to take it off.  I found shaving to be the best and I hated it because I have stubble an hour after shaving.  I cried to know that no one could touch me without feeling the rough sandpaper texture of my skin.  The things wrong with me were noticeable and it only served to separated me further and further.

My emotional walls were being built around me at that time.  My weaknesses would be found and exploited, so I built defenses around the offensive spot.  I became hard on the outside.  You have to run a gauntlet to be my friend and few want to try, but I like my obstacle course because it gets rid of the rift-raft pretty fast.  I don't have to worry about mean characters using me and I am fine using the word no.  The side effect I have to deal with is the harsh loneliness.  Heart crushing, soul stomping, skin cutting loneliness.  I feel it cutting into me at odd times through out my life.  I was driving home from work and as I climbed the hill into Simi Valley and looked across the expanse of new housing being built my heart contracted into a pain I seldom let myself feel.  It was so overwhelming.  I marvel that I am able to bear it, let alone bury it inside me.

There were sweet instances of kindness happening to me at the same time as the cruelty, but they were harder to see because it was the behaviour that I expected to happen.  I vividly remember an older girl I knew from church coming to my defense as a group of boys made random rude comments to me while waiting for the bell to ring.  They dug and dug into me feeling like stab wounds drilling  into the protection of body armour.  Their comments are as destructive as a physical attack and I wonder why.  Now I just laugh at stupid people saying stupid things, but as a child those comments hurt beyond explanation.  I stood there and took it.  What else could I do?  I couldn't fight.  I couldn't tell a teacher, they were back in the PE office and I had to stay in the area so I could get to my next class in time.  This girl, Jenni's voice came out of no where.  She was disgusted by what they were doing to me and spoke up.  My mouth hung open in shock at her words.  It was nice to know that someone else could hear what was going on.  The way everyone ignored the rude comments I thought I was being over sensitive.  Her actions granted me about 30 seconds of peace, but it was a very important 30 seconds for me.

I began to think of death an awful lot around this time of my life.  I hated the outside voices coming at me.  I tried to block them out.  I walked home from school every day.  I didn't live far, but I could only go home one way, so I was unable to avoid my fellow students and even worse I had to walk along a busy street for half a block.  This street was used by the High School kids coming home.  They would shout obscenities out of their car windows at me.  "Bitch!" was one of their favorites along with "fat cunt".  So I would talk to myself to block out the other people around me.  I would also see how far I could walk while  "being blind".(closing my eyes)  It was the way I coped.

I was being told that I was ugly and worthless by people of all ages every day.  I began to believe there was nothing for me.  I began to believe that to make the world a better place, I should leave it. Since I had no one to hang out with my favorite past time was to figure out how I should kill myself.    I was still in Jr. High School, about 13 years old, no friends, no resources.

The Internet was not around at this point, so I did not have access to any of the tools needed to make the thoughts happen.  I would walk home with my eyes close and run through the list and how I could achieve any of them.  I am such a wimp though.  I was not into feeling any pain, so that cross quite a few of them off my list.  I had no idea where to buy a gun or any friends who hunted.  I couldn't think of a place I could hang myself without getting caught, plus where to get a rope and how to tie the knot.  These are all practical problems that would take effort to overcome.  That helped to cut down the possibility of me doing anything so drastic.  It gave me something to think about besides the constant sounds of "You are disgusting."

I developed a strange obsession. I would walk to the end of my street, it opened up onto a very high traffic road.  The busy street was constant with cars going 40 miles an hour.  The people who lived there had to have indoor pets or they would get run over.  I played a game with myself.  I would sit on the corner wall and dare myself to step into traffic. I spent hours watching the ebb and flow of traffic and when the cars reached a certain point I would tell myself to "jump".  I never listened.  I knew it was entirely too selfish to have another person "accidentally" kill me.  I would never put that kind of heartache onto another person  plus I thought it would hurt to much.

Meanwhile, my brain on darker thoughts, I found something that I knew would help me in my quest to end things.  My mother has had trouble sleeping for as long as I can remember.  I would have to wake her up to take me to school.  She was pretty happy when I stopped my early morning marching band class.  Well, I found in her things a bottle of unused sleeping pills.  I noticed that they were past there expiration date and were about to throw them into the garbage, when I thought better of it.  I emptied the bottle and threw it away, but I put the pills into a nondescript container ready for a rainy day.

I tried to escape.  I wanted so badly to leave. I found a music school that I could go to and live there.  I needed a change of scenery.  I needed a change of people.  I did not trust any one in Simi at that point, not enough to feel like I could talk to them about the pain.  I felt poo-pooed and belittle like I was a little kid tattling because their brother got more ice cream than them.  I was not taken seriously and I wanted that to change.  I filled out the paperwork and was accepted to the new school.  I told my mother about the incredible news.  I showed here the pamphlet and started preparing myself to go.  She said no.  She said there wasn't enough money.  I really didn't care.  I knew she was using that as an excuse.  She didn't want me to go, not because of the money, but because she didn't want me to leave her.  If money was the issue we could have worked it out.  I knew no was no and I didn't fight.

I made it to 9th grade.  They gave a presentation on suicide and the signs people give before they commit to doing it.  I laughed inside my head.  They told me what would give people a hint and I stored the information away.  Things had continued to get rocky.  My school peers had tried to do a "Carrie" like joke.  I was nominated for prom queen.  The principle caught the names and asked all the girls including me to come to her office.  The pretty, popular girls spilled the beans.  I wished I wasn't there in the office to hear it was a joke on me.  I wished I didn't hear the plan through the principle's open door.  I left the office and I walked home.  It was before the bell rang, so I got to walk home in peace. 

Plenty of fat people are married with kids.  Plenty of fat people have jobs and careers.  Plenty of fat people lead perfectly normal lives, but I am treated like something you find on the bottom of your shoe.   My friend was gone.  The doctors hated me, my brothers hated me, my classmates hated me and to tell the truth that feeling hasn't dissipated with age.  Knowledge that a person is wrapped up in their own life has been the difference in my thinking.  People don't try to ignore me, but since I am not apart of their daily lives then it just feels that way.  I was very lucky to have a friend who told me the truth.  I wasn't quite friends with her when she had her first baby, but we were close by her second and she just had to pay attention to her husband and her kids.  It has nothing to do with her love for me, but I have tried very hard to respect that need for her to take care of her family.  I have learned that most woman can't take the time out for me.  I don't blame them.  I am in awe of the time, energy and talents that are required to be a mother and wife.  I do not have those same demands upon me and it is very hard to see that others are just too busy to take the time needed in being my friend.

I have tried really hard to remove the poison inside of me, but I don't understand what others see when they look at me.  I am passionate and I am very black and white, empathy and compassion are not natural traits for me.  I do forgive myself for my mistakes, but I do not forgive myself stupidity.

Finally one day I stayed late at school and so I was also late on my walk home.  I was basically the only one on the sidewalk and I was feeling very low about myself. In the half a block before I turn the corner over 15 nasty things were shouted at me from passing cars.  I was alone and the heartbreaking words floated on the air flatly refusing to be ignored in the silence.  They crashed my world.  I already felt unwanted and the words pierced my well developed armoured skin and hit the fleshy mush underneath.  I felt destroyed, the tears not meaning anything as I made my decision.

I walked into the dark house.  Every one was gone for some reason or another and the hurt multiplied inside of me.  I reached under the sink for a bottle of bright blue Windex, trudged upstairs to an empty room.  I turn on the TV and proceeded to take the pills I had tucked away, a year earlier, down from the shelf.  I took every single one with the Windex chaser and laid on the couch grateful to finally have it all over with.

I have no idea how much time passed.  Mom called me to help her with dinner.  I stood to help my mother and fell to the ground unable to control my limbs.  What I had done hit me full force.  I managed to stumble my way downstairs and found my mother was outside cooking on the grill.  I told her I was sorry, but I couldn't help her because I was feeling very sick.  I crawled back up the stairs into the bathroom.  I felt so guilty about what I had done.  It was unfair that my mother would have to find my body.  I stuck my fingers down my throat and forced myself to throw up.  I saw whole pills in the toilet and figured I would be safe.  I tumbled to my bed.  I was scared to close my eyes.  I kept thinking I may not wake up, but I never thought to ask to go to the hospital.  Isn't that weird?  I felt I would be fine.

I slept for 24 hours.  I came down to eat and I said to my mom, "I guess I was really sick."  She answered me by saying, "Yes, I heard you throwing up, so I thought I would just let you sleep."

I only told Rosa what I had done in a matter of fact way.  "Yeah, I took a whole bunch of pills over the weekend."  She didn't say anything about it and that was all.  I never mentioned it to anyone.

I only write this story because what I did in 9th grade is affecting me now.  Yes, I am depressed at what my circumstances are.  I think how I could take too much insulin or overdose on my pain pills, but I will never do that because of how I felt when I was a teenager.  I don't know if it was a religious experience, but when my mother woke me up, when I was interrupted by the person who loves me so very much, I felt how wrong my choice was.  

I wish I could say that things got better for me after that, but it didn't.  It was a struggle to not be bitter.  I wanted to blame others for my pain, but I discovered that I had to find a way to have my emotions and not harm myself or others.  The things I learned from that experience at 15 are still vital to me right now as I struggle to wake and struggle through the day.  It is unfathomable to know what it is like to be sick every single day, unless you are dealing with it yourself.  I try very hard to take that into consideration, but I have nothing now.  As far as I know I have no future.  I have no idea how to change my situation.  I am stuck in a rut that is only getting worse.  But after my experience I promised myself and I promised God when I was 15 that I would never attempt to harm myself again.  I do not break my promises.  I think they are the most important judge of my character.  No matter how bad it is getting now it is a promise that I will never break.

I do what I can.  I write this post to give hope to myself and others that are so desperate they think dying is the only way to be free.  I learned at a young age that this life is going to be hard.  We can fold under the pressure or struggle every moment to continue.  I shall continue because the pain shows me the joy.  I am very conscious of the kindness offered in a way I didn't understand when I was younger.  Thank you for caring, it helps to warm my heart.