Today, March 20th, is the eight year anniversary of when I took a hundred and fifty pills after walking home from high school and then after hours in the ER, throwing up and feeling numb, got committed to the mental hospital for a 51/50.
The memories that surround this incident are buried in my mind, only to sometimes reappear with a vengeance. I remember that day being filled with feelings of intense desperation and worthlessness. I remember crying the entire walk home from school, calling all the normal comforts in my phone to only be met with silence. I remember getting home to hit myself with a baseball bat like I would normally do in extreme emotional pain to just not feel satisfied this time. I remember calmly sitting on the computer in the family kitchen, slowly popping pill after pill down my throat while on Myspace. I remember all those people I had called finally calling me back once the bottle was empty, demanding I call an ambulance or they would. I remember sitting quietly by the front door while EMTs shoved oxygen tubes in my nose and put me on a stretcher to wheel me out in front of all the neighbors that I couldn't care less about. I remember my best friend's mom. My mom. My best friend. Crying. I wasn't crying.
The EMTs scoffed, "Why would you kill yourself over a boy?"
It was never the BOY.
It was the abuse, year after year after year by so many different faces that just blended together into nothing. The constant feeling of being worth nothing, being treated like an object. It was everything, I wanted to feel nothing. I was rotting inside so let me rot all the way through.
We sat in the ICU with tubes all over me. I threw up a lot but the nurse says I'm so lucky because the pills I took aren't poisonous. I did't feel lucky.
My family cried and I laughed.
I could't stop laughing.
I am not dead.
I am going to keep living.
This is funny right now.
No one knows I am bipolar yet. No one understands me.
They finally found a ward after midnight.
My mom cried as she signs the paperwork.
I don't want to talk about the ward. Maybe one day. Not today.
I've O.D.ed in private since. I've threatened. I've thought. But I've lived.
I haven't tried in over 3 years.
I am grateful I am alive even when things are so bad I want to tear my skin off.
Leaving doesn't solve the problems. Closing the door, exiting the room just means that you will never experience anything again. Nothing. Not the embrace of your mother. Not your favorite song. Not the smell of Jasmine blooming in the summer outside your window. Every bad day has some beauty in it. I promise. So just stick around and find your things that make your life beautiful.
My beautiful things |