Recovering

When you've spent almost eight years contemplating how the lives of those you love would change if you were to suddenly end your own life, chances are you're probably as fucked up as I am.

Recently my 18th birthday passed, and pretty soon the eighth anniversary of the first time I attempted to end my life will be approaching as well. It's weird to think about the state of mind and the quality of life I'm in really. Mainly because I didn't believe I'd make it past high school graduation, honestly, I didn't believe that I'd make it to high school. I did, though. So I thought with the beginning of my first year at college starting in less than a week, now would be as good a time as ever to really talk about my silent struggle with self-harm.

Now, when I say I've thought about suicide for almost eight years, I'm not exaggerating. The first time any sort of violent or "deadly" thought popped into my head was when I was in bible study at age ten (ironic, I know). The group leader was reading a passage in the Book of John (not anything I can really care to remember) and I was sitting across the way from this massive, sliding glass door that had the most beautiful view of the sunset. While staring off wishing I wasn't being forced to listen to some strange man read an even stranger story, the daydreams just started on their own. First, it was the sunset actually engulfing myself and charring my body so there'd be absolutely no remains but the thought of the smell kinda ruined that one, then it turned to me jumping into the sunset and my body turning so warm and then to nothing at all, to finally the sun just crashing into the earth so we'd all die. I wanted to feel warm in the way I did when I looked at the sun, so I went to the kitchen and turned on the gas stove and held my hands near it to try to catch some of the heat. I moved my hands closer and eventually, I just moved my face closer to the flame. It wasn't working and I got frustrated, then I thought of how when I'd cut my finger doing something it'd turn hot. So, naturally, I went to find something sharp (meanwhile the bullshit bible study group was still going on). It was just my fingers, I gave myself some pretty nice gashes on all five fingers on my left hand and got a good talking to from the group leader who found me bleeding on his kitchen floor.

At the time I was still actively communicating with my parents so later that night I told my mom how bible study went, I just happened to leave out all the details about the actual lesson and focused on my daydreams about the sun and dying. My mother just took it as me acting out due to the fact I was being forced to spend my Monday nights at some strange house filled with kids she deemed to be well behaved and mannered, whereas I was difficult and stubborn. So that was that and I was left under the impression that my behavior was normal for an angry child who didn't really have a genuine reason to be angry at the world. Now, I'm not saying that I blame my mother for not noticing that my behavior started to become slightly concerning around that time and she just played it off as normal, but I do believe that if something had been done about my thoughts THEN, I maybe wouldn't have progressed those thoughts into destructive behavior.

Flash forward about two years and I was in sixth grade as the new kid. Every new kid story has a moment(s) where they lash out or say/do something stupid in order to make a friend, impression, or a mark somewhere. Mine? I set the girls bathroom on fire because I was trying to prove to the Latina girls I'd come to like that I wasn't just some scared White girl who was outnumbered in my new neighborhood, that I wasn't afraid to "follow through." But I took it too far...see, I enjoyed the attention I was getting after I'd do stupid shit like that. Because that was the only time people would ever look at me and ask if I was okay, if I needed help. So I figured if potentially harming myself was how I would get anyone to give two shits about me, then hell I was all on board.

Tell me how that's normal. Explain to me that it was normal for a child, a child, to go out and find new ways to harm herself just to get someone, anyone, to look at her like she's actually there. That she's an actual fucking human being and isn't just making up these thoughts and feelings for no goddamn reason.

I think I've shared enough for now...