“Behind my smile, is everything you could never understand.”

As a child I grew up in just an average neighborhood, had both parents, and two siblings. I can remember the most strange things and conversations. I remember things from when I was only two. But I can’t remember a time where my Dad wasn’t abusing one substance or another.

I remember my Dad being my best friend when I was a young child. I didn’t want to start preschool because I didn’t want to be away from my Daddy. I was a Daddy’s girl alright. My Mom worked at the time, so my Dad did a lot of the raising of me and my sister. My brother was in school before I was even born, so I don’t have many memories of him in my early years. I have some early memories of my sister, but most of my earliest memories only consist of me and my Dad, I guess you can say that we really bonded right off the bat.

As I got a little older, I got more used to the fact that I was going to be at school a good portion of the day with out my Dad being around. I made a few friends, but for some reason, I never really felt socially accepted by the other kids. I remember my first real friend. We met in kindergarten at a field trip, and she just so happened to live three doors down from me. We got to play and spend the night with each other like kids normally do, but my sister and I weren’t really allowed to go out and play very often.

As far as I can remember it was when I was about seven or eight that I think it started, my Dad not letting us go out to play, and contradicting everything my Mom said or gave us permission to do. We had to sneak to do things, like make a phone call, to our Grandma, even to eat sometimes. My Dad I guess just got so swallowed into taking over control and the alcohol and drugs that it was as if he was there but it wasn’t really him, almost as if he stopped caring completely about his family and only cared about himself, which could very likely be the case as many addicts become that way.

My Dad would feed us three meals a day yes, but I, the picky eater I am, didn’t like a lot of the stuff he’d make, so I’d sneak and throw it away. My Dad would give us such tiny portions, and we’d still be hungry, we were under weight because of it. He was cheap, unless it came to him. So when Dad wasn’t home or was sleeping, we would sneak food and eat. It got pretty bad, and I still remember it vividly. I can remember not being allowed out so long and not being able to ride my bike that I forgot how to ride my bike. Riding a bike is something a person should always remember how to do. I couldn’t do it, it was like I needed training wheels all over again.

When Dad quit drinking I was in maybe third grade, Daddy was my hero after that. Little did I know the reason he was able to quit drinking cold turkey like he did and not slip up now and then was because he immediately turned back to the drugs. He did drugs before he met my Mom so he had a history with it. Alcoholism runs on both sides of my family, especially my Dad’s side, so he started drinking at an early age too. My Dad was also prescribed a ridiculous amount of pain medications for multiple reasons. The fucked up part about it though, my Dad’s doctor was just prescribing my Dad what ever he wanted practically, so not only was he eating handfuls of pills on a daily basis, he was doing all sorts of drugs after he quit drinking.

I can’t remember if he was like that with his medications when he was drinking. The main things I remember of him drinking are yelling, and fighting, and carrying heavy cases of beer as a child and dragging coolers to drain them and put ice in them, and grabbing a cold beer for Dad.

I was in fifth grade when the shit started to hit the fan. It was a normal school day like any other, my sister stayed home sick. I was surprised by my brother, his girlfriend, and their kids there to pick me up after school. I was wondering why they were picking me up and what was going on. Apparently my Dad had told my Mom he was going out to get cigarettes and he’d be right back, couple hours flew by, Dad still wasn’t back. So my Mom called my brother and they tried to figure out where he was. They tried local police, everything. He still hadn’t arrived by the time I got home. My Mom and brother finally located my Dad, he was in jail. Suspicious behavior for continuously driving around the same spot and having illegal drugs in his vehicle. Of course Dad claimed they weren’t his and that he had no idea how they got there.

He was in jail for a few days. I was in the D.A.R.E. program at the time, so I of course, being the kid who always said I’d never smoke or do drugs or get drunk, thought “I don’t need this program, Daddy does.” I shared this thought with my Mom and she agreed. Since Dad kept all of the money and everything, we didn’t know how long we’d be with out everything. We had no idea if we’d have food to last because we weren’t sure how long Dad would be in jail. When Dad got out, Mom told him what I said about him needing to take the D.A.R.E. program, not me, and my Dad confronted me about it when I got home from school that day. It made me feel completely awful. Saying something so ruthlessly about my Dad, my best friend.

My Dad just wasn’t right, there has to have been some sort of underlying problem that created the monster he turned into. Soon the neighborhood found out about my Dad’s addictions. I was made fun of because of it, people said some very hurtful things that still play over in my head to this day. I can recall the neighbors talking to my sister and I because they could hear our parents yelling and they wanted to make sure things were okay. Things NEVER were okay.

On top of that, and feeling so socially unaccepted, I was made fun of for so much, I didn’t have a lot of friends. Excruciatingly hurtful false rumors were spread about me, and I think what hurt most, was my sister went along with the rumors. The rumors got so bad to the point that I just didn’t want to go to school anymore, it was bad enough that I was getting picked on to begin with. I never really got to experience and enjoy my childhood, in ways I was very much deprived of a big variety of things. Experiencing all of that was hard enough for me.

My Mom suffers from depression and many other mental illnesses, and she had just gotten so depressed and out of her element that she attempted suicide more times than I can remember. I felt abandoned. Not only by my Mom, but also by my Dad. I felt like my Mom didn’t love me, because she was willing to take her life and leave me in the hell hole created at my house. I felt like my Dad loved drugs and not my family any more, not me.

My brother is a lot older than me, we never really bonded, he’d get my sister and me out of the house on the weekend which I can never make up to him. My sister and I were close at times. She was mean to me though. She always wanted to be like my brother. Both my brother and sister were kind of mean to me, which I think may have been a result of my Dad treating me better than them and my being the youngest child. It was hurtful though.

I never really understood the things I felt as a child because I thought it was normal and was too embarrassed to ask. I’ve never really been the person to talk about what’s wrong. I felt the depression as a child and didn’t know that’s what it was until later on in my adolescence.It was difficult for me growing up feeling as isolated and abandoned as I did. It wasn’t until my last year in elementary school that I thought things were really going to start to get better. My Mom, Dad, sister, and I were going to move.

Though it sucked my brother wasn’t allowed to come with us, and me being too young to realize he wouldn’t have had any place to stay, I was stoked for a new beginning, for a fresh start. Well it went as planned all the way through closing on the house. The night we got back home from the closing, shit really hit the fan, full blown force. It was getting late, I was getting hungry, we were going to have McDonald’s that night. I wanted to go with my Dad to go and get the food to bring home, but I changed my mind and decided to call my Grandma first and then ask my Dad if I could go with. I always would talk with my Grandma for fifteen minutes every time we talked. The fifteen minutes was up, we got off the phone, Dad still hadn’t left to get the food. So I yell down the basement stairs to ask if I can go with to get dinner, and get no response.

I went down the stairs, into the office of the basement, and there he was. My Daddy, laying there, still as a rock, eyes red, and dead. I had just turned twelve two months before. I was still so much a child. I couldn’t come to terms with the facts. I kept saying “It’s just a bad dream, wake up, wake up!” I remember Mom telling me that she thinks Dad’s gone, and having to wait for the ambulance, and trying to get a hold of my brother. It was horrible. My Aunt and Uncle pick my sister and me up to take us to the hospital to be with my Mom and Dad.

When we got there we were sent to the waiting room the doctors had put my Mom in. Shortly after that, the doctors come into the room. With straight faces, they said “We did all we could, we just couldn’t save him, he was dead for ten to fifteen minutes before the call to 911. I blamed myself. I should have gone down stairs before calling my Grandma, if I had, I could have saved him. What my family thinks happened was that my Dad didn’t do drugs the entire weekend we were out of town closing on the new house and that when we arrived back home he did, and it was just too much for him, that it caused him to have a heart attack, and it took his life.

I to this day still don’t know if it was intentional or accidental and I never will. He had reason. He wanted to change, or so he said to my Mom, but he didn’t want to go to rehab because he would be cut from taking his pain medications. Moving was his chance to change, as it was mine, just under different circumstances.

After my Dad died, the depression really started to kick in. That’s when I started to develop the sleeping problems I struggle with today. I was upset beyond words. I ate to not only comfort myself, but because I had the freedom to finally. We didn’t wind up moving because money was very tight at the time. Dad left us in so much debt. He drained all the money saved up and put it into his drug habits.

The house we had bought wasn’t selling, so after five months of my Dad’s death, we moved into the new house and sold the old one. I thought I was getting my chance still. I still felt the depression but also a relief. I was getting away from the bad memories. I was starting with a fresh slate almost.

My seventh grade year was by far the best, even though it was the first school year with out my Dad around. The first half of the school year sucked, but after I moved and started at my new school, things sort of looked up. It was like the sun was starting to shine a little bit. I still felt the depression, I started cutting and I will admit, some of the things I did were for attention, but I didn’t realize that at the time. I just needed some one to see I was in so much pain still, so I’d do something stupid like sit on the tracks as a train was coming, my friends pulled me off, though I’m still, to this day, unsure of if I would have let the train hit me or jump off the tracks before. I think a part of me subconsciously knew my friends would get me off in time. I started drinking, smoking cigarettes, and smoking weed. The summer after my seventh grade year kind of sucked. I ate out of boredom and depression because things were getting worse yet again.

My eighth grade year, was miserable. I got fat. I was incredibly uncomfortable in my skin. I hated myself. I was still cutting, drinking, smoking cigarettes and weed, thats when I started to take pills. Home life was bad. My siblings were meaner to me than ever before. My sister would punch me in the face, her and her friends started nasty rumors about me. I cried myself to sleep most nights. The only thing that kept me going was my friend who practically lived with me. We were always together, but shit hit the fan between us too that school year. We argued a lot. There was so much drama. I couldn’t do it anymore.

I was in a way relieved when my Mom met my Step Dad. I moved, yet again. My brother his new girlfriend, their new born baby, and my sister stayed. Mom payed for their bills and everything. I started fresh once again. I hung out with the good kids, then to the average teenage kids who party on the weekends, and then the non stop party group of kids. Things got pretty bad. My sister, brother, his girlfriend, and their child moved to the same town as my mom, step dad, and I. I wasn’t too terribly thrilled though. I liked that I didn’t have them there making me feel worse than I already had. I definitely changed. It all really started at a party.

I went to a New Years party and got trashed and wound up losing my virginity to a guy I had just met that night. Needless to say being trashed isn’t an excuse but my judgement was impaired and he hadn’t been partying so his wasn’t the situation wasn’t exactly right, but it happens. I was fifteen. I never heard from the guy since, haven’t even seen him. Not even a month later, my depression boiled down to my breaking point.

I had taken some pills to calm down because my boyfriend at them time and I had gotten into a fight. I wound up having to go to the hospital for it. The guy broke up with me, via text message, while I was still laying in the hospital bed. When I got home the next night I cut my leg up bad. I was hurt he had done me dirty like that. A little more than a month later I had talked to some people that I thought were my good friend about taking so much of a certain type and milligram of pills and wondering what would happen. They told me I’d better not even think of taking them because of the incident the month before.

I went home that night, it was a winter night, worst night of the worst snow/ice storm in a decade. I felt like even my friends were pushing me away, like every one else had. I couldn’t handle the pain anymore. I wrote a suicide letter trying to explain how I felt and why I wanted to take my life and how they each made me feel. I took fifty-eight fifty milligram Amitriptyline. The first thing I thought was I was never going to see my nephews face ever again. That I had made a mistake, but I was too embarrassed to admit it and ask for help. I lied down with my suicide note by my side, waiting to die. I think I fell asleep. I don’t remember much. I think something in me wanted to get help before hand, I think thats why I mentioned it to my ‘friends’ earlier that day. I believe this because I got out of my bed and went out of my room. To let some one know I needed help with out just up and saying it, which I should have. All I remember of that is going into my sisters room, picking up an empty soda can, and knocking on the bathroom door to talk to my brothers girlfriend as she gave my nephew a bath. The next thing I remember is an ambulance. Then everything goes blank.

I remember waking up in the hospital to my Mom talking to the nurse about the scars all over my body from cutting. I can remember thinking that I didn’t want to wake up and being pissed because I hadn’t died. I opened my eyes and felt extremely groggy. I remember my Mom talking, but I can’t recall what she said. I was under close watch because I had attempted suicide. It was awful. I was still pretty groggy and out of it due to all of the medication in my system when an ambulance came to transport me to a psych ward, over a hundred miles away from my home and family. I bawled my eyes out, I was scared and didn’t want to leave my Mom and Step Dad.

I later on discovered a hand print bruise on my arm which brought back the memory of my brother grabbing my arm the night I over dosed and asking if I was fucked up. My reply was mumbles, thats all I could remember. Turns out, waking up and my family finding out I had taken something saved my life. My brother had his girlfriend keep me awake while they shoveled a path through snow and ice for the paramedics. The doctors told my family that if I would have fallen back asleep that I wouldn’t of woken back up. I was hospitalized a little over a week, and never wanted to go back to a place like that ever again.

Though I met one of the best people I know in the hospital it was one of my worst experiences. I kind of faked my way through the hospital. I told them I felt better, when really I didn’t and was still wishing I would have died. I was happy I was able to see my family, and I realized just how much pain I had caused and how much more I could have caused if I did die and I was greatful for the fact they didn’t have to suffer through that because I was so unhappy. It wouldn’t of been fair to them. I wasn’t better by any means.

My brothers girlfriend tried telling my mom that I just needed her to be there for me, which was a good part of it because mentally she wasn’t there for me when I needed her. Hell in ways, she wasn’t even there for me physically. She was home, but we never really interacted with each other.My Mom wanted no part in believing that. She still to this day doesn’t believe it, and I could never tell her because I know it would break her heart and I couldn’t put her through that no matter how much it hurts me.

I went into the psych ward three more times that year, all within about six months. When I’d start having suicidal thought or self harming thoughts, I’d tell my Mom and Step Dad that I thought I needed to go back to the hospital because of how I was feeling. My stress levels were just incredibly over loaded, I just couldn’t deal with any more stupid, unneeded drama, I couldn’t handle the severe self hatred I still have towards myself today, and most of all I needed a place where I felt safe. Every time something went wrong, I thought of what I had put my family through, but I needed help. I needed to be safe from myself and the hospitals seemed to offer that.

A year had passed since I had over dosed. I was working, I thought I had good friends finally, I thought things were going to start to get better. For the first time after my Dad had died, I thought it was going to get better. I thought totally and completely wrong. All my life I’ve had trust issues, they got worse when my Dad died. The first person I truly trusted, broke every ounce of faith I had left in me of hoping life will get better and turn back around.

I met a guy. The best way to describe him is he made me feel like a princess when we were around each other, but then just as fast as he brought it upon me, he took it away. I met him through a coworker. Long story short, he and I had got to talking. I told him from the get go that I wasn’t going to be easy, that if all he wanted was sex to look some place else. We hung out one night. My friend who was living with me at the time came with us. We went out to Denny’s, he told some one there, in front of me, that I was his girl friend. I didn’t mind because I liked the idea, at the time any ways. It was like a good looking guy like him, wasn’t ashamed of me in public, he didn’t care to tell people I was his girl. I never really had that.

Things were going alright, up until we left. I sat in the back on the way back towards my house, but the guy wanted to sit by me, so he let my friend drive. He started kissing me, I was uncomfortable, and whispering to him no, stop it. He didn’t listen, he kept on kissing me. Then he started caressing my breast, and biting on them, and leaving hickeys. I continued whispering no and stop to him. I know he heard me, because my friend that was driving heard me. He pulled me down on the back seat and pulled my jeans and panties off. I stopped saying no at this point, he wasn’t listening by then, he wasn’t going to start.

He hardly stuck his penis in my *****, and it hurt. I had only had sex a few times at this point, so it still would hurt. I guess my friend had thought nothing of it all because since it had hurt me so bad I made noises that would sound similar to moaning. After he finished and we redressed ourselves, I was quiet. I smoked a cigarette and didn’t say a word. A night or two later, my friend and I hung out with this guy again. This time at his Dad’s house, were he was staying. It was just the three of us there. We went up to his room and just sat there talking. Then he started feeling me up and tugging at my clothes.

This time I tried a different strategy. I pulled my clothes up so he couldn’t pull them off. After struggling with me for so long, he started with my friend. This girl seems willing enough to sleep with any one who will stick it in her. So she didn’t struggle it. Then once he got her clothes off, he got mine off. I tried to hold my pants up so tightly, I had finger nail impressions in the palm of my hand. He didn’t stop trying, so I gave in.

He was kissing us both, playing with our breast. She climbed on top of him and rode him like it was nothing while he fingered me and kissed me. I just sort of laid there. After she got off him, he got on top of me. It hurt just as bad. He stopped, but he said he didn’t get off. I was infuriated he had done this to me, and I was so pissed at myself for allowing it. I wanted justice. I needed him to get off, so I had proof he had done this to me. I told him to finish, but he didn’t. I dropped the matter, feeling beat.

The last time I was with him, I didn’t even bother saying no or trying a different tactic to try to prevent him from getting his way. He pulled into a parking lot, and lead me to the back. The seats were folded down and there was a head rest. He laid my head down on it, and laid me down straight. He pulled my pants and panties down and pulled my shirt up. Usually he would kiss and feel before actually penetrating me, but this time he didn’t. He just automatically stuck it in. It hurt worse than both of the last times combined.

I knew it was going to happen. He told me via text message. The way my mind works though, is I didn’t want to believe what had just actually happened. I wanted the good feelings to last. So I pretended it wasn’t bad, that it was a natural thing. I tricked myself into believing this. So I let myself continue to trust him. Because of this, I deserved what I got. I could have even gotten away from the situation. But I choose not to. Some other drama started related to the situation with the guy, so I went to the police. They saw the part in my statement about the guy and asked if I wanted to press charges for statutory rape. My friend talked me into it and I proceeded, only because they said I wouldn’t have to tell my parents, as I was only sixteen  at the time. They took my statements, sent me to the place for sexual testings, and word got out because a friend said something to some one, and word got to the guy. He got a lawyer, charges were dropped because there was no physical evidence and they didn’t think I’d make a good witness.

I was just in a shock stage from it all. I mean I don’t know what any one else would expect, but I had just put my whole entire trust into one person for the first time and got fucked over that badly, I think its pretty needless to say that I wasn’t in a good state of mental health at all. A few months had passed, and I couldn’t handle the pain any longer.

Every where I went, I saw something that reminded me of him, and how bad it hurt physically and emotionally. I was depressed beyond words. I had lost so much in such a short amount of time. I had contemplated suicide a few times after everything that had just happened. One night I actually tried again. I took sixty-nine one hundred milligram Trazodone. I had written a letter and laid down to fall asleep. Falling asleep was difficult, I felt sick, like I needed to puke. After a while I had woken up and puked. I knew then my attempt was a fail. I went back to sleep and slept for almost a day straight. I claimed I was just sick. I felt horrible, drowsy and incredibly light headed. I even felt short of breath.

I started drinking on almost a daily basis after that. I started smoking weed more too. Then after I turned seventeen I started taking pills, a lot of pills. I was doing coke, and eating all sorts of pills. I ate them like skittles. I was like that for a few months. Then I cut down to just getting high, smoking cigarettes, and drinking on occasion. I see that I’m following the same bad paths my Dad took. I can see that the my life is about to crash, but I don’t care and that’s what scares me most.

It’s been almost a year now since my last over dose. I’ve contemplated suicide, and have struggled with self mutilation. I don’t talk to any one about how I feel anymore. Although my family and I are a lot closer now, I still feel such a vacancy within me. I don’t really have many friends right now, I’d say about four, and even they don’t know even half of it. I’m very closed off, and it hurts sometimes.

I feel as if I’m not good enough. I don’t like myself the least bit and to this day, I still wish I would have succeeded in my first attempt. As glad as I am to see my family and not have caused them that pain and grievance, I’m not any happier, I’m not sure I’m any better, I personally think I’m worse off than before. I don’t even know how to explain how I feel.

This story, isn’t even a fraction of what I’ve gone through. Some times, I don’t even see a point in trying anymore. Sometimes, I just wish the pain would stop.