Saturday is the day I die

You say you will end your life and leave this hell behind. What if ending your life DOESN’T end the pain? What if the pain is still there AFTER you do it?
You say you’ve lost everyone who’s ever been close to you and that your foster parents are throwing you out. Even now, you have choices. Tell a teacher or a guidance counsellor what’s going on, because your parents can’t just THROW you out, not without a back-up plan.
I don’t know you, but I know you have choices. You probably have more choices than I will ever have. When I was your age (I’m 40 now), all I ever wanted was to live to be an adult. I have cerebral palsy and I am in a wheelchair. I lost pretty much every childhood friend I had. Many of the ones who were disabled died before the age of adulthood. The friends whio could walk moved away or disappeared without even saying goodbye. Even as an adult, many people are frightened of me, or to be more precise, the wheelchair I’m sitting on and they won’t come anywhere near me. Even some of my friends aew drifting away and isolating me because they don’t know what to say (And I know they don’t know what to say because one person came out and admitted it.) When I was a child, my parents would scream at me, treat me like I was retarded and threaten to put me in a nursing home for the rest of my life. Sometimes my brothers and sisters would call me names like retard, often while the yelling was going on. To make a long story short, I moved out when the abuse got too much, but not before I was forced into an operation I shouldn’t have had. And I will be paying for that mistake forever. I now live in constant agony as a result of that operation. I was permanently disowned by my parents for not letting them sign me into a nursing home for the rest of my life. When it became clear I didn’t trust them as they kept demanding, they tried to get my psychiatrist to declare me incompetant so I could be forced to move into a nursing home. I’m 40 years old with an above-average IQ. No one is going to tell me when my parents die because one sister said she was afraid” I’d celebrate” But no one wants to admit that I might have good reason to celebrate. No one wants to admit that they physically and emotionally abused me, or railroaded me into a psychiatric hospital at age 5 (18 months) for no good reason. And I know why I was railroaded. I was becoming withdrawn from friends and family because of the abuse and the surgeries I had to go through. (My psychiatrict at the time pulled my file but said he was witholding any information that he felt would push me over the edge. He told me why I went there, how long I was there and why I left, nothing more.) My parents got decades of mileage out of telling me how I got kicked out of school in kindergarden, sent to an institution and kicked out of the institution because “I refused” to be helped. All lies and they know now I know they lied to me and they showed no concern when I found out. They did more than this. They lied to doctors and staff about me and painted me as “emotionally disturbed and non-compliant.” I saw at least one letter written to nursing staff when I was 18 with these lies. When I begged my parents for help with my severe pain and told them I was suiciidal, they tried to lock me up again, this time for good. They bragged to one case manager how “easy” it was to get me to do things when I was in severe pain. They deliberately came down with forms to sign on a weekend when my pain was severe. I asked them to come another weekend when my pain was less. They insisted on coming anyway. They knew I would never give them Power of Attorney over me if I weren’t in pain. They came when I was confined to a hospital for depression. They brought down a brother and a sister to add on the guilt. Throughout the incident, my mother said “Trust us. We’re family.” All the while bad mouthing me behind my back to staff and friends, just like in childhood. They told one friend “We can’t be her parents any more unless she’s in a nursing home.” And then there was the comment to the case manager, all the more shocking because my mom is a pain specialist working with terminal cancer patients. She loves her job, but is too “burned out” to even think of her daughter living a free life. My parents have NO say in my care whatsoever. At best, they would travel 500 miles to install an air conditioner, buy a few groceries and go home. No letters, no phones and they whined to the psychiatrist about the air-conditioner. He read a portion of a letter they wrote to him to try and institutionalize me. Throughout my childhood they screamed at me to staff about what a hardship I was, how I was emotionally disturbed. They were rubbing my face in my owm waste, throwing me on my bed. The physical abuse only stopped when they found out I had osteoporosis as a child. They had one set of rules for me and another for my able-bpdied sibs. They sent my sibs on school trips all the time, but to send me on one was “too hard”. When I asked to go on a school triip to Washington D.C., they hit the roof. Then my father got an exercise bike. I had to pedal 15 km a day in 45 minutes….with legs that couldn’t support my weight to stand even with braces and a walker. Merely flinching from a fire alarm was enough to break my bones as was physio I was forced to endure daily. I WAS FORCED TO PEDAL THOSE 15 KMS in 45 minutes or I didn’t get paid. I was paid 5 cents a kilometre. (And if you think that low rate of pay is an exception, some disabled people in the States are forced to do menial labor or be put in a nursing home at one dollar an hour or less.) The physiotherapists only expected me to ride on a tricycle for recess. They didn’t know about the bike at home, but they were also doing things like locking me in a storage room by myself. When I was hitting my sister during fights (and who didn’t). I wasn’t sent to bed without supper. Because I was hitting my sister and because I drew a tank in my writing book (horrors!), the staff told me not to allow me to watch TV at ALL and the TV stayed off for me for the rest of the 80s, until I was grown. I am now obsessed with 70s and 80s movies and TV shows. They have the aura of the “Forbidden Fruit” The staff were afraid that having me watch “Batman” was too violent. Not the recent Batman movies. Batman as in Adam West. Do you know ANYONE who takes that show seriously. The professional staff caring for me were in terror that this show would turn me into a psychopath. Today, kids with bonafide emotional problems and or physical disabilities can be locked in isolation for say, slouching in their seat.
I didn’t mentiion all this to make you feel guilty. I live with regular thoughts of killing myself. If you deal with these feelings, then whatever caused is “serious”. The feelings are not a weakness or a character flaw. Able-bodied people with these thoughts shouldn’t be treated as “cowards” for “wimping out” And there is help out there for your situation, even with your parents “throwing you out”. II am not merely talking of psychiatric help, but help for kids in trouble. II know what it is like to come from a broken family, but many disabled teens are being abused and cannot leave because they need their father’s help to get down the stairs and out of the house. I was in that position myself. My father was a gifted builder and could have built a ramp years ago, but did not because building a ramp would have allowed him to control me less. It is hard to stand up to the parents you are fighting with, but it is even more frightening when you are reliant on them to bathe you and dress you and scary when standing up to them could mean an nursing home. And abuse shelters tend not to have wheelchair ramps. Everywhere I go I have to deal with stairs and if I get past those, past people’s prejudice. And worst of all, MANY PEOPLE FEEL THAT IT IS BETTER TO KILL DISABLED PEOPLE OR ALLOW THEM TO KILL THEMSELVES than to give them psychiatric help and/or civil rights. A month ago, I tried to kill myself in the ER. Not only did they not intervene, they left an object with me that would have made killing myself EASIER. Then told me when I didn’t try again that I wasn’t desperate enough. Two weeks later, someone on-;ine was afraid for my safety and called the police and paramedics to bring me to the hospital. They handed me my file that said the psych ward was full and that the resident didn’t want to meet with me. I had been escorted to the hospital as a threat to myself and/or others. No one tried to stop me from leaving and I could have been easily subdued. By the time someone noticed I was gone, I was far enough away that they had to send an ambulance. The paramedic asked if everything was all right. I said yes and they left.

I am NOT a right-to-die activist. I WANTED psychiatric help. I still do. I think of death and dying constantly. But when I seek help, I get silence, rudeness or worse. The staff even left me with the means to kill myself.And many other people have told me: “Unlike ‘normal” people with suicidal thoghts, you have a valid reason for suicide.” Remarks like these are a disservice to “normal” people with suicidal thoughts and they are a disservice to me and people with a handicap. I am resolved for now to fight on, but no suicide helpline, no mental hospital will give me psychiatric care. And I feel pretty sure that at least one jerk on here is going to tell me to kill myself and not burden society anymore. And yet my disability has taught me to stand up for other oppressed people and for people who suffer. For troubled kids especially, because when one’s parents are abusive, it is often worse than having no parents at all.

I think of suicide all the time and it’s not because I don’t “think about how it will affect friends or family.” Many of my friends are drifting away probably because they don’t know what to tell me. Before that one friend had the courage to tell me this, I thought it was because I was alienating them. I have no idea what my family feels about me now, but they will not even acknowledge that they abused me. At best, they think they acted “in my interests”, without asking my opnion on the matter.

I am willing to look up resources to help you out. Even with your parents “throwing you out”, you are still young. You may see nothing but pain in your future and hardship, but there are people willing to help you, really help you. I am just the first and don’t count me out because I am crippled. Much of my reason for my despair comes from people expecting little or nothing of me and using my wheelchair as an excuse to ostracize me or abuse me. When Japan had that earthquake, I sent more money than many people with their healthy bodies and more money. And I did it knowing full well that Japan is further behind in disabled rights than North America. I did it knowing many of its’ people would see me in my wheelchair and spit on me in the street. And I am not sorry I did it either, because one day I will have the lasr laugh.

I know you have it hard, but I have it much harder than you. I am sticking it out. It will not end the thoughts of suicide, but I am willing to stick it out and I am willing to help you or anyone else and Yes I CAN HELP. I can understand the anguish suicidal thoughts can cause and the suffering PEOPLE DELIBERATELY INFLICT on someone already in the most pain imaginable. And I won’t bash you if you decide not to stick it out. But it iwould be such a bloody waste to die at seventeen. You see the agony, but you don’t KNOW suicide will end the misery. Everything in you may be telling you that but that “everything” could be an illusion and if you die and find out it made matters WORSE, you would have no means of correcing that mistake.

I would appreciate not being called a hypocrite for thinking of suicide often. I have used every ounce of will[power to rid myself of them.