Everybody has a story.

For some reason it occurred to me this evening that I’ve never told anyone my story. Ever. So now it’s time to. I guess I need to start at the very beginning. Apologies; conciseness isn’t my thing.

It was fall of 2008. I was a senior in high school. I was on top of the world, and I had no idea.

I had a boyfriend. It wasn’t anything serious, but I really liked him. More than any guy I’d ever dated. My friends and I had just had the most amazing summer -we’d discovered the fun that alcohol could bring us. I had a best friend who I could spend days on end with and we’d never get sick of each other. I’d just gotten my license and a car. I had a job I loved because I worked with my friends. School always came pretty easily to me, but I had a major case of senioritis. My best friend Elli and I would skip school and hang out all day. We’d go in late and write ourselves notes. We’d get drunk before homeroom. Put simply, I just didn’t give a fuck anymore. I didn’t know how to juggle all the things in my life, but I was so happy. Unfortunately I was being extremely self destructive, and the happiness didn’t last. And the higher up you are, the worse the fall is.

In December my wonderful boyfriend dumped me, and that was the beginning of everything. He never said it, but I know it was because he didn’t approve of the person who I was turning into. Looking back, I would have dumped me too. Hindsight is 20-20, I suppose. I was being a terrible girlfriend. All I cared about was myself and the next enjoyably self-destructive act I would get myself into. From that day in December it was straight downhill.

Over the next few weeks, as I began to piece together why my relationship had ended, I realized several things: First, I really was becoming a different person, and when I took a step back I didn’t like this new girl. Second, I was alienating all my friends who didn’t like to drink or smoke. Third, I had thrown away a really great guy. I was really upset by these things and I turned to a close friend. He just so happened to be Elli’s ex-boyfriend. They didn’t talk anymore, but we still did. Often. He would stay up with me for hours, talking about everything and nothing. He helped me through a lot of long nights. I’d liked him in the past – we’d even had flings before he dated Elli – but it was during this time that I started to really fall for him. Hard. And then just a few days before New Years I slept with him. Lost my virginity to him. That’s when it really got bad.

Of course I had to tell Elli. I don’t think I physically could have kept it a secret. I’ll tell you right now that she never forgave me for it. But in those first weeks, things were horrible. I didn’t know how to go from spending every waking second with her to having a panic attack when I saw her. Because that’s what happened. I had to leave class because I began shaking, felt a tightening in my chest, and couldn’t breathe properly. She had emotional issues herself, and she was constantly beating it into my head that it was all my fault. It wasn’t and I know that now, but I believed her at the time. Other friends of our began to take sides. I knew that anything I said would be repeated back to her eventually. I couldn’t trust anyone anymore. Not even myself. Meanwhile, the boy who I’d slept with was initially supportive of me. He’d ask me how I was doing and did I need anything. But eventually he stopped. He wanted nothing to do with me. And that hurt just as much.

I struggled through January, all the while wondering what I’d done to deserve this. Every day was harder than the one before it. I felt like I’d fallen into a hole, and I had no willpower to get out of it. On January 27th I went to work. Another very good friend of mine was a hostess with me, and she wasn’t speaking to me for reasons I no longer remember. I pretended not to care, but it was a long evening. When I left work I’d barely gotten to my car when I got a call from Elli. I don’t remember the details of that conversation anymore, but she was livid. She told me that I was a waste of a friendship, and she called me a whore among many other things. Those are the two that have stuck with me all this time. Everything that had happened up until that point was already more than I could handle, and hearing her say those things put me over the edge. Everybody has a breaking point, and I guess I’d reached mine.

I don’t remember driving home from work, but I remember forming a plan through the haze in my head. I told my parents I was sleeping at somebody’s house. Getting out of my house for the night was never difficult. I had a bottle of vodka and a bottle of rum in the trunk of my car. The most important plan was for me to get as far away as possible. Then I was going to get extremely drunk. And then, if I didn’t manage to drink enough to kill myself, I was going to drive off the road, a bridge, anything. I guess I thought I’d figure that out when I got there, but at that moment I just needed to drive. So I did.

It wasn’t a very good plan, but mind you, I wasn’t thinking rationally. Suicide had been on my mind for a while by now, but I hadn’t gotten as far as really making a plan. The bottles were on the floor of the passenger seat. I kept telling myself to drink, but couldn’t seem to move my hands from the steering wheel. I made it to New York – over three hours away – before I realized I wasn’t going to go through with it.

Those three hours cleared my head. It was like, the more physical distance I put between myself and my problems, the smaller they seemed. I didn’t feel better, just better enough to not want to kill myself. It was as if I was standing on the edge of a building and had taken one step back. I got home at eight in the morning and slept for days. I wasn’t out of the woods. I thought about suicide every single day for months. I thought about ways to do it. I looked for good places to drive off the road. I thought about who would care, and who wouldn’t. The second list always seemed longer. I walked around like a zombie for months, wondering why the fuck nobody ever asked me what was wrong with me. Couldn’t they see I was drowning?

Gradually things got better. I think I kind of realized nobody was going to help me, and I may as well start helping myself. By the time I graduated high school (a day I honestly didn’t think I’d live to see) I’d learned to pick my friends. I cut a lot of people out of my life, and I built a wall around myself that is still there. I never got completely “better.” And I never told anybody about it.

I still think about suicide. Frequently. It’s not something I want to do at this particular moment, but I know how fast things can change. Maybe next month I will. Honestly, I wish I could do it in a way that would make it look accidental. I think that’s what’s always stopped me. I’m supposed to be the happy girl. I’m the one who does everything right. Nobody knows about the emotional scars. Nobody knows how deep they are. And unhealthy though it may be, I want to preserve that image of me. I don’t want people to know how fucked up I am. I want to kill myself, but I don’t want anybody else to ever know that. Not even after it’s done.