If I Stay?

It’s hard for me to even type this out, to be honest. I’m a very private person, one who rarely lets people in on the darker aspects of my life.

All my life, I have felt worthless, pathetic, weak. People have abused, violated, and abandoned me without any regard. And I let them because I am too weak to do anything about it or unable to.

Suicide crosses my mind at least nine times every week. It infests my mind when I’m not even paying attention and always makes sure to make its presence loud and clear when my situations are bleak. My chest constantly feels heavy except for brief reprieves when certain people help me to feel relief.

I grew up in an abusive household until I was around the age of seven, ruled by my heavy-handed father and my self-chosen ignorant mother. Bruises were the norm. Tears were forbidden and rewarded with more bruises. Fingers were crawling and scissors were snipping. And acceptance was definitely scarcely given, though desperately craved.

Finally, though, everything changed when the neighbors worked up enough courage to anonymously tip of the police. We were free and temporarily living in a shelter after that, but free. Just when I was finally free from his hands and heinous touches, I was thrust into another cage.

My mother has micromanaged me my entire life, however, it has increased as I have gotten older. Growing up, even out of my abusive childhood, the abuse continued on but in a different form. I was introduced to more physical abuse–though not quite as drastic as before–, but this time it was perpetrated by my mother. If she was not ignoring everything, she was using violence to solve whatever she deemed to be a problem. The violent reactions, thankfully though, decreased as I aged.

I am an obedient young woman–despite my starkly different beliefs, however that doesn’t matter. I have no rights in her house–no privacy, I’m not allowed to get a job, or drive. She is always going through my things and then gets angry when I become affronted or mildly irritated. She’s never able to admit she’s wrong. But the worst thing to me is her blatant dismissal of me as a child and as an older adolescent. When I was a child she ignored my cries and pleas for help as my father beat me until I was heavily bruised, she ignored the fact that–as a family–we needed to leave or go to the police. She ignored the fact that I told her that my father constantly touched me inappropriately and, when it had escalated to rape, she denied that anything had ever happen. She spent majority of my childhood, post That-House, brainwashing me into believing that nothing had happened and that I was still a virgin. She failed me as a mother. She still fails me as a mother. And I find it so undeniably frustrating that I still love her and want her to accept me. She’ll praise me, say that she loves me, but the moment that something doesn’t go exactly how she envisioned it, she instantly places her hands over her ears and eyes and ignores whatever is going on.

I am an atheist. I wish with everything in me that I could believe in a God or an afterlife, but I don’t. I have tried and it is just something that doesn’t resonate with me. To me, there will be no relief because I will be dead; however, there will also be no more pain because I will be dead.  And that scares me. After that final drip of blood or stutter of the heart, that will be it. Life will be over. Fini.

But.

I don’t want that. Just because I am suicidal doesn’t mean that I can’t imagine a future for myself, that I don’t have goals that I want to accomplish in life. I’m seventeen and graduation is next week; a milestone in my life is just around the corner. I’m on a full scholarship to a college that I’m ecstatic to attend, I’ll be away from my mother for close to a year, and I’ll be pursuing Criminal Psychology until my heart is content. I have a life ahead of me. I have dreams. I want to get my PhD in Criminal Psychology and become a Lead Behavioral Analyst at the CDC. I want to have a boy. I want to see my seven godchildren grow up and have children of their own. I want to find someone who will love me, dark past and thoughts and all, for who I am. Most of all, though, my biggest dream is to be happy. I want that so badly that it hurts to think about it.

I will admit that I was quite close to committing suicide when I stumbled upon this site while looking for a reason (any, any reason) to not do it. The knife was shaking in my hand but I put it down and, as I read the “Read this First” page, feathered my fingers over the graduation tassel hanging from my window.

I want to end everything, but I also–hypocritically–want to live. Making the choice is a daily struggle that I have lived with, but I don’t want to struggle anymore. I want to be free. I want to go through my life, happy with myself, and without a hole constantly eating away at my chest and filling my heart with lead.

The most important and perplexing question, though, is: If I choose to stay, how do I do this?