All my life I’ve struggled against the pain. I’ve wondered what was wrong with me. I’ve carried the demon around for so long I almost forget that other people don’t. I first felt truly suicidal when I was 8 years old. I hated life so much. I don’t think I realized people liked and loved me because I felt so worthless on the inside. We moved when I was 10, and I thought geography would cure me. The pain only got worse with puberty. I even wrote a story about committing suicide, but the school never addressed it.
In 9th grade, a friend died in a car wreck. My emotions were confusing: the jealousy trumped the despair, I am ashamed to admit. I overdosed later that year. Accidental, but I came out of my coma three days later furious. How could I survive? Yet my parents refused to get me psychiatric help. As always, suck it up and deal with it! So I did, but I never forgot how freeing that brief reprieve from life was. I never will.
Fast forward 6 years. High school and college were a nightmare. To cope with the pain, shame, and worthlessness, I picked up an addiction to alcohol and diet pills as well as anorexia. I slapped on a smile and was the best little girl in the world. I didn’t know what was wrong, but I knew I was a time bomb, complete with alcohol poisoning, mixed drug intoxication, and malnutrition. And other bad habits.
After college, I took my self-destruction to a new level. I had my first mixed episode and started getting panic attacks. I became so anorexic I had a stroke and nearly a heart attack. I went into the hospital for the first time for suicidality, alcoholism, and anorexia. While there I learned to cut. A year and three hospitalizations a later, I was sober and nourished but in so much pain I could barely function.
I embraced my underlying death wish, and I renewed my subscription to Crazy Land by going back to anorexia, alcohol, cutting, and pills. I had two incidents of mixed drug intoxication overdoses, and both times cursed myself for surviving. I ended up in the ER a different time for heart arrhythmia, and again cursed myself. I got so depressed, I couldn’t get any lower without dying and finally realized something. If strokes, alcohol poisoning, overdoses, and starvation weren’t enough to kill me, death wasn’t meant to be.
So, I settled for life. And I got a degree to teach children with emotional and behavioral disorders. Why? Because if anyone understands pain and insanity, I do. If something I do helps a teen who is fighting to stay afloat, my purpose is served. I have a purpose. It keeps me alive today. It brings me joy.
But the pain lingers. The shame, guilt, failure, angst…it lingers on. I am 34, married, professionally successful, well-medicated, sober, and abstinent from eating disorders, but I still hurt. I still panic. I still cut; it is my secret coping mechanism. I teach high school, and I see the teenaged girls with cuts on their arms. I tell them it gets better. I am a huge hypocrite. I laugh about being weird and crazy. People don’t realize I’m not exaggerating. It’s not really that funny.
I read another story where someone said they always knew they will someday die of suicide. I suspect this to be true for me. Right now? Today? No. The bipolar monster is laying low. I have a purpose that I feel strongly about: working with the younger versions of me. But I know that someday the pain will finally get the best of me… But for now I am ok.
1 comment
After so much has happened to you in life, you kind of turned your life around but it’s an example of how things that become part of us are hard to shake off, depression and self loathing continue beneath the surface. You say you believe that some day you’ll commiting suicide, as time goes by I hope that it’ll seem less likely, you want to care and help others and that’s a great quality to have. I hope the purpose you have found continues to benefit others and give them the understanding that no one gave you at that age.