My abbreviated (yet wholly true) story

Names have been removed and some details simplified to avoid a breach of my own sense of security and confidentiality of others.

Have you ever held a knife against your skin, but been too cowardly to cut? Have you ever knocked yourself out, in the hope that you don’t wake up? Depression and suicide. Two of the coldest, most clinical words I know for feelings that no amount of writing or talking can ever describe. This is my rather abbreviated story.

I was born into a Christian family, raised to believe that there was a God somewhere out there, yet everywhere at the same time, who loves me, and has a greater purpose for me. And now, and for most of my life, I more or less believed that. But faith isn’t a straight path, and it has many twists and turns, and ‘shortcuts’ that end up leading you to the road of despair.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been the official ‘loser’, for various reasons. Even when I was five, and everyone in my class was friends with everyone, I was a reject. Smarter than most of the kids two years older than me, my peers all thought I was weird. Heck, maybe I was. I know I am today. My first four years of school weren’t much fun. Every single lunchtime was spent walking the school courtyard, watching the others play tag, or handball, or just laughing and having fun. But that wasn’t me, no matter how hard I tried to belong to that world.

It was when I was nine that I finally managed to make my first friend. He, like me, was wandering alone, with his head down, not really going anywhere. Somehow, my little, withdrawn, self with minimal self-esteem managed to pluck up the courage to say “Hello?”, in my tiny, sqeaky, little-kid voice. And then, for the first time at school, someone genuinely smiled at me. I had someone to play with, even if it was just the two of us.

From there, my school life started to pick up. I started becoming more confident in class, although I was still afraid to even answer a single question. Why? I was laughed at every time I got something wrong. “Ooooh, ******’s wrong!”. Every night, those words echoed through my ears, and I gave up on even talking. Outside of the world of lessons, though, I was enjoying myself a lot more. My friend gave me a smile when I thought I was no longer able to smile. But then, at the end of our sixth year, he transferred to another school, and I was starting intermediate school alone. I suppose I should have been used to that feeling, but after two years of laughter, it was difficult to adjust.

My family life wasn’t much greater than my school life. I had an older brother, who thought I was ‘uncool’. He was right, but it still hurt when he refused to even speak to me. My younger sister got all the attention from my parents, which left me, the middle child, isolated and alone, even when I was with my family. They didn’t really notice me, which didn’t help at all in later life.

So I went into my seventh year at school, feeling more unwanted than ever. The teachers knew I was intelligent, they could see so in my work (according to my school reports), but (also according to my school reports) “****** lacks confidence, and struggles to work or communicate with peers”. I tried my best to fit in, and, little by little, I became less of a misfit, and more of the kid on the edge of the circle, desperately hanging on to the clinger-ons. I could be seen playing soccer on the school field with the other kids, but due to my lack of skill, it was no help with my social awkwardness.

In my eigth year, in what I think was a desperate bid to utilise the potential they supposedly saw in me, the head teachers gave me responsibility. I became a student leader, and Head Canteen Monitor. Every Tuesday, I was focussed on my duties, which I guess made me a more self-confident individual. At the end of the year, my report was looking a lot better than the previous year’s. I had a fair few co-curricular activities listed, such as “Mathex, Student Leader, Head Canteen Monitor, Senior Orchestra and Rainy-Day Monitor”. Looking back, I think that was what made my peers see me as such a geek, but it was these activities which helped me to become a happier person.

Then came 2011. The year of change, which saw me slump to an all-time low. Early February, my great-grandmother died. It was when I was with her, in the holidays, that I felt the most wanted. Despite her age, she was energetic, warm and friendly. When she died, it felt like a huge hole had been created in my life. It was there I started to drift from my Christian faith. Up until then, people had seemed to be impressed with my knowledge of the Bible stories and verses. But that was the problem. I could recite any given memory verse, or tell you the message of the parable of the Progidal Son, but my knowledge and relationship with God himself was lacking. So when I got struck down, it was Him I got angry at, when in fact He had never done anything wrong.

It was also the year I started high school. Going into another school year, yet again alone. I never really fitted in. My only friends were people I never showed my true self to. And, because of that, I never had any proper friendships. I just drifted, getting by, but never enjoying life. Slowly, yet steadily, I sunk into a place where I never wanted to be. The spiral slide of depression. I became an almost silent person, and no-one even noticed. That didn’t help my state of mind at all.

Around my fourteenth birthday, I began to harm myself. I was only in a minor state of self-harming depression, so the degree of harm I undertook was far less severe than that of other people. But it got worse. I took to knocking myself out in order to stop myself doing anything worse. A month later, I was knocking myself out in the hope that I wouldn’t wake up. And no-one noticed a thing. Finally, at the start of the school holidays, I had had enough. My family was out; my sister and my parents at another birthday party. I hadn’t been to a party for years. My brother, I can’t remember where. I was alone.

I sat down at my desk, and wrote my ‘final’ goodbye. I then held the knife I took from the kitchen against my skin. The cold steel pressed against my skin for ten minutes. The serrated edge of the knife drew blood, but only pinpricks in my flesh. I just couldn’t do it. I was a coward, through and through. I only hated myself more and more for not being able to go through with it. I curled up in a ball and cried myself to sleep, for the thousandth time wishing it would be the last time I closed my eyes. The note lay, forgotten, on my desk.