The day I ALMOST DIED!!!

Sometimes when I look back at the day that I took almost  full bottle of pills.....shivers run up and down my arms.

Looking back I realize that I did not truly recognize that suicide ended everything....permanently. I don't think the truth or reality of that had really sunk into my mind. I just wanted the pain to stop right then and there, at THAT moment I felt I couldn't bare not one more ounce of internal, emotional pain. I didn't think about the consequences being a forever end to....me, or the pain it may have caused to my brothers....my only source of love.

I remember that day as if it were yesterday.....

I woke up with a weight on my whole body, as if I gained 40 pounds overnight. It was weighing me down, making me feel sluggish and tired and lacking any kind of joy or hope.

It was depression.

I carried it with me like an invisible weight.

No one saw it, no one tried to take it off of me, and my God was it heavy.

Sweet sixteen.

I thought of my friends and how special their parent made them feel when they turned 16....a beautiful party, a pretty dress, flowers, cake......love.

I didn't have that.

I asked my mother for one gift, for one act of love one tiny parcel of evidence that I was loved.

Today I turned 16.

Nothing unusual happened. No one said a word, I don't even think my mother remembered

"Mom, I'm sixteen."

"That's great, happy birthday," she says emotionlessly.

I try to push her lack of emotion out of my mind.

"Mom, there's something I would really like from you." My throat is hoarse as I speak and my heart pounds like a drum within my chest. I don't ask my mother for things, I have learned a long time ago that my job is to give and provide for her and expect nothing in return. But as I get older, I am less comfortable with this arrangement. I watch others, I watch very closely how people interact. I see their expressions, and I have become such a keen observer emotionally that at times I have learned to recognize the feelings behind their external image. I am an empath.

So I watch my mothers face, her lips pierced together. She looks at me as if I'm ridiculous and the request is absurd.

Nonetheless she walks over to me and leans over....making sure there is at least a foot of distance between us....she slaps my back a few times as if she's burping me.

"There...happy?"

And she walks into the kitchen to do the dishes.

I'm left standing there feeling as if I do not exist...I do not matter...I am nothing but an annoyance...I am unlovable....I hurt so much inside.

The depression that I carry around has gained weight and is harder for me to walk around with. Its summer time so I do not get a break from this black cloud that sits over my house. I can't go to school and there at least pretend to be happy. I can't go to school and hear a teacher compliment me for something....school is the only place I am noticed, it's the only place people adults say nice things to me.

I'm so lonely

Doesn't anyone see me.

Doesn't she care if I'm hurting

A few days go by and I do something that makes her angry.

She is doting over my brother almost in an exaggerated way, and I know inside that she is purposely trying to hurt me.

I stand there unable to look away at the gestures of love I've been denied my whole life. It's like a car wreck...you don't want to see it yet you can't help but look.

She looks over at me and her expression changes from soft to hard in a split second.

"Why are you standing there like that? What's your problem?"

I've been asked those questions for so many years....my normal response in the past was....."nothing." and then I would walk away with my back curved barely having the strength to hold my body upright.

But this time I'm angry. I'm tired of her games.

I'm tired of her vicious desire to hurt me. And so today I do not walk away like a coward.

"When I grow up I'm going to love ALL of my kids."

I say in a calm yet determined voice.

You would think I had cursed her out.....she flies to her feet and before I know it her hands have wrapped around my shirt and she slams me into the wall.

I'm taken by surprise and don't have time to react. My head hurts because the back part slammed into the wall and I'm just acknowledging that when the slap rips across my cheek. She's screaming now but honestly I can't seem to hear her....it's as if someone hit mute in my brain and I'm watching this from a distance.....she keeps slamming me back and forth and I see myself crying.

This goes on for a couple of minutes until my older brother walks through the door, see's what's going on and pulls her off of me. I am crying so hard and yet I'm mad at myself for just standing there and crying. I am now 3 inches taller than her and could have easily and with little effort pinned her to the ground.

But I didn't. Because somehow as awful as she is I feel a line of respect that I can not cross...even though she does.

I'm sent to my room

I hate my life. I hate myself.

And I hurt so bad.

It's there at that dark moment I decide to do something about the pain.

I walk into the bathroom....the only place I'm allowed outside of my bedroom. The medicine cabinet is full of different things, hydrogen peroxide, bandaids, Tylenol, visine, and then I see a pill container for my step father. The pills are huge and they are green.

I take 10 pills and walk into the bedroom.

I begin my suicide note...telling them they are better off without me, that I do nothing but cause problems, The tears fall silently but I'm ok now....because I have a solution, a plan.

I go back to the bathroom and take ten more.

I keep a tally on the suicide note so they know how many pills I took.

I continue this until I've taken at least 50.

I'm starting to feel strange.

My stomach hurts, my head is spinning and everything seems to be moving in slow motion.

My mother comes to the room, she doesn't notice the suicide note on the end table by my bed. She pulls me out of bed by my hair.

"We're taking the boys to the park," she says with evil dripping out of the corners of her mouth.

"I don't want to go. I want to sleep."

"Too bad. Get your shoes on you're coming."

"I don't feel good, I'm sick I just need to sleep."

"GET YOUR SHOES ON NOW" She shoves me in the direction of my closet.

Somehow I manage to get them on and walk to the car. But this emotion on top of me from the pills is now on top of the depression I carry around and I am so dizzy. The world has no gravity, I don't know where to place my next step as I walk and I trip and stumble until I find a tree where I sit and lean against it as the family spends quality time together at the playground.

I sit there....waiting....waiting for the pain to stop.

Waiting for it all to end.

The next two weeks I spend throwing up and hallucinating. I keep talking and my family keeps asking who am I talking to ....I thought they were talking to me...I'm hearing voices. I don't even realize its been two weeks when I finally wake up completely coherent.

Only to see my same four walls.

Only to feel the same depression trying to weigh me down in life.

I am alive.

And I realize that I am happy that I did not die, because another plan is forming in my mind. A better plan to end this all.

I am simply going to escape....run away....and carve out a better life for myself.