Seriously, Reader Discretion Advised

The following is part of a blog I wrote, about seven years ago, on Myspace. I originally wrote it for a different purpose entirely, but on this upcoming Sunday, April 20th, it will be the ten year anniversary of my suicide attempt. I will be writing a separate blog to mark that occasion, but I thought I would go ahead and share this, the story and some background, before then. It may be strange and awful to read, and it might just feel like too much personal information, and if so, please don't read it. But to me, it was (and is) a huge, life-altering event and I want to share it.

I'm not sharing it to be morbid- quite the opposite. I think it really, really shows just how far I have come.
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Saturday, April 7th, 2007

Okay. I'm about to show you probably one of the worst pics I've ever been in. It's me in 5th grade.

Ugh. I still cringe every time I see that. What a nerd, huh?

But 5th grade wasn't a great year for me. It wasn't as bad as 6th grade, but still bad. I was pretty depressed my 5th grade year. In 5th and 6th grade, I hallucinated a lot. A big part of my world was people other people could never see or hear. But I did. I dreamt about them all the time.. as time went on they got progressively worse. I remember one night, I dreamt that one of the people was standing beside me. I woke up, and she was standing beside me. She reached out and touched my shoulder and I felt it.

In 6th grade, I was suicidal.

I was looking around and I found this old daily journal we did for English. Flipping through it, you can see me sinking lower and lower.

This is the first page:

This is April 14th:

And I'll just type out a few other journal entries so you can see:

November 6th 2003

"There's nothing I desire more than being alone without other people. Alone is how I function best!"

November 18th 2003

-Write about your life at age 35.

"My life will probably be similar to most 35 year-olds. I'll get up at 7, go to work in a stuffy oppressive cubicle from 9 to 5, go home to my small apartment, heat up a TV dinner, and go to bed at 10. I will waste my life in this fashion. Anymore, most things are manufactured in other countries, so I'll be lucky to even have a job."

January 21st 2004

-Do you believe in miracles?

"No, I don't believe in miracles. People are on earth not because someone put us here and is watching over us, but because the conditions on this earth were somehow ideal for us. No one is helping us live, and someday we will all die and destruct. The sun will go out and we will freeze to death and starve. There are no miracles."

January 29th 2004

-Compare yourself to your favorite animal.

"My favorite animal is probably a turtle. I'm not as slow as some turtles, and not as fast as others. I'm not really green or brown. I don't have a shell, but I am very shy."

February 2nd 2004

-What kind of parent do you think you will be?

"How should I know? I certainly hope I won't be abusive. I probably won't even be a parent. When I consider what my parents went through... no."

February 19th 2004

-What do you worry about and why?

"I worry about a lot of things, big and small. For instance, if I have to give an oral report, of course I worry. But I also worry about things like when the sun burns out, the world will die and no one will live. I have bigger concerns, though."

February 26th 2004

-What are the biggest time wasters in your life?

"In my life? Life itself is a pure waste of time!"

February 27th 2004

-What are you thankful for today?

[blank]

April 14th 2004

-Is there life after death?

"God, I sure hope not. Once this life is over, I hope I don't have to endure anything else. Life sucks."

April 20th 2004

-What do you think your parents felt like at your age?

"I don't know and I don't care. Hopefully better than me."

Actually, April 20th was the day I tried to kill myself.

You hear people talk about planning it out. For weeks, even months ahead of time, they knew what day they were going to do it. I didn't really have the date planned out, but I knew how I was going to do it.

For months and months I traced over the veins in my wrists with pencils, pens, and my fingers. Some days when no one was watching, I'd take scissors or a knife or a razor and just lightly trace the veins, without pushing down very hard. I liked the feeling it gave me. I drew tons of pictures of people doing it. I thought about it all the time.

That year, we had an "integrated unit" of math and mythology, so that meant lots of little photocopied books with mythology stories in them. I liked to mess with the little cartoon characters. I'd take a red pen and carve lines and words into their skin, pretending it was mine. I'd gouge out their eyes and slit their throats. They would bleed from the mouth and every place I would cut them. I even showed these to some other people. My closest friends didn't say much about it, but I could tell they were a little worried. Most boys I showed the drawings to thought they were "awesome" and borrowed them to show their friends.

A teacher, Mr. Daniel, saw some once. It was on a trip down to a museum in Santa Fe or Albuquerque. On the long ride down, I was working on some. He asked to see them, and I let him. I didn't care. He was visibly bothered. 

"Are you seeing anyone about these?" he asked. I just laughed.

For all of my 5th grade year and most of my 6th, I never told anybody how bad I was feeling. Nobody.

But one day in February 2004, I was watching TV. One of those ads came on, featuring a student that had benefited from the state's lottery money. She said, "Hi, my name is Sarah and I work with depressed kids." Something just clicked and I started to cry and I couldn't stop. My mom was very confused, and since I was too choked up to tell her what was wrong, she told me to go take a shower, to see if it would calm me down. It didn't really, but I was able to tell her and my dad that I was depressed. Looking back I don't think I emphasized the "suicidal" part nearly as much as I should have.

My mom took me to see a doctor here in town. He prescribed me 10 mg of Prozac. Okay, to begin with, I think Prozac is a shitty drug. But I'll also tell you, at present, I take about 1060 mg of meds a day, so that measly 10 mg wasn't gonna do shit.

This is also where therapy came into the picture. My mom took me to see a therapist in Las Vegas, Judy. Well, maybe it was just because it was my first therapist,but I really disliked her. It was the first time somebody actually made me talk about how bad I was feeling, and I didn't like it.

By about the 2nd visit, she had  assessed that I was definitely at risk for hurting myself, so she wrote out a little "contract" on a sheet of paper. It said that I would not hurt myself unless I called her and talked to her first. I signed it and she made a copy. She gave me the original and told me to keep it- that it was important. I dunno, it was in the pocket of a pair of jeans. I haven't seen it since.

But on the 20th of April, I got to school. We always had homeroom first, and in my homeroom, we couldn't talk- we could read or draw (or sleep!) so that morning I started to draw. I wasn't paying much attention to what I was drawing, so when I sort of woke up and really looked at the picture, I saw it was a girl with a knife. Wearing the same clothes I was wearing that day. I smiled.

I then drew a figure next to the girl in the picture. It was lying down, beside a knife and a pool of blood. It was dead, and it was me. That's when I knew. I knew it was the day.

I hardly remember anything from that day of school, just an overwhelming feeling of relief.

When my mom came and picked me up that day, she could tell something was wrong. "Are you okay?" she asked a couple times. Every time she asked, I just smiled and told her I was fine.

When we got home, I waited until no one was in the room, and grabbed a knife from the kitchen. I had big pockets, so I stuck it in one, but I kept my hand on it. My mom came back in the room and invited me to stay downstairs and watch Oprah with her, like we often did, but I refused. She gave me a hug and I gave her a one-armed hug back, since my other hand was still on the knife. 

I went up to my room and closed the door. I sat down on my bed, holding the knife. I sat there for a few minutes. By then I was pretty much out of it. I started to trace the veins, like always. Then I started to push harder. The skin turned white from pressure, but the knife wasn't cutting. I did my best to make the knife work, but it was clear I had chosen a very, very dull one. I wasn't entirely with it, so I thought I would go back downstairs and grab a different one. I forgot about my mom. When I got downstairs, there she was. There was a split second when nobody moved, nobody spoke, nobody breathed. But then she ran over to me, pushing me into the kitchen, taking the knife from my hand and wrapping a towel around my wrist. We both sat down, rocking back and forth, and she asked over and over, "Why, Sarah? Why?"

And I couldn't answer her.

The cut wasn't awful so she drove me to the doctor's office. When the nurse asked me why I was there, I just showed her my wrist. "Why did you do that?!" she demanded.

I couldn't answer her.

The doctor had me checked into the hospital, mainly so I would be under 24 hour surveillance. They had me change into hospital dress, and sit in a bed in a room. I remember nurses coming in and bandaging up my arm, and the doctor coming back to check on me. I remember taking a shower, with someone checking on me every two minutes. 

One of the nurses there was the mother of one of the kids in my grade. She was very nice to me but then went home and told her kid all about it, and that's how the school found out.

That hospital was where some of the most awkward conversations of my life took place. What can you say to all your family when they come and visit you, there, for that reason?

The only non-family visitor I had was Mr. Daniel, my science teacher. We are still friends to this day.

I was in the hospital a few days. My family always tried to have someone with me at all times- my mom curled up in a chair; my dad stretched out on the floor.

After I got out of the hospital, I stayed home for a day or two. One of my closest friends called me:

"Hey!! What are you doing?" she asked cheerfully.

"Uhh, not too much... what about you?"

"Not much.. hey, I was wondering, do you have the date of the band concert?"

"No, I don't think so, sorry."

"Oh, that's okay, I was just wondering."

"Oh."

"Yeah... hey, I miss you at school."

"Yeah, sorry about that, I should be back pretty soon."

"Good! Good...." here there was a long silence. "There's been some crazy rumors going around about you."

"Oh yeah?" I did my best to sound light, uncaring.

"Yeah... somebody's been saying that you tried to kill yourself by slitting your wrists."

And then I had to tell one of my best friends in the whole world that the rumors were true; that I had tried to do that. That still hurts.

When I got back to school, I couldn't go anywhere without hearing:

"Where's your razor blade, Sarah?"

"Did you really try you hang yourself?"

"Did you really cut yourself 13 times?"

"What a freak."

I wore a wristband over it, but people still stared and asked to see it. My therapist, Judy, heard about it and sent us a refund. I got a new psychiatrist in Pueblo, who's only answer was to "Raise the Prozac!"

Then, I got a new therapist, Loanne. We got a long pretty well, SO much better than Judy and I.  She asked me to sign a contract, like Judy had done. I hesitated, then told her the truth: I didn't think I could. So she called my mom into the room and told us both that the best place for me, the safest place for me, was Parkview Medical Center, a mental hospital/rehab place for teens, and that's where I went.

To be admitted there, I had to be driven there in a police car after surrendering anything on my person considered sharp or dangerous. Once there, they have to push a button in order for the door to open for access into the building. They let me keep my clothes, but I  had to keep my shoes with laces outside in the hall at night when I wasn't wearing them. I had stuff for my pimples, but they kept it at the front desk because it was "too risky".

I had a roommate, Jessica, who was there for depression and eating disorders. We got released on the same day and she gave me some stickers. I still have them.

There were about 10 kids there while I was and we all got to know each other pretty well, because when you're in a place like that, basically all you do is talk. Talk about your issues, talk about theirs, talk about shared issues. If you don't like to talk about yourself, you're pretty much screwed.

I just HATED it there. I was scared and lonely and as unhappy as could be. I got out after a week because I did my best to convince my doctors I was cured and perfectly good to go. I would have said ANYTHING to get out.

But I really didn't feel any better. Not at all. I went back to school and it was hell. It was like everything was closing in again and it sucked.

Then! One day after school, my mom wanted to go see something. She had heard from someone that there was the tiniest, cutest puppy at the Animal Hospital. The puppy had been abandoned at birth, left to die. She made it, though. We went to see her. She was even smaller than I could have imagined, a potato-sized dog. She needed a home and I got to keep her. She saved my life.

We named her Otis, for no real reason- my sister, Elizabeth, suggested it and it just fit. I was in such a low place, I didn't have anything to live for. But then she came.

We had to feed her from a bottle every couple of hours. We had to help her to the the bathroom. We had to keep her warm and safe. She slept in a box by my bed and woke me up at about 6 am every morning with her crying. It was summer, but I didn't care. Not one bit.

I've had so many ups and downs, it's been crazy. They finally figured out that I'm bipolar. 7th grade was a pleasant surprise after 5th and 6th. I got even closer to my old friends and made new ones too. I started dying my hair. I joined an awesome band. 8th grade was pretty good too, but my Freshman year has been amazing. I'm really starting to feel happy with myself and my life.

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Truth be told, I've had quite a few ups and downs since then, but now I'm doing extremely well! Like I said, I will soon be writing another blog, celebrating the ten years it's been, but I just wanted to put this up first, for those of you who didn't know my story.

I know it was really long and not very cheerful but it's a huge part of my life and has helped shape the person I am today.

Thanks for reading!

Sarah (and Otis!)