When I was younger I tried to kill myself.
I know people say things like, ‘you don’t try to kill yourself, you either do it or you don’t.’ Meaning, of course, that if you somehow botch it or don’t go through with it, that you didn’t really want to kill yourself. That you really only wanted attention.
But I really had every intention of dying when I took those pills. Of falling asleep and never waking up again; Not in this world anyway.
So why not get a gun, the naysayers argue. Hard to screw up shooting yourself. Or why not hang yourself? That’s usually a sure-fire way to say goodbye. Why take a whole thing of over-the-counter sleeping pills? Surely you must have know that wouldn’t work. Surely you just wanted to make a dramatic gesture. Wave your little hand to the world and scream ‘Hey, look over here everybody! She’s calling out for help! Pay attention!’ Attention must be paid…
And when you do it and you end up in the hospital answering questions like: “Why did you take that many pills? Were you really tired? Or was there another reason?” When you end up having to be escorted to the restroom by a nurse intern and have to pee with the door open so that they can make sure you don’t try to do further harm to yourself, When you have to sober up and drink the charcoal and face the reality of what you’ve done, the shame of what you’ve done, the horror of what you’ve done…Well. I can tell you quite honestly that I had had every intention of killing myself. Of falling asleep and never waking up—not in this world anyway.
I had not intended, in any way, shape, or form, to be here to deal with the aftermath of my actions. The fall out.
I had never in a million years expected a quiet ambulance ride from the emergency room to the psychiatric hospital. Never could have imagined having to say goodbye to my parents as I prepared, quite against my will, to spend an undetermined amount of my time in a closed ward. With a catatonic roommate. And no sharp objects. And crazy people wandering the linoleum, muttering to themselves or weeping or screaming or throwing chairs.
Was I crying out for attention when I took those over-the-counter pills and lay my head down for a little nap? No. If it makes the naysayers more comfortable to think that, then, well, who am I to argue? But I bought those pills one day when things were getting overwhelming. I bought them and I held on to them. They comforted me, somehow, just knowing that they were tucked away in the back of a desk drawer. Knowing that they were ready when I was.
It was like I’d gone into CVS and purchased myself a sure-fire escape route if the road got too bumpy. If the path got too hard. If it all became too much, well, then I could just go to my drawer, pull out the free ticket and tell the conductor: Thanks, it’s been fun, but this is my stop.
And you know I took them in a state of severe agitation. There’d been a fight. I think. A break up. Probably. And I was simply done trying to pick up pieces or hold things together. I was tired. Funnily, not in the way the Emergency Room Nurse had meant when she asked why I’d taken so many sleeping pills, not in that way of course, but yes. I was. I was so very tired. Tired of being myself. Tired of the life I was living or expected to live. Tired of hating myself and regretting my choices. Tired of not knowing the answers and feeling like I’d never know the goddamn answers. Bone tired. Weary, even.
So I swallowed those little pills one by one. I’d never been great at swallowing pills. My Mum used to put my aspirin in applesauce for me as a kid. I swallowed them down one by one and with every pill I took I swear I felt calmer and calmer. Felt a peace dripping down over me. Felt a measure of comfort. A feeling that I had finally done the right thing.
‘It won’t be long now’, my inner self seemed to say. I would lay down to rest in just a little bit and all the drama would finally cease. And I could let go. Just. Let. Go.
So I lay me down, a favorite movie playing on the tv, a favorite pillow clutched close, and I waited for sleep to come. I was all cried out by this point. And ready.
And while I waited, my eyelids getting impossibly heavy, the space between breaths getting longer by the minute, while I drifted off to sleep on the mattress on the floor that we still own today---
I saw my dead relatives.
Now, I don’t know if this sort of thing happens because of movie clichés or not. If we expect to be confronted with our departed loved ones because of what pop culture has taught us, or, if art imitates life and cliché has cropped up because this happens universally. Either way, as my heartbeat slowed I saw my passed loved ones.
I remember, in particular, the wrinkled, craggy old face of my grandmother. Her thick-lensed glasses, her over-sized woolen sweater, her short, permed hairdo.
She didn’t speak. I got no verbal advice from the beyond. Nothing was said to me. She simply looked at me and she looked so very saddened. So deeply disappointed.
I remember being filled with remorse. And Guilt. And Shame. I saw my dead Uncle, the one who’d died a missionary priest in Brazil, and he, too, looked somber, though peaceful, and I wondered, in a sudden panic, if all my catholic teachings had been right. I worried, quite out of the blue, about getting sent to Hell.
And My body struggled against the steadily deepening slumber. Struggled to wake up. It was that feeling of sleep paralysis: Awake but unable to move a muscle.
I remember the effort, the supreme effort it took me to finally move air past my vocal chords and over my tongue and through my lips. And I remember the sound, so feeble and hopeless. I wanted to scream, was working hard to holler, and all that manifested was a kittenish mewl. This engendered a fresh wave of terror, the inability to call for help. So I tried hard again, feeling sapped and unequal to the challenge, fueled only by sheer panic.
The second call was louder than the first, but by no means strong or full bodied. But something in it, something in that desperate little cry, caught his attention and brought him running from the next room.
I don’t remember the details, really, from there. I remember his panic when he saw me, when he heard my slurred confession, when he assessed my jelly-limbed state, my heavy lids, my drooping head. I remember his indecision. Wanting to call an ambulance, my begging him to call my mother instead.
It was awful.
He got me outside, where I retched in the driveway, puking up some of the pills, but mostly dry heaving from the terror. I didn’t want his household to know what was wrong. I didn’t want anyone to know.
And when my mother came—I’d called her out of work—she was livid. I mean, I’ve never seen her angrier. Furious with me. And, it’s peculiar, isn’t it, the things you remember and the things you don’t? But I distinctly remember her telling me that I’d better hope I lived, because if I died she was going to destroy my rose garden.
Incidentally, I’ve never had the love of roses that I once had. It seems likely to me that this incident has more to do with it than the pests and root rot and leaf spotting.
Anyway. It happened. And she tells me, once I’m settled in at the hospital, she tells me that she now has to go home. “Your father will have to be told.” She leveled.
I can’t express to you the cold, clanging dread I felt in that moment. It was a good thing I was being watched, because I probably would have found a way to complete the aborted venture one way or another.
And it was real.
I remember bursting into tears when my father arrived at the ER sometime later. Bursting into tears and saying ‘Daddy’, which is not a term I’d used for him in years and years. And He was kinder than I’d ever believed was possible. Kinder, but somewhat dismissive. As though I hadn’t meant it, really. As if I’d been foolish and over-dramatic, but would get over my emotional state soon enough.
I had to drink charcoal. Quite literally, liquid charcoal. And I had to be checked into that facility. And afterward I had to go to a shrink and take pills and try to get back into the routine of living. The routine I thought I’d never have to do again.
I meant to kill myself that afternoon. I intended to die, lost my nerve, and now I exist still. I persist. Most days I am grateful for life. Or many days anyway.
But I’ve never stopped revising my exit strategy. And that’s the cold-clammy truth of it. Instead of over-the-counter sleeping pills, which, I’ve learned, are designed to make you vomit if you take too many, instead of that next time will be more sure-fire. And I calculate it. And hone it. And shape it.
And this is not healthy, I am sure.
And it is lonely. Because, with whom can one share these sorts of aspirations?
So let the naysayers have their say. But know this: I very often regret no going through with it. Failing at my attempt on my life. Screwing up, chickening out, and not seeing it through.
And this has nothing whatever to do with attention, because until very recently, only a very small handful of people even knew about this period of my life. Just the four of us involved. Then, several years later, when a friend was in trouble, I told him too.
Only recently have I decided to embrace this period as part of my story. Part of my voice. Part of who I am. And share it. Because, well, that’s what having a voice and a perspective is all about, isn’t it?
When I was younger I tried to kill myself. And sometimes wish I’d gotten it right.
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