Here’s What Happened On The Night I Tried To Kill Myself

It’s very strange. I wish I could predict the nights when I’d remember old me and tell myself to go to sleep earlier. Everyone has bad days and good days I suppose, but when it’s a bad night. Nothing can make my brain stop traveling through itself. Something changed. I wish I had some idea what it was. Suddenly I am ready to talk about it and by talking about it, I don’t mean in overview. I wanted to kill myself. But more importantly, I tried to end my life because suddenly the person I saw when I looked at myself in the mirror, wasn’t the person I had been looking at for 17 years.

The last thing I can remember is being downstairs, and getting called into the living room once again for the dreaded lecture. I had an internet curfew and a phone curfew. I wasn’t supposed to be calling or texting after 11 o’clock. I had battled with my parents and disobeyed this rule numerous times, but something about this time was different. I was numb. As I sat diagonal from my dad and he asked me if I knew the following numbers 814-657-XXXX, I thought to myself. I hate them. I quit. This is never going to get any better. I am 17-years-old and I can’t even text off of my own phone when I want. How about 814-254-XXXX, I knew the procedure that was going to follow the numbers, he was making a point and immediately afterwards was going to tell me that I was a disappointment and that I once again betrayed them and lied to them. And who is, 814-758-XXXX, I ignored him and was still already trying to prepare my nerves for “Give me your phone, you are grounded. Once again.” Followed by the disapproving yet sympathetic look from my mom as she stood over his shoulder. She always had this way of taking his side, but making sure to let me know that she felt bad.

What happened next though surprised even me. He took my phone, told me It was going to be shut off and who knows when I would get it back. I have this terrible habit of getting the shakes either when I am extremely upset or I am very angry, and most often when I am nervous. I always starting trembling as I was getting lectured. What surprised me was that I was numb. I wasn’t shaking or making any movement at all.

It is at the time my dad said “Okay I’m done with you,” in an extremely monotone pitch that everything from my memory gets fuzzy.

I came up to my room. I remember that my body felt like it weighed twice what it should. As soon as I got to my room and shut the door, I began to be able to feel my heart beat through my chest. I felt light headed and angry. I wanted to hit something. believe I did hit the mirror once. The second my hand hit the glass every emotion in my body escaped at once. I felt rage. I felt sadness. I felt like a complete and utter, waste of space. I began to watch my life play like a slideshow in front of my eyes. I heard my parents telling me once again that I had disappointed them. I felt as thought there was never going to be any change in my life. That this grounding would never end. That a month, a week, even 3 days seemed like an impossible about to be in this house any longer.

At this point I had started to pace all over my room at a ridiculous speed. I couldn’t even slow down my brain. I wanted to scream and cry all at the same time. But yet nothing was coming out. I never will know how long I was in my room from the time I left my fathers speech to the time he returned upstairs saying, “Get in the car”. It feels like an out of body experience. I do remember that I tried to work up the courage to strangle myself immediately after I stopped pacing finally. I did it so hard that I almost blacked out. My face went numb and my lips went purple. The worst part about it is that I was looking into the mirror the entire time. I remember my brain feeling like it was going to explode before I grew too weak and let go of the scarf that I had been holding onto my neck. When I got to the hospital the nurse had asked me about marks on my neck, and I told her that I hadn’t tried to do anything to my neck. I’m pretty sure to this day still my parents have no idea that she asked.

I remember taking the pills. Immediately afterwards is where my memory becomes the least clear. It feels like a dream. I also remember laying down to sleep because I felt helpless. I felt as thought I was just a ticking time bomb and all I wanted to do was escape. I remember hearing the phone ring. I knew who was going to be on the other end, because I had called and told my boyfriend that I did something stupid. I suppose this was my subconscious self-deciding that I didn’t want to die, a cry for help. What happened after, my parents storming upstairs and asking if I had really taken pills, the car ride to the hospital, getting put into a bed. I cannot remember any of it. I vaguely remember lying on the hospital bed, My neck started to hurt from staring so far to the right lying in the bed. My parents were sitting on my left and I couldn’t look at them. When one of them would walk into the room I never made eye contact.

I supposed I answered a million questions and said a ton of things. In my head I had wondered if they called my sisters or my family, I saw nurses in the hallway that I knew from around town and I wondered if they knew why I was in the hospital or if they would ask.

There are three things I remember most about being in the hospital.

First, I remember the nurse asking me if I had intentions of taking my life when I took the pills. I almost immediately and robotically, with my parents in the room, said, “No, I wasn’t trying to kill myself”. The reason I remember this moment precisely is because the entire time I spoke inside my head all I could hear was, “yes, and I wish it had taken more of them because it didn’t work.”

The second thing that I remember most about that night is the moment where my doctor came in and told my parents that I wouldn’t need my stomach pumped. The first thing my mom asked was, “So what you are saying is that we don’t know if she actually took the pills, it could have been for attention.” I almost started screaming as soon as the words left her mouth. My own mother was sitting in a hospital room with me hearing the words, “suicide attempt” and still thought that it was just a big trick on my part to get attention.

Lastly, I remember my dad. My dad is a very strong business man who I have never seen actually cry. The first time I looked at him in the hospital room was when the doctor asked my parents what they wanted to do, send me home or send me to the pysch ward. My dad looked at me and with the most pale expression and honest crack in his voice said, “Weslee, do you want to go home.” For the first words I spoke to them in hours I found myself starting to cry and I said, “Yes I want to go home.”