Suicide Part 2: Why Me?

Suicide Part 2: Why Me?

🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič – @specialdaddy

I was a sad kid. There is not a lot more I can add to that. I did not feel loved like a kid should feel loved. I was the mother hen of 4 kids (I say 4 because my youngest brother did not live with me) and I carried that weight on my shoulder for a long, long time. I still blame things on myself after I flew the nest. I blame myself for things that maybe I could have helped them avoid. I know that is just dumb but I cannot help what my brain sometimes leads me to believe. I can’t figure out why my one brother hates me so much and all I can think is that he feels that I left the family. I get that but I had to, for my mental health.

Mom

My mom meant well but she tended to show my brother more attention and love because he needed it. He had a lot more aggression towards her in his younger years and she helped and corralled him through. My sisters were super close in age and my mom was really their mom. They may not tend to agree but she treated them like her kids and I spent a lot of my early teenage years stuck at home babysitting them. I don’t mean to sound like an asshole but I was stuck. When my brother got to go off and hang out with friends because my mom could never put the responsibility of watching my sisters on him, I was made to stay home and watch them. Grandma and Grandpa and Mom took turns going out on the weekends. Some weekends my mom would have Saturday and some she would have Friday. I still don’t understand why they felt they had to do that but they did. A lot of times, even if a parental figure was home, I still would have to stay home and be with my sisters because they wanted to sleep with me and would not go to sleep without me. No joke, I would cry and cry but in the end, I would not win.

Sometimes though, I was allowed to have friends over.  I would be so happy about it except for when we would have to get up early to deliver newspapers in the cold wind and rain. Then, I would just be embarrassed that that was what a sleepover with me entailed. My mom would have my friends do it with us and I wished that they wouldn’t because it bothered me. Looking back, some of my friends enjoyed it, but I didn’t see that at the time. I often felt that was the first and the last sleepover they would want to have with me.

Oftentimes, when it was my mom’s turn to be home and if it was a Saturday she would be cranky because she was hungover. I remember cringing when she would yell, I

hated it. And sometimes when mom was home she would make us watch the stupidest shit that we didn’t want to watch like Xena warrior princess or Renegade.  Now, in my mom’s defense, she has fond memories of us watching TGIF together, I thought she hated it but I stand corrected. So I guess that makes me feel a little bit better now. Sometimes she would still be hungover from the night before and make me take care of my sisters. It sucked. I don’t recommend giving your kids these memories. Now, don’t get me wrong, there were some good memories but when you’re a depressed kid you tend to dwell on the bad.

Other Parent

The other side of the parent coin was very dull. I did not know my dad. He was in contact at one point in time but I could not tell you what years. I want to say it was during middle school but I can’t be certain. I know I wrote about it in another post ( Life without a Dad), but I honestly don’t know. It bothered me a lot. I didn’t talk about it with most because my mom and grandparents acted like they didn’t know much about him.   I could tell my mom hated talking about it. I constantly wore that heavy weight of

“Why am I not good enough,” “Even my dad wants nothing to do with me” and so on.

It may not have been the truth but in my clouded-over, sad eyes that is all I could see. I think more than anything I was hoping one day he would swoop in and be this perfect father that would want to take care of me and show me my worth. That never happened and the hole grew deeper. It is something I am still working on now. Something I am learning is that it can never truly be repaired. However, I can fill the hole with the love I have from my own family that loves and needs me. My heart hurts for any child that has to do life without a parent, it just isn’t right. Even those that were adopted but have amazing adoptive parents will always wonder why. If you don’t, I am truly amazed at your level of self-worth and maturity.

The Aftermath

Fast forward a few years and you have a teen that is self-conscious and doesn’t get asked to do as much because she wasn’t allowed to hang out before. On top of the previous, the times I was asked I was very restricted and not allowed to do a lot. I could never figure out if my mom was trying to protect me, if she just didn’t want me to go out so I could help with my sisters or she just didn’t like me. Is it rational? No. But it is just how this young, insecure teen felt.

Photo by Kamila Maciejewska on Uns

I started hanging out with the wrong person or two and started drinking and riding my bike home at a young age. A certain friend of mine adored me but in a dysfunctional kinda way. It’s like we thrived off of each other’s miserableness. We obsessed over it and began to go downhill together. It was a thrill for us, as messed up as that may seem. We would drink cheap shots of vodka in the white, red and blue plastic bottle in her upstairs attic room while we burned incense and listened to extremely depressing music like Stabbing Westward or NIN. We would sit there and get drunk talking about all of the things we wanted in life.  We felt we would probably never have these things, like certain boys or bodies or whatever was bringing us down.

We continued to take it to another level the more we hung out. Soon it wasn’t just vodka and depressing music but it was also OUIJA boards and ghost hunting and smoking pot in downtown Willoughby. I used to look back on these days with nostalgia, as odd as that sounds. It was like a very depressing yet deep time. We spent all of our time together, as best friends do. Some of the people that were my best friends (and actually still are) did not know me well at that time like they used to.  I’m pretty sure they saw me going down this spiral but didn’t know what to do to help me.

This friend of mine would wear bandages on her wrists at times but one could never know if she was crying out for attention or making up stories. A lot of people just did not know. We would both talk about killing ourselves and how we would do it. She claimed those bandages were from something she had written on her wrists from a gravestone. She had woken up to slash marks all over the writing she had done. One cannot know. She was someone you did not mess with and she was someone you wanted on your good side. She was on mine for a good while. We grew apart when I went off to college and tried to reconnect on Facebook, but a short while after she unfriended me.  It is what it is.

The Decision

One day I could not take it anymore. I was done and I know for a fact now that a lot of it had to do with all of that all of the negative energy that I had surrounded myself with.  The constant spiral with my friend did not help my well-being. I remember being in my room, as I often was. Alone and crying, listening to my music really loud. Dwelling on a boyfriend that I had been obsessing over. In all honesty, he was my first boyfriend and my first kiss, I thought I loved him and he was the one. He just went on with his life as nothing had happened. It was a short-lived love, but in my eyes, it meant the world to me. Makes me so sad when I think back on that extremely unconfident girl that thought this boy was all she needed in her life, being a mom that will make damn sure her daughter knows she is worth so much more. I don’t know if I was writing my dark and self-deprecating poetry that day or if I was staring at magazines wishing I looked like those perfect models I saw in Delias. I just know that I took something that was blunt (thank God) and decide to start sawing at my wrists. I did not do it right…I did not know what I was doing but I was trying very hard.

Reflection

Photo by Jean Gerber on Unsplash

As I reflect back, I can see that my Mom did truly love me, she was just young and not sure how to raise a teen like me that needed extra love and attention. We had good moments that I will never forget. Like the time that first boyfriend broke up with me and she held me while I cried and understood the pain. She even wrote my book report for me that I was supposed to do that night but I couldn’t. I was too sad and done. It was our little secret. I could continue to share over the years the ways we have grown together and I have learned to appreciate that her and I are just different and that is ok. I even told my mom to be on the lookout for a post coming soon about how proud I am of the person she has become. But for now, I will share my story, the raw, the real and the unwavering. This memory and more are all part of my healing and I am working through it.

Depression is the worst. Depression followed by a suicide attempt is the ultimate low of lows. I have been there. Please know you do not have to do this alone. There are many out there that have been in this same spot and want to help you. Reach out. As hard as it is. You are worth it.

As always, thank you for following my story.

~Amanda

#suicideattempt #depression #suicide #whyme #teensuicide