How it feels to be a suicide survivor

My innocence was taken from me when I was fifteen. My first love abused me and broke my heart. He tore me to pieces. I expected my next boyfriend, my best friend, to save me, but he didn’t believe the stories. I had been sexually, physically, and emotionally tattered, and the one person I really trusted turned away.

I sunk into a deep depression, losing my worth, losing my sanity. I didn’t see value in myself. I thought of myself as no one, nothing. I thought I was insignificant. I spent days in bed sleeping or keeping my nose in a book. I lived through the novels I read. I pushed my family away, yelling at them and blaming them for what was happening to me. I once kicked a hole in the wall and screamed bloody murder. This was my downfall. I crumbled and fell apart.
I lost who I was. I was no longer the outgoing, sweet, friendly and funny girl I had once been. The girl I used to be withered and sunk to the bottom of the pit. It felt like she was gone. I didn’t see her. All I saw were tears, loneliness, sadness, darkness, and death.

When I was sixteen, I planned my suicide attempt. I told myself I would just be gone and the pain would leave me. I thought no one would miss me anyway. I didn’t feel like there was anything to live for. I saw no value in whom I was as a person and believed the world would have been a better place without me. What did I have to offer the world?

I waited until the middle of the night to go down to the kitchen to grab a knife. I pressed the knife taut to my left wrist and took a deep breath. My heart raced and pumped through my chest. But I sat still. I stared at the knife’s glare for a minute or two. Then in my disgust, I threw it across the tile floor. I hugged my knees and bowed my head as I cried like I never had before. I sat in the bathtub for a while, just crying, breathing, realizing what I had done.

After my suicide attempt, I prayed and prayed so hard to be saved. I wanted to be redeemed. I wanted to look death in the eyes and say, “I’m not worthless.” Although the days to come were rough, having been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, depression, and an anxiety disorder, I felt relieved that my feelings weren’t out of the blue and all in my head. For the past four years, I’ve been medicated on a high dose of Prozac, despite the dangers of its side effects.

I tried to get off of my medications a few different times. I was ashamed of feeling like the drug was my crutch. I thought if I could be off my medication, I would feel normal like everyone else. But that didn’t happen. And slowly I realized that I wasn’t ever going to be “normal.” I always felt different and now I knew why.

Some days I feel out of control. Some days I sit and cry for a long time. Some days I feel great and I’m happier than ever. There are many times when I don’t know if I’ll get through the day without hurting myself.

But I know that I have to fight. It’s not all about me anymore. I know now that my family would miss me. They would fall to pieces. My friends would feel a gaping hole from my passing. My boyfriend would have the space next to him in his bed never filled by me again. I wouldn’t exist anymore, only to be remembered as “that girl who killed herself.”

No, I have to fight because I don’t want anyone to feel as alone as I felt. I don’t want anyone to feel so alienated by a mental disorder like I was. The stigma attached to mental illness needs to be annihilated. It’s time for it to end. I’m here because I can see the real beauty in life through my friends and family. Because of my journey, my biggest goal in life is to inspire other people to stay strong. Being strong doesn’t have to mean never having bad days. Those days happen all the time.

Real strength is fighting back by living and breathing. Sharing stories. Inspiring people. And because of my inner strength and those that I love, I’m still fighting today. Whether you’re a suicide survivor, a cancer survivor, or a survivor of the struggles of everyday life, you can always find true hope and fight.

I Owe a Debt

When you tell someone that you are depressed, most people associate it with this overly dramatic idea that you live in a world constantly covered by dark and brooding storm clouds. If they see you laughing with your friends, they will say, “You can’t be depressed! You were laughing and looked happy!”

What people who have never experienced depression don’t understand is that it’s not that every single day is completely terrible – we don’t walk around with permanent frowns on our faces nor cringe at any glimmer of happiness. There can be days where I laugh and periods of time where things are going fine.

But it’s just this overarching dissatisfaction with life that makes me depressed.

I have been dealing with depression for about three years now. I have gotten to the point where I simply feel flat. I don’t really get the point of life - I think it is very pointless. When hearing those statements, naturally that raises a few red flags. And I bet you started to wonder if I were suicidal? Well you would be correct!

(And I know it is concerning to hear me talk about suicide so nonchalantly. But as I previously mentioned, a side effect of depression is feeling flat and apathetic, so I hope you can try to see where I’m coming from. You don’t have to agree, but just try to see it from my perspective.)

So I’ve stated that I’m suicidal. But let me clarify that. I’m suicidal in the sense that I think life is kind of pointless so I really wouldn’t care if I died tomorrow. Having said that, I would never actually commit the actual act. I want to. But I never would. Why you may ask?

Well honestly I care too much about others to do that. When thinking of the effect that my death would have on my family and friends, I recognize how selfish it would be to put them through that pain. I realize that I have control over whether or not they experience pain and sorrow on my behalf, so why would I choose for them to suffer.

But the biggest thing that keeps me fighting is a quote from my favorite book, The Fault In Our Stars, which states, “I owed a debt to everybody who didn’t get to be a person anymore.” There are people in this world who die from cancer or illnesses that can’t be cured. There are people who die fighting for our country and people who die at the hands of a drunk driver. When I think about taking my own life, I think that I have a duty to the people who wanted to live but couldn’t live anymore. They didn’t have a say in the matter. But I do. And I owe it to them to keep battling.

The Illness is Not Me, and it is Not You Either

I’ve never really liked the rain, it makes me feel cold and sick. What is always worse is when you get stuck in the pouring rain, the thunder is loud, and you are without an umbrella. That’s how my brain feels, everything is loud, cold, raining, and there’s nothing that I can do about it. At least that’s what I thought.

I’ve always known that I wasn’t happy. I grew up with an addict and alcoholic of a father, who was verbally and physically abusive. He would threaten to hurt if we ever got in the way of anything he depended on. Yet, we were demanded to look like the perfect family because we lived in a town of only 300 and everyone would know if there was a crack in the portrait.

When my mother left him, that’s when things really started to go downhill. My biological father turned what used to be the vegetable and fruit drawers to his beer drawers, there was liquor in his coffee mugs in the morning, and the kids at school would tell me about how he was getting in bar fights over the weekend. I was only ten.

When I was sexually assaulted for the first time at 13, it was on a school bus full of kids and nobody helped me. Rather instead, I heard the laughs and I saw their smiles. These laughs still haunt me to this day. It took me over a year to tell someone and over three years to finally tell my mother.

I didn’t tell anyone how I was feeling, I was stuck in this dark rainstorm wanting to die, only holding on because I didn’t want to hurt my mom. I wouldn’t hug others, my personal relationships suffered, and I was a hollow body.

I was sexually assaulted again in high school, I still hear his telling me not to ever say anything but that I liked it. I was a “good girl”. My first year of college my boyfriend of only a couple weeks raped me, again called the good girl.

I became a shell again, my grades plummeted and I struggled with all of my personal relationships. My relationship with my mother deteriorated. My old insomnia came back, as did my anorexia, panic attacks, and another suicide attempt.

It wasn’t until I was taken off of my old medication that my first real feeling of recovery came to me, a combination of merely just clouding up my thoughts in the midst of the storm. I was switched to a different anti-depressant and sleep aid while going cold turkey from what I had been on.

The medication switch when it finally hit me was not the only thing that saved me. The new medication served as an umbrella for me to hold in a way. The love and support that I could finally feel once covered from a freezing rain of PTSD memories I couldn’t control warmed me from the cold I felt inside.  The words of encouragement gave me the strength to keep walking.

Sexual assault, rape, depression, panic disorder, PTSD, and mental health illness can happen to anyone. It effects Frogs around you and you may not know it because it’s not something on the outside, it’s on the in. Those who are struggling lose many friends to the fact that others just don’t understand or don’t want to be friends with someone with these kinds of issues.

But if you take anything away from what I have written, it’s that you are not alone and you are not defective. I have spent too many days in my young life thinking that there is something wrong with me. I have an illness, but the illness is not me and it’s not you either. The Counseling Center has inside and outside resources for help. Here’s to recovery, love and support, and go Frogs.

Losing My Best Friend

My best friend died by suicide sophomore year. Not only did I not know she was even battling depression, but I could barely even grasp the fact that I would no longer see her. I wish I had known the signs so that I could have asked the questions that would allow her to talk and me to listen. I was devastated when I found out, and I didn’t even know how to react. I’ll admit there were some very low points for me in the weeks and months following her death. I leaned on my friends and family, particularly my sister. I began to talk about her more openly, and realized that the more I reached out, the more positivity and support I received. I started running and becoming more active, maybe in part because I knew she liked being active, and in part to give myself time to reflect. I became more involved on campus and pushed myself into new groups and situations. Although I wish she was still here, I know I cannot change what happened. I wish I had talked to her that day, and at times I've felt guilty for not seeing her that day. But the more I talk about her and remember who she was, the more strength I gain. Even though she is gone, I sometimes see her in others. Oftentimes I see her in myself.