I don’t have many memories where I remember what I was wearing, but I vividly recall absentmindedly counting the rows on my favorite pair of red corduroys in an alcove of my school when, all of sudden, I found myself fantasizing about ways to end my twelve-year-old life.
I don’t know what it was about that day in particular; all I know is that from that day forward, I was drowning in suicidal thinking. When most girls my age were becoming boy crazy and excited about school dances, I had a different sort of dance partner: the Beast that is suicidality.
I have often wondered what I could go back and change to have prevented my rendezvous with the Beast. Would it have mattered if I had been more popular? If I’d dressed more fashionably? If I hadn’t struggled so with math? (After all, I’m not entirely kidding when I say I went to law school because there was no math on the LSAT!) If I had been better at school sports? If I hadn’t gone to such a challenging school with upwards of three hours of homework per night?
No matter how I frame the question, I’m always left with the same conclusion: middle school was not the beginning of my problems. I kept in touch with my first-grade teacher, and she told me I was one of the most depressed children she ever taught.
Life has not been entirely kind to me, but the root cause of my suicidality is probably not the result of not winning any popularity contests in the sixth grade. Truth be told, I didn’t realize I was in any way unusual for being constantly depressed and mired in suicidality until I was a third-year in law school and anorexic.
My two roommates and close friends told me I had to go see a therapist. When I went, at their urging, the very kind psychologist asked me a series of questions, and when he was finished, he told me I had clinical depression. I remember looking at him, dumbfounded: there was a name for how I felt? And more importantly, not everybody felt like me??
That was a huge turning point for me. While I was yet to hit rock bottom, I at least realized that if there was a name to the way I felt, and if it was not “normal” (note: I HATE the word normal – I often say normal is just a setting on a washing machine!), then maybe, just maybe, there was a world out there with less pain and misery. And thus began my search for mental health.
It would take two suicide attempts and thirty-five years, but the Beast has been tolerable for these past several years. Now, that doesn’t mean that I am free of the Beast, but what it does mean is that it’s been easier to put him back in his cage and walk away.
And I don’t feel like I’m a fraud, writing a blog urging those suffering from suicidality to choose life. What I do know is that if I’d succeeded the times I tried to kill myself, I wouldn’t be sitting here watching the four most incredible dogs snore happily in their sleep – I would’ve missed getting to know all of them, and that means something, given how special they are to me.
I find more to live for as time goes on, and I’m profoundly grateful for that – it makes all the incredibly hard work, tears, and frustration worth it, and if I can do this, then so can you!
P.S. I mentioned my dogs will make regular appearances ... Meet Sabrina!
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