It Got Better

I tried to kill myself. Twice. Within the same year. And I’m starting on such a jarring note because I want you, the reader, to know that this is exactly what this article is about. My experience. I’m not claiming to be a mental health expert, I haven’t even ever done something as simple as taken a psychology class. It’s just that recently I’ve been struggling with my anxiety more and more as time progresses and I figure it’s best to write it all out before I explode. 

I was 13, which arguably isn’t the best time in anyone’s life, but I can safely say I wasn’t just “sad” or “moody.” My anxiety (still years away from any diagnosis) had brought me into a spiral of anger and sadness that had led me to 2 AM on my bathroom floor, writing a letter thanking the handful of people I really did love for trying their best. 

I waited. My letter was written, and I had lost any and all tears months before. I recalled my seemingly irreparable “relationship” with my mother, the endless bullying I faced in school, and most importantly, how little anyone cared. Even me. I would try to talk to someone about it, but as soon as I did it just felt hopeless. On both ends. I can’t recall what led me to put my letter in the drawer and go to bed that night but it was not quite as powerful as what led me to write a second draft not seven months later.

My home life had dissolved into my mother and I only exchanging a maximum of three sentences per day, awkward at best and angry at worst. My classmates had progressed from teasing me to fabricating hateful stories about me that got everyone, friends or not, to completely turn their backs on me because of words I never said. I didn’t know which was worse—school was always bad but home had the aspect of the unknown. 

I sat at my desk, and when I tell you I tried everything, I mean everything. I wrote this time not to everyone I had loved, but about everyone I had loved. I poured every last happy memory I could bring myself to recall onto pages and pages of lined paper, but I still couldn’t remember how to feel happy. I had felt it, sure, I’m not a sociopath. I was simply so empty that I had no recollection of what it meant to be full. Every day was just waiting to go home and escape the seemingly endless cruelty of my classmates, and when I got home I had no one to turn to. I couldn’t even relax in my sleep; I woke up every night (sometimes multiple times a night) to a panic attack that I didn’t even know was a panic attack. 

I played my favorite songs. I put on my favorite dress. I went downstairs and ate my favorite foods. Nothing worked. I sat in front of my mirror and smiled at myself but all I was, and at the time thought I ever could be, was scared and sad and angry. 

I reached for the bottle of Advil I had sitting on my desk and poured just enough into a cup. I grabbed it, along with my cup of water I had gotten earlier, and I dumped the pills in my mouth. They were in my mouth. I was that close when I heard my dad walking down the hall. My relationship with my mom sucked, but I’ve always been much closer with my dad. Problem was, he was always out of town on business trips, so the times he was home were sufficiently rare. I knew I could call him, but I also knew that it would only lead to him calling my mom and it would just be a mess.

Nonetheless, something in my mind changed. I spit the pills back in the cup and quickly hid them in my desk. I could have swallowed them, but in that split second I spit them out. My dad had no idea what was going on, much less that he saved my life that day. I wasn’t happy, not then and not for a very long time. I wasn’t hopeful or sentimental or any of that crap either. I just had a gut feeling, and boy, was that gut feeling right. 

It took two years for me to feel okay. In that time, I got diagnosed with anxiety, saw counselors, and just started over. It wasn’t an immediate fix. It took plenty of time to find new friends and rediscover what I love. But I eventually did, and I’m okay. I’m not constantly happy all the time. I still struggle with my anxiety and after dealing with the stress of constant meanness in my direction from my “friends”, I have a hard time being genuine. I have a lot of feelings and many people would say I wear my heart on my sleeve, but I can’t name any one friend (although the people I choose to surround myself with now are so much kinder and more caring than my old classmates made me think was even possible) who really knows me. I don’t even know me. As I said, after completely losing myself I didn’t just ~magically~ become fixed overnight. I’m still in the process of getting better, and there for sure are bad days. Days that are bad for no specific reason. I just wake up and can’t seem to be happy. I go about my day in a daze, and unfortunately I sometimes (okay, a lot of times) take this out on people I really care about. So it’s still rough, and still something I have to work through. 

But I am okay. I do have the bad days, but I also have the good days, the just-fine days, and the days that have slowly helped me realize why I couldn’t bring myself do it either time. The days when I realize I’ve made a new close friend or my hard work on a project finally pays off. Those rare moments when I’m driving with my windows down listening to my old favorite songs and feeling happy, even though I’m all alone. And so I push through the bad. I can confidently say that those two nights were the worst of my life, and if I could push through then, I sure can now. The only difference is, now I know it’ll be worth it. I know what it’s like to have nothing to live for and then suddenly be given a world I couldn’t imagine leaving.