my life has not been all fun and games. this part was pretty painful but also when i became positive that i have a purpose here in this life whether i know what it is or not. i may never know my purpose even if i fulfill it. One thing is for sure, God will NOT take me until it is my time, regardless of my attempts in the past to check out. if you havn't guessed yet "a permanent solution to a temporary problem" refers to suicide. as i mentioned in my post entitled 'They are coming to take me away' i was too familiar way too young with thoughts of ending my life and being institutionalized for trying.
i have found journals i kept at 9 years old where i was talking about how badly i wanted to die. from the beginning i figured death would end the pain. i do not remember how i came to that conclusion but i was 26 when i finally came to terms with the fact that taking my life was not a choice. initially i wanted to escape the abuse i was forced to endure and it just stayed in my mind as an out if things got too painful.
I was 15 years old the first time i attempted suicide. i do not remember my thought process leading up to me eating a bottle of tylonol and drinking a handle of vodka. i really thought it was going to kill me so i called a friend and told her what i did, she told my dad. an ambulance came, i was transported to the er where they pumped my stomach and fed me charcoal to get the crap out of my system. that attempt was a fail. when i was released from the nut house 2 weeks later i tried again, this time whiskey and a bottle of the medication they sent me home with. again it was no tragic near death experience and i went back to the nut house for a couple weeks. this time when i was discharged i had to go back to my mom because my dad didn't know how to help me or keep me safe so he packed up my shit and i didn't see him again for a while (i was 30 before i forgave him). my mom picked me up, we grabbed the stuff my dad threw in trash bags and left at my grandmother's house, and she drove me back to brockton.
i was just hopelessly suffering in what seemed like endless unbearable pain. and now i was fixated on succeeding at the great escape. i wanted to die, not get attention or help. i am unsure where i got the pills or even the idea, but a few days after coming home to my mom's house i overdosed again. this time i took 2 bottles of gel caplet sleeping pills. 64 pills that would dissolve immediately so there would be no charcoal or stomach pumping. but when the pills started to hit me i became scared, i was dying, definitely dead if i didn't tell anyone since everyone in the house was asleep, or i could tell someone and it still might be too late. i called out to my mom, she came in my room worried, all i said was "i did it again". she asked me what i took and i showed her the empty bottles. next thing i know we were all in the car on our way to brockton hospital, me, mom, my step-dad and my sister kerri. they wanted to take the car instead of calling 911 since it was a pretty rough city with lots going on, the ambulance would have taken 20 minutes, i didn't have 20 minutes. the next thing i remember is mom throwing the empty bottles at the registration lady in the er who, upon realizing what i had taken, got me on a stretcher right away. thats when i looked at my right arm, my skin was yellow, like literally, and i could see every purple vein. i didn't know what was happening and that is when everything went black. my mom said they started asking questions like what was my name but as i was about to answer my body went into a full blown grand mall seizure. not sure about the rest of that night. i was in the icu for a week after being paddled back to life, then the cardiac unit for a week cuz i really jacked up my heart. they all said i was a miracle and thank god i was alive. once i was medically cleared it was back to the nut house for me. it was then that i made a deliberate decision to avoid feelings by using drugs and alcohol since i couldn't kill myself right and just kept ending up locked up in institutions. that worked for a long time.
fast forward to 2002, i was 23 years old. i was living on the edge, being careless with my life, i would say i was invincible since no matter how close i came to death i always survived. the only one i could relate to in my family was my brother, jon, who was 8 years older than me. that's another story, we didn't grow up living together and he spent most of his life (from 13 years old on...) in and out of jails or juvenile homes. everyone in the family agreed, we were the black sheep, the apples that fell a bit too far from the tree. We were the only two out of 5 siblings who had done hard drugs, been to jail and we had the same bad tempers, anger issues, neither of us would hesitate to physically fight someone, anyone. We had different circumstances, but both of us tormented by the abuse we had experienced. and we both had similar reactions to our emotions.
my brother and i hadn't been very close for many years, but in 2002 he began to reach out to me. i was trying to stay sober for the first time and had a few months put together. my brother placed a $20 bet on the kentucky derby that year, the trifecta or something. he bet on the underdog as he did and that year the horse that everyone was sure was going to win had broken his leg (this is my fuzzy recolection) and the underdog won! my brother was so excited thinking he won like a thousand dollars he went running out of the house down to the bar. he missed the end of the race, where the next three (two?) horses came in the order he had bet they would. when he got to the bar he found out he had won 203k! long story short, i don't think the money killed him, i think he felt hopeless when he realized the money couldn't fill that inner void. in one of his first interviews about his big win, when asked what he will do with his money, he laughed and said he had already given a considerable donation to the casino. he called me constantly, he would offer me money if i would go to the casino with him, but i was trying so hard to stay sober i was scared i would drink so i didn't end up going. a month and a half after he won the money he only had 50k left, after insane amounts of drugs and drinking and gambling, he hung himself. i had been worried about him but honestly thought he would hurt himself drunk driving. but in that moment i was not baffled like the rest of my family, just an empathy and sadness, i know how it feels to want to escape the pain that bad. ultimately all agreed that he was now at peace and free from his pain.
two months after that i made a couple brilliant (not) choices, like going back to my ex right after he got out of prison....might tell that story another time. i relapsed, i do not remember with who or where due to a concussion. i was in an accident. there were two witnesses in different cars who both stated that i was going about 80mph down a street in brockton that is not really safe to even drive 40mph. they both said i just jerked my wheel to the left, hit a curb and smashed into a stone wall without ever hitting the breaks. i was not wearing a seatbelt but had an airbag. from what i hear it took about 2 1/2 hours to get me out of the car with the jaws of life. that was my chevy beretta, first car i bought with my own money and my dad said when he went to get my belongings out of the car he could barely squeeze his hand between the front and back seat. I broke a bunch of ribs and snapped my leg in half. at one point a friend that came to the hospital to visit me said my head was the size of a pumpkin. and everyone around me in the hospital was saying thank god im alive, thank god i'm still here. and i remember feeling so resentful, what happened to being at peace? how come jon got to go? how come thank god he's not suffering but i have to stay????
fast forward a few years and a few more traumatic events to 2005. i was really depressed about the life circumstances i had created for myself. i decided to give it one last shot at checking out. i had been drinking mad dog 20/20 that morning and don't remember buying the pills. I found myself in a $500 shitbox chevy nova i had bought, in a dunkin donuts parking lot on the edge of brockton. this time 3 bottles of gel caplet pills. 96 pills. they said i was a miracle for surviving two bottles, i knew this was it. i took the pills in handfuls. it was february, i was about to shut my car off when i realized i didn't need to worry about running out of gas (wasn't going to be needing it) so i decided to die comfortably, with the heat and music blasting. i had just bought that car and didn't know the extent of the issues with it. i don't remember another thing until months after that moment.
this part is what i have been told. i had gone into grand maul seizures, my body tensed and stretched out, i began laying on the gas which caused the frayed alternator belt to snap creating a loud noise. bystanders came running to help. ultimately the emts put an emergency airway in me in the parking lot before they could even transport me to the hospital, where i stayed on life support for the next five days.
i know it was scary for my family and they thought i had done it that time. i don't know what i think of near death experiences but i will tell you i remember one thing from that time in the hospital, a dream maybe. i saw my fav grammy d and my brother, i went to jon to embrace him, no one was moving their lips but grammy and jon held their arms out so i could not hug them and just kept saying not yet, it is not your time.
since then i have gained a different understanding of death. still not sure what i think about life, but this is my journey, i need to fulfill my purpose. at first i was angry that god refused to take me, but after all of the deliberate and what should have been successful attempts to take my life, i have finally accepted, truly accepted, i will go exactly when it is my time, not a minute before.
ultimately there has always been a desire for me to escape. no matter how i have chosen to run. suicide, however, is no longer something i will waste my time trying to accomplish. first of all nothing is permanent, not the good, not the bad, second....god won't take me anyway. Nosir, honestly, i have chosen to embrace this experience called life, since it may be the only one i have and i want to make the best of it.
Suicide is no joke! If you are feeling hopeless reach out! What grows in the dark dies in the light ❤️
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