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The truth is bittersweet.
Jan. 13th, 2011 01:49 pmThis user icon is a decade old now. I took it not long after I started dying my hair. I would like to dye my hair again, but I can't justify the cost given how short I keep it these days. Maybe.
I think this particular day is hitting me hard because of the cold. It's cold, and clouded outside. Thank all the gods above and below it isn't snowing, because I don't think I could handle that with any grace. The cold air is enough to waken the memories.
Part of me feels very strange writing about this. Some wounds never fully heal, like Frodo's or Harry Potter or any of my dark heroes of stories. This one may never heal for me. I can still remember standing in the dusting of snow, feeling as if I was falling up into the sky. The cold of the window sill where I set the can of soda, the swallowed handfuls of pills, the abandoned note, turning up that Kraftwerk cd I never, ever listened to again, stuffing that copy of The Crow under my pillow (I've never been able to read it or get rid of it)... I remember an EMT trying to turn down the music, someone asking me if I wrote a note, screaming.
Sometimes I think I know why I tried to kill myself. Sometimes I don't. For a person so paralyzed by the concept of death, it is a hard thing to answer. At the time, I was living in a horrendous situation and no adults in my life were listening. Someone else I knew shot himself a few months previously and my psychotic teacher asked me one day in the classroom "So when are you going to shoot yourself Amanda?" Of all the casual cruelties of that year, that one remained firmly fixed in my memory. I remember how hot it was at the memorial and how acorns fell on us during the service. So many other things are lost, a result of the bizarre over-medication forced on me by adults who felt the entire problem was my willfulness. I almost failed math that year because I could not hold the formulas in my head. There are gaps, a blackness. While the scans at the hospital ruled out any significant brain damage, I've always been a little convinced that something was broken in the overdose, during those days unconscious.
I overdosed on a bottle of Zoloft, along with a handful of painkillers. It took me an entire can of soda to swallow all of the pills. For years afterward I won't even take something for a headache because of the scar in my throat from the tube and the ghostly sense memory of swallowing them over and over. Having my tonsils taken out and the intervening years has lessened that, but sometimes I still choke on an ibuprofen and I feel this intense fear far out of proportion to the moment.
When I overdosed, I was sixteen years old. I have lived almost that many years since. The suicide and the ripples it made in my life defined a lot of my world, a lot of what came next. The further I move away from it, the more I tell myself that it matters less. The truth though is that it changed everything and nothing of today would be here if it hadn't happened. The truth is bittersweet.
I think this particular day is hitting me hard because of the cold. It's cold, and clouded outside. Thank all the gods above and below it isn't snowing, because I don't think I could handle that with any grace. The cold air is enough to waken the memories.
Part of me feels very strange writing about this. Some wounds never fully heal, like Frodo's or Harry Potter or any of my dark heroes of stories. This one may never heal for me. I can still remember standing in the dusting of snow, feeling as if I was falling up into the sky. The cold of the window sill where I set the can of soda, the swallowed handfuls of pills, the abandoned note, turning up that Kraftwerk cd I never, ever listened to again, stuffing that copy of The Crow under my pillow (I've never been able to read it or get rid of it)... I remember an EMT trying to turn down the music, someone asking me if I wrote a note, screaming.
Sometimes I think I know why I tried to kill myself. Sometimes I don't. For a person so paralyzed by the concept of death, it is a hard thing to answer. At the time, I was living in a horrendous situation and no adults in my life were listening. Someone else I knew shot himself a few months previously and my psychotic teacher asked me one day in the classroom "So when are you going to shoot yourself Amanda?" Of all the casual cruelties of that year, that one remained firmly fixed in my memory. I remember how hot it was at the memorial and how acorns fell on us during the service. So many other things are lost, a result of the bizarre over-medication forced on me by adults who felt the entire problem was my willfulness. I almost failed math that year because I could not hold the formulas in my head. There are gaps, a blackness. While the scans at the hospital ruled out any significant brain damage, I've always been a little convinced that something was broken in the overdose, during those days unconscious.
I overdosed on a bottle of Zoloft, along with a handful of painkillers. It took me an entire can of soda to swallow all of the pills. For years afterward I won't even take something for a headache because of the scar in my throat from the tube and the ghostly sense memory of swallowing them over and over. Having my tonsils taken out and the intervening years has lessened that, but sometimes I still choke on an ibuprofen and I feel this intense fear far out of proportion to the moment.
When I overdosed, I was sixteen years old. I have lived almost that many years since. The suicide and the ripples it made in my life defined a lot of my world, a lot of what came next. The further I move away from it, the more I tell myself that it matters less. The truth though is that it changed everything and nothing of today would be here if it hadn't happened. The truth is bittersweet.