(Warning: This chapter concerns suicide and self harm)
August began and I was plunging head first into my final semester of school, my student teaching had begun. I would go to two different schools during that fall semester, to get a varied experience. I was terrified. Luckily, I had already gone through the worst thing imaginable! You might say I had a higher threshold for discomfort. I knew it would be hard. I had absolutely no blinders on about what I was entering into. It was still harder than I was prepared for.
My first mentor and I never established a clear idea of what our roles would be together. I had no plan, no idea of what would happen. After the first few days, they threw the figurative “keys” at me, that I was now in charge even though it didn’t seem like it. Things were stressful, I felt like an alien trying to keep up an act. Nothing I did ever seemed to be enough, a familiar feeling when becoming an actual teacher.
On a particularly stressful day, I let someone’s judgment and criticism pierce through what little stability I had left intact. After several months on autopilot depression, I snapped. In my car driving home, I remember my head and body felt numb. I felt my whole world caving in, everything I’d worked for, everything that was gone. What did anything matter anymore?
All I could think was that I was a failure, I had failed my dad. He’d be disappointed in me. I wanted it all to stop. I couldn’t handle any more disappointment, my whole year had been that. It never seemed to end. I knew clearly I wanted to die. All I could think was how wrong it had all been, how everything about my life was a wreckage of old hope. In that moment it was like tunnel vision of every blistering moment of the last nine months, all rushing at me. It felt like someone had cut my head off but I was somehow still driving.
Once I got home, completely alone, I tried to kill myself. Thankfully, I failed. The irony of it all, considering I felt a failure in my life, is not lost on me. In what could have been a hallucination, while trying to leave this planet, I genuinely heard my dad’s low voice, repeating my name. It sounded sad, stern, but mostly upset. Once coming back from whatever trance I had been in, I felt immediate and inexplicable regret.
I was in pain both mentally and physically. How would I be normal again after what I’d done? With a history of being a terrible liar, I had no choice but to tell Jon when he got home. There was no hiding it, especially with how I looked. Distraught, he tearfully questioned why he should trust me and why he shouldn’t have me committed. I told him my only honest answer, because “it was a mistake.”
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The idea of suicide to most of society is that: you’re selfish, a coward, a quitter and all the other cruel, stigmatizing things people like to declare. For me, I physically couldn’t handle one more moment of pain. My mind had blown a fuse after months of continuous agony, endless nightmares, and of not being able to find joy in anything- whatsoever. Imagine slicing open your thumb but it’s your entire body and it never improves after months and months of torture. If you haven’t experienced that, then count yourself lucky.
I wasn’t setting out to hurt anyone. I wasn’t quitting or rejecting the loved ones around me. Every moment of every day since my dad died felt like an exercise in stamina and courage. I had to keep living for everybody else even when I wasn’t sure what I was doing anymore. I owed them and the whole world to be strong and to keep going. I was trying to be like everyone else around me but with no real plan on how to do it.
My usual mantras of, “it could always be worse”, “stop feeling sorry for yourself”, “make the most of your life”, had not succeeded in dealing with my trauma. This is the reason I share this part of my story. This isn’t a fun part to share but it’s necessary. How on earth would anyone know the truth of what trauma actually does if I hide and lie about it as well? It’s clear to me now looking back, where I was headed. Watching my dad die for weeks, losing my home, plummeting into a new stressful profession all in less than a year, there was no way I could do it all alone.
I’d never experienced grief or loss of that magnitude before. I also didn’t know how or what it was to mourn. I had no clue how to process what I’d lived through nor did I understand my new identity that became broken down with it. I was drowning and too proud to show it because I didn’t want anyone to worry. Because as a society we don’t have time to deal with sad people, you can’t show pain. I was still locking all my emotions up like I did to cope during the last months he’d been alive.
If I could do it over again, I would have gone to the counselor on campus. My excuse at that time was that I was too tired and busy. Though really, I was afraid of the wound. Afraid of confronting the monster and my dad’s death. I could not accept my new life without him and resented any attempt to move on. Going to someone for help would mean I would have to acknowledge my new world had been changed forever. But I still should have. It’s one of the biggest regrets of my life.
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After that horrible afternoon, I spent the rest of that night hurting and feeling the lowest I’d ever felt in my life. I barely slept that night and thought I might never be okay again. I still remember lying in the dark, believing I was too far gone, that my life would be forever cursed at what I had done.
The next day something unexpected happened. The day I had dreaded waking up to, was actually… pleasantly normal. In fact, it was kind of a good day and school went fine. It was even one of the most beautiful days I’d seen in a long time. Sitting in my car, staring at the gorgeous sky in the parking lot, it felt impossible how normal and cheerful the world around me looked. I tried to understand how different something can appear in twenty-four hours.
It wasn’t until several years later that I realized I had not fully processed that event because there was no time to. It happened and I moved on, trying to forget it. Years later, during one suicide training at work, I suddenly became hyper-aware that I technically shouldn’t still be on this earth. I remembered that somehow, it was a miracle I didn’t die that day.
Through many years, it all finally sunk in. I ached at the thought that all the pain I was living through with my dad’s death would’ve been transferred to so many others I loved. It was a long delayed awakening that I could’ve haunted and hurt others, as badly as I myself had been suffering. It was a whole other dimension that had never occurred to me. It’s hard to believe how much time will continue to unravel a knot.
Shine A Light On Me 