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“There is some allergy medicine in the bathroom cabinet, you can take one.”

My new foster mother, Deanna, told me as I sneezed seventeen times in a row. Wiping my nose on the sleeve of my shirt I walked into the front bathroom that I shared with both of my sisters, Deanna’s biological daughter, and two other foster children that lived in the home.

I was the newest foster child here. My sisters had lived here for a while but I was recently sent back from an adoptive placement that didn’t quite work out after I was sat down and told that I’d never see my sisters again because they were part of my old life that I could no longer live. At ten years old, the idea of never seeing the only two people who had been constant in your life is not an easy pill to swallow. I had big emotions about it and didn’t know how to process them, so when they came to the surface as “bad attitude” my soon to be adoptive parents decided they no longer wanted me and sent me back from Louisiana to Oklahoma to the system they had “rescued” me from and I was placed in the home with my sisters. The move was not easy, but I was used to packing my trash bag and shipping out as this was the eleventh foster home I had been in. No matter how many times you do it, adjusting to a new home with new people, new rules, and new expectations is always difficult. Although I was back with my sister’s things in this home were always uneasy. Deanna had one favorite, and it was none of us foster children, as the newest in the home I had not yet figured out the way into Deanna’s heart. That is one thing the system taught me, to disguise myself as whatever I needed to be in order to keep my head on the same pillow as long as I could.

I called it survival then… I later learned it was manipulation.

I opened the medicine cabinet, pulled out the box of allergy medication, closed the cabinet, and began to read the directions on the back of the box:

Adults and children 6 years and over: 1 tablet daily; not more than 1 tablet in 24 hours

“Do you think you could die from more than one?”

I thought to myself as I inspected my appearance in the mirror.

It was there, in the bathroom that my lifelong battle with suicidal ideations began as I had my first thought of killing myself holding the box of over-the-counter allergy medication wondering just how many I would have to take to actually die. I didn’t know why I wanted to die, but in that moment my mind was consumed with thoughts of going to sleep and not waking up because the world would be better off with one less scrawny, dirty, motherless little brunette running around in it.

I opened the box and popped three tiny pills from their individual plastic bubbles, glanced at myself in the mirror once more before throwing them in my mouth, taking a huge drink of water, and swallowing.

With a pounding heart, I waited to see what would happen.

To my surprise, it would take more than three allergy pills to shut the body down permanently, although I did quit sneezing and had a very long two-day nap as a result of my curiosity. This would be the first of many times I’d look in that very same mirror and fantasize about the many ways I could complete the task of ridding the world of my existence, most of the time I would talk myself out of it, although over the years I tested the dosing instructions of several medications. Never enough to actually overdose, but always walking that thin line between life and death.

“Your arm is bleeding.”

I leaned over and whispered to Samantha, who I had watched pick at fresh scabs on her forearms for the last ten minutes of our science lesson.

Samantha was a kind girl. I had gone to school with her since moving back to Oklahoma six years before. She and I used to be very good friends, but we drifted apart over the last couple of years as most middle school friends do once you start high school. Her naturally outgoing personality had turned very introverted after her parents split. Rumor had it she had spent most of the previous summer vacation in an inpatient facility after her father found her curled up on her bedroom floor bleeding out from a self-inflicted wound to the wrist.

Her eyes met mine, she nodded and pulled her long sleeves down to her wrist, looked back toward the front of the classroom and started to pick at her fingernails rather than her wounds since I had noticed.

I envied Samantha.

Although I had danced with the devil myself in the form of over-medicating myself to relieve the constant battle with my brain, I could never find the courage to take it any further, no matter how many times I fantasized about dying, I couldn’t actually follow through with it the way she did.

Later that night, as I sat in my room, no matter how hard a tried to shake the visions of her fresh wounds, I could not. My brain was once more curious, this time it was not over the amount of medication it would take to stop my organs from doing their job, this time it was the curiosity of just how much pressure I would have to put behind a razor blade to draw blood.

At sixteen years old I found a new devil to dance with.

The rush of adrenaline watching a fresh razor blade slide effortlessly over my thigh. Watching the skin beneath it turn red and slightly swell as the blood rose to the surface waiting to be released. Learning just how much pressure to apply to open the skin and let it flow became an addiction. Being able to control my own pain and escape whatever bullshit the world around me was throwing at me became my drug of choice.

I was hooked.

Still, at 35 years old, in times of extreme distress, this is the solution my brain goes to. Although I have not actively engaged in this form of self-harm in a couple of years, I struggle with the craving for control that my brain equates to the act of cutting.

“This can not be real”

I told myself as I sat on the cold bathroom floor of the grocery store I worked at, in pure shock, with five stolen pregnancy tests in my hands.

All showing positive.

My whole life flashed in front of my eyes as I sat in utter disbelief that this could happen to me. Every single insecurity I had developed from having an abusive addict for a mother and twelve different homes, none of which gave a shit about me enough to prepare me for motherhood arose within my soul.

All I could do was cry.

For a week straight, all I could do was cry.

I swung back in forth between acceptance and disbelief that at nineteen years old, I was carrying a human being inside my body. A human being that I would be responsible for keeping alive when I barely knew how to keep myself alive.

I loved him from the second I saw two lines on the first of five pregnancy tests, but how in the hell could I do this?

For a week straight I fought my brain to stay alive. I could not stand to even imagine the thought of going to a clinic and having them take the life of the human I was growing inside of me, but the thought of me taking my own life and ultimately his along with me was at the forefront of every thought I had.

For a week straight.

For a week straight I fought myself for not only my life but for his.

“You hate me so much… Why don’t you just kill me then?”

I screamed as I turned and walked into to garage, this is where we went to scream it out as if it were saving our boys from hearing the horrible things, we had said to each other, more so now than ever since we had split up and were still living in the same house.

He didn’t follow me as I had expected him to. I stood in the garage, alone, filled with rage and fear. Feelings I had grown all too accustomed to as I lived in this state of mind most of the time.

I stared at the door, waiting for him to come through it so I could continue my reign of terror telling him what a piece of shit he is and how much I hated him.

Every second that went by that he did not come through the door leading to more rage. I could feel the anger boiling over as I lost control of myself and turned toward the shelves he had built for storage.

I took my arm and cleared the bottom shelf in anger, flinging storge tubs of clothes the boys had outgrown, a trash bag of too-small shoes, and a bucket with little odds and ends to the ground with a loud crash.

I threw myself to the floor with a mixture of overwhelming sadness and uncontrollable anger. Tears streamed from my eyes as I glanced around in shame at the mess I had made.

This was not me. 

I absolutely hated who I had become.

Through my tears I spotted a dirty screwdriver that had been in the bucket I knocked over that was now laying just a few feet away from me.

Before my rational brain had time to think about what I was doing I had the screwdriver in my hand digging at my wrist begging God to take me from this world.

At 33 years old my soul was throwing an all-out tantrum because I had wandered so far off the path that God had created for me. I was so far from the human that God had made me. I had killed off so many parts of myself that were crucial to the very existence that I now sat on the floor begging God to grant my wish for death by a dirty screwdriver.

This moment forever changed my life.

Today I still struggle with my brain.

It is wired differently and that’s okay.

I no longer carry the shame that I once did around my struggle with mental illness. I am able to look in the mirror with gratitude for every version of myself that hated that reflection enough to want to never look at it again but found the courage to keep going. Because of her strength, I am able to have the strength to share my stories with vulnerability and compassion.

My stories may not reach many, but to those that they reach, they will be everything.

My hope is that you find the ability to share your stories with the world as well.

May we all do our part to break the stigma around mental illness.

If you or someone you love are currently struggling with suicidal ideations, please reach out to a professional.

800-273-8255 It’s okay to not be okay.