It was October 31st 2016. Halloween night. My fifteen-year-old self had been planning her suicide attempt all day. The plan was to take my whole bottle of antidepressants and cut my wrists open-drunk, because I heard it thins your blood, and in the bathtub, because I heard the water stops the cuts from clotting. In retrospect now I know the chance of me actually dying from either of those things was very low.

What drove me to commit suicide at this point? I don’t fully remember, but I’m sure it had to do with the same reason I feel suicidal these days…hopelessness. The reality of it is that none of us are truly hopeless. We can change our lives, and it’s okay if help from others is needed. In fact, we need support from others. I believe that plays a huge part in recovery.

Around ten o’clock, once my mother was asleep for the night, I went into the bathroom, locked the door, and started taking my antidepressants, one by one…it was then when I realized there was only thirteen in the bottle. I still had another option though. I didn’t want my mom to find me naked when she walked in on my dead corpse, so I decided instead of being in the bath, I would just turn on the water and put my wrists under. Trying to cut a vein was much harder than movies made it seem. I was unsuccessful, but the amount of blood still produced a gruesome scene. I still believed the two combined might kill me, so I sat and waited. After sitting for an hour on the bathroom floor, arms draped into the tub, listening to Adele, I regretted what I had done.

Walking into my mother’s bedroom and trying to tell her what I had done was one of the scariest things I’ve ever had to do. It might have actually been the scariest. She immediately asked me if I had cut myself, and I said yes, though I couldn’t muster up the courage to tell her what else. Her reaction when I finally did is something that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

The hospital was scary. Walking into the emergency room with bloody clothes and cut up wrists was humiliating to me. “She took 13 lexapro”, my mom-almost too loudly-told the receptionist. She didn’t seem to understand until my mom explained multiple times. I was taken to a room, changed into a gown, pee sample, saline IV, etc. They then performed an EKG to check my heart rhythm, which ended up being off. I was told I was going to spend the night in the ICU because I was at risk of a seizure. I will get more into what the hospital stay was like in another post, this is just my suicide attempt and what it taught me.

I spent that night and the entire next day in the ICU-which I have a lot more to say about in my next post-because my heart was getting worse, then I spent the next night and day in a normal pediatric hospital room. Once I was finally ‘medically cleared’ I got my room in the psych ward, in which I spent seven days. When I was transferred out of the ICU and into the normal pediatric room is when my father showed up. He was on a business trip in another country and once he got the news of my suicide attempt he took an emergency flight here. He hugged me and told me he loved me more than I could ever imagine. This is when I learned that suicide is not the answer.

So what did my suicide attempt teach me? It taught me that you hurt people a great amount more than you could ever imagine. Seeing my parents faces while looking at me in a hospital bed, seeing them cry, seeing my mom spend all day and night on a chair next to my bed, it will all take a toll on me for the rest of my life. It has also scarred my parents forever, and that’s something I can never take back. I could never begin to imagine what it would be like to see your child that way. I’m not trying to pretend I don’t still get suicidal, I do, but now I make sure I tell someone right away. Its amazing how much it helps to just be with someone.