Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and rely not on your own understanding. In all your ways know him and he will make your paths straight. ~Proverbs 3:5-6
The first time I failed at suicide, I was in the 7th grade.
It was the late 80’s. Back then, I was a scrawny small nerd. This was before nerd culture was accepted onto the mainstage of society. During the height of bullying in schools. There was not a single day in middle school that I did not get beat up, picked on, pushed around, humiliated and degraded. Every… single… day… I had to endure a constant barrage of abuse at the hands of a large number of fellow students.
And though I was a nerd, I had the mentality of certain success in anything I did. As Hollywood had taught me that the nerd CAN get the girl of his dreams. I believed in ‘happily ever after’.
Being the nerd of the class, I, of course, had a crush on the most popular girl in class. One day I worked up the courage to tell her how I felt about her. And after stuttering through the words I had rehearsed a hundred times before, I managed to confess my crush. To my delight, she told me she thought I was cute! And even better, she wanted me to walk home with her after school. I spent the entire day disconnected from class. Being a hopeless romantic, I ran through a multitude of fantastical scenarios where I might get to finally have my first kiss!
Agreeing to meet at the front doors after school so we could walk together, I hurriedly grabbed my backpack and raced to meet her. As I reached the front doors and happily swung them open I spotted her sitting by the flower pots with her bag in hand. I smiled and waved at her.
She looked over at me and smiled… then turned her head and said, “That’s him.”
A brief moment of confusion had swept across me. Until I looked in the direction she had spoken. Standing by the wall, just out of my initial view, were three 9th grade guys. Before I knew what was happening, the three of them rushed forward and grabbed me by my backpack, dragging me into the grass, where they proceeded to beat the ever living hell out of me. Spitting in my face and laughing, they poured out a barrage of hateful words, demeaning me and degrading me for having the audacity to tell this girl I had a crush on her. Though the beating was only 10 minutes or so, it felt like an eternity. All the while, the girl I had pined over for so long laughed and mocked me.
After the beating was over, and the bullies had left me on the ground, bloody, crying and battered, I gathered up my books and put them into a torn backpack, picked up my shoe that one had used to strike me across the face multiple times, wiped their spit from my face, and stumbled home the 1 mile walk.
On my way home, a school bus passed, and several kids leaned out of the windows, laughing and pointing at me. Cars drove by the kids with ripped clothes and a half intact backpack, leering and staring.
When I walked in the house, there was no one around. Dad hadn’t gotten off of work yet, my sister was at her friend’s house, and my stepmom had gone to the community garden. I was all alone and humiliated.
I quickly jumped into the shower to clean the mud and blood off of myself, and did what I could to hide the bruises forming on my face. I didn’t want my dad to see what had happened. I thought it would embarrass him to know he had such a loser for a son. (Side note, this was not the case. Years later when he heard the story his heart broke. See, the years of being bullied, had led me to convince myself that everyone thought I was a loser. Even those who loved me dearly.)
After I had cleaned up, I sat on my bed and cried. I cried so hard I nearly passed out. And at a moment of serious weakness, I picked up the bottle of aspirin I had taken from the medicine cabinet, popped the top, and poured them into my mouth, quickly chasing them with a sprite. And then laid down on my bed, fully convinced I would fall asleep and be dead before anyone got home.
But… That was not how things turned out. That is most certainly not how overdosing works.
See, I was only in middle school. I didn’t have an understanding of pills, or suicide, or how the body may react to a sudden influx of what it perceives as a poison.
Within 20 minutes, I was in the bathroom, on my knees in front of the toilet holding onto the bowl for dear life as my body convulsively expelled the mass of aspirin. I was severely sick. My body was shaking, I was in cold sweats, I couldn’t see straight, my hearing was distant and tinny. I thought I was dying.
Hollywood had taught me that suicide from pills was a quiet and painless way to go. I thought, if I overdose on pills, I will just go to sleep and not wake up. And wow… was I wrong.
I stayed home sick from school for 2 days with a “stomach virus”. I couldn’t keep down food, I was dizzy all the time, barely able to walk, sometimes having to crawl to the bathroom for another round of regurgitation.
When I finally returned to school, rumor had gotten around that I had skipped school out of embarrassment. There were even jokes of me having died. The bullying resumed as soon as I was back. And I went on with my life… daily beatings from the bullies unceasing.
