3 Years On

TW Self Harm / Suicide
(Note; this is some pretty poor writing skill on display here, but I am tired and it is a reflection, not prose)



It is still incredibly difficult for me to reflect on my suicide attempt(s) three years on from the most recent occurrence..
This is not so much an effect of being unable to relive the trauma, but rather I am worried that as someone who is still frequently left frustrated and embarrassed that these attempts failed,  rather than being met with relief and happiness, I should withhold my commentary so as to avoid subconsciously relaying it in a positive light, and perhaps drawing vulnerable others closer toward the idea.
Regardless, I believe there is merit in attempting to decrease the stigma surrounding the topic, and, on a day where I happen to feel particularly isolated, I could use the false safety blanket that venting on the internet provides.
Now, as a Mother, I am absolutely horrified in the deepest sense of the word to envision my own child reliving my teen years as his own. I hold a lot of grief for the child I was then, who missed so many natural milestones in personal development while her priorities began and ended with inventing more violent ways of sabotaging herself.
These are not cliches, just as these sentences are not intended to sound poetic or calculated; this is in actuality a very vague relay of the realities that had for so long been a large fraction of my foundations as an individual.
I first began self harming when I was in year five, a mere ten years of age. It was at this age that I first broke my silence over sexual abuse I had experienced many years prior.
I couldn't be sure of what led to my depression manifesting itself as self harm, as I don't recall any influences that exposed me to the practice. In saying this, it was always very minimal cutting in those early days anyhow.
My following Primary schooling years would see my step father killed in a violent car accident. Following this, I began attempting to escape this absolute implosion of my family unit, often with a heavy rope slung around my neck. I was twelve..
Though I had no idea what I was doing, I was apparently desperate to figure it out, and would often try to have 'pep talks' with myself on my walk home from school, so as to be more successful that following evening. This was the case most days.
While my friends were busy preparing mentally and emotionally for High School; the relationships, friendships, grades and what have you, I was preparing to die with all the same enthusiasm.
My mother was led to believe that I had an aggressive rash on my face that would come and go, when in fact it was the most of my facial blood capillaries having burst from asphyxiation.

High School was a never ending relay from class to counsellor.
While I have countless fond memories from those years, and managed to have many normal experiences, my capacity to function was tested on a daily basis. The attempts to take my own life were increasingly frequent, and the self harm even more so.
Thankfully, I connected well with the schools in-house Guidance Officer and was granted a great deal of leeway in my attendance records toward my senior years when it counted more, with her assistance.
I believed that this was to be my condition for the rest of my years. I spent no time dreaming about life 'post High School'; a future partner; children; career options, because I genuinely believed that I would not live to see it.
So many years spent in this way certainly led to a subconscious conditioning of my coping mechanisms and perceptions. While I did not have the ability to recognise it then, in hindsight it is revealed just how crippling my mental health issues were and still are on my social skills, self value and the depth to which I can feel and empathise at a general level.
To this day I am still replanting seeds, unhappy with those I had sewn, and hoping for a bloom of new flowers. Building a family of my own has been invaluable to this practice, both in finding an unwavering source of support in my partner, and a reason to strive for selflessness, as being a mother asks of one to do.
Disposing of myself, and indeed harming myself physically are no longer options. And as time progresses, those things don't feel as though they ought to be, either.

As mentioned earlier, it has now been three years since what was my most ambitious and determined suicide attempt. I refer to it as such not because it was the one time that led to my admission in a psychiatric ward, but rather because I had no gap between feeling and action: there was no suicide letter, there was no tear stained face, or pacing around the house, and there was no pep talk on that walk home from school.
I left during a class, and carried myself home, calm and level headed about what needed to be done.
At this time I was in a share house with two adults who were essentially strangers to me, and while they were at their jobs, I still took precautions to ensure they would not come home to find me in an ugly state. Thus, I retreated to the shower, raised the volume on some aggressive classical orchestral music (which at the time I thought would be a rather romantic way to end things with), and placed my weapons of choice in each corner of the floor.
As I moved from fork, to scissors, to knife, I was gradually met with the anticipated pain-evoked adrenaline I had hoped for, and thus was ready for the final act.
Bleach is a poison that kills you in particularly violent ways. It burns out your organs and eventually induces cardiac arrest. It seemed a pretty sure-fire no-fail option.
While in hindsight I feel I could have tried harder to resist, what I drank down was almost instantaneously rejected by my body and came roaring back out. I suffered a great deal of pain but the only long term issue I have been left with is a minimal to non existent sense of smell.

"You are so lucky to be alive!" was something I heard frequently between being transferred through various hospitals for assessment and operation. I however couldn't help thinking that our definitions of 'lucky' varied. Finding myself in a psychiatric ward was a damaging experience that I wouldn't wish upon anyone. The last place I would imagine to rehabilitate mentally sensitive people is a small space with barred windows and surveillance. It may also have not have helped that during this time I was on an anti-authority bent and was an avid conspiracy theorist, and so I denied their medications, made a fuss about not being able to go outside in the evenings to see the stars, and proceeded to spend my stay sleeping for 80% of the day and reading an extensive pile of literature (many of which remain favourites of mine to this day, which I always reflect upon as the silver lining).
While the hospital food was incredible, and more importantly for an independent student living off of $30 of groceries a week, free, I was not doing well in that environment and decided I'd best behave so as to be released as quickly as possible. A mere few weeks later I was back at school attempting to secure some kind of decent OP and vowing to never risk being 'locked up' again; a fate I feared more than I had ever feared death.

And so, here we are.

3 years on, I have found a much better coping mechanism in eating toast when I am sad and watching Netflix when the world gets me down (kidding.. kind of). I am ridiculously more resilient than I ever thought possible, as a result of a culmination of factors.
While I may not have reached the 'other side' of the metaphorical fence yet, and still feel miles away from experiencing what it means to be 'mentally healthy', I've healed more than I could have ever foreseen. I don't perceive myself as a damaged person, but rather as someone who just missed the starting gun and is just now gaining pace.
The process of living day to day in recovery is eased when the burden is shared with those who love you and appreciate your story. Setting goals I can be proud of, practicing self love and confidence, and socialising with new and old pals alike, are important rituals even if I often fall short of the outcomes I hope to achieve, but, you know, I am only twenty years old, so let us be lenient toward the fact that I don't yet have my life entirely sorted!

As one body, in one town, of one city, in one state, of one country, on one planet, of one galaxy, in one universe, it is hard to determine what a reasonable reflection on suffering may be. Philosophising over whether it matters in the scheme of things that I survived, or perhaps if I hadn't of is tricky, because while surely I am but an irrelevant, invisible component of a much more Grand tale, I am still a component nevertheless.

I hope to live a lengthy set of earth bound years and indeed make up for lost time; to drink in all that I can from the cannon of the Universe. And, when I am eventually recycled back into organic matter, and my atoms passed on for future use, I hope to have left a tangible affect that echoes nothing of the half-person I have been for the first fraction of my life time, for there are surely much more valuable contributions to be made while we are here, no matter the significance.