When I Tried to Kill Myself

I once tried to kill myself.

I didn’t try to cut myself, take rat poison or put my head in the oven. No, no, let me explain to you how pathetic this attempt was.

I was in high school, junior year. Feeling sad all the time — maybe I was depressed, I don’t really know. I took Advil. Yeah, Advil. It gets better. I never learned how to swallow pills with a swig of water like most people. So when I wanted to take ADVIL to try to end my life, I also had to take a stack of sliced bread, I Can’t Believe its not Butter spread, a butter knife and a plate to the bathroom, where I proceeded to butter slices of bread, one by one, chewing them, then swallowing the Advil with the bread. I took maybe 18 or 20 Advil, wrote a note and crawled into bed.

My parents came into my room, read the note and one of them says to the other, ‘Well, I guess we have to take her to the hospital.” So I go to the hospital. In the hospital, they pumped my stomach. You’ve probably heard the term. I had. I read it in a book or maybe heard of it having to do it to a small child that ingested something they shouldn’t have. If you’ve never had your stomach pumped, let me describe it here.

A tube was forced down my throat. Imagine someone forcing a tube into your mouth, down your throat, all the way down to your stomach. And I’m gagging and fighting this tube being pushed into me and they are holding me down so they can do this. I remember this one woman, maybe a nurse who said something to the effect of “Well you didn’t care so much before, but you care a lot now” — commenting, and not nicely, on how I was struggling against this tube being pumped down my throat.

Then when they are actually pumping the contents of my stomach out through that tube, I could feel the warmth in my throat of all the bile or stomach acid and chewed up pieces of buttered bread all coming UP through my mouth, even though I couldn’t feel the contents themselves. It was like I was vomiting, but insulated.

For days or maybe even weeks after ward, I could flashback to how that felt and I would claw at my throat, remembering how awful it felt. But the worst part for me, and the part that makes me feel a little sad even as I write this today so many years later is that afterward, I felt no one acknowledged that I tried to end my life. As pathetic of an attempt as it was, it was a cry for help. It was me telling the world that I was hurting and I wanted to someone to pay attention to me. And no one did.

I remember another 16 or 17 year old Indian boy killed himself, and I knew his mom really well. I remember thinking, that could have been me. He probably felt the same way I did. And in fact, several Indian kids killed themselves in the small town I lived in. The adults got together and raised money to build a building to have an Indian community center and they dedicated the building to these children. It was a nice gesture, but I don’t think any of those people really understood what was going on and what they needed to.

I don’t know what I did in those days and months after to get through whatever it was I was feeling. I know it was an awful, numbing, terrible feeling. If you know anyone, anyone at all that you think is going through something like this, if anyone you know even jokes about wanting to die or killing themselves — take it seriously. Do something about it. Give them the number for a suicide prevention hotline, call that number yourself and ask them what you should do. Chances are, that someone who is joking about that, isn’t really joking.

I don’t know if I ever joked about killing myself or dying, I think I kept everything to myself. I don’t know if it showed on the outside. Maybe someone who I went to high school with might read this and tell me if they knew I was upset or depressed. But even if they did know, I don’t hold anyone accountable for not helping me, because the reality was that it wasn’t something the average person (much less another 16 year old) could have helped me with. Yeah, maybe I could have used a little bit of acknowledgement and help, but I got it somehow, clearly, because I’m standing here today and I’m able to talk about it.