(no subject)
About a month ago I wrote one of the most amazing and vulnerable pieces of writing that I've managed to come up with. I warn you guys though, it details a period in my life that was one of the worst. If anything, the ending has hope.
Please give me constructive criticism.
Most fourteen year olds don’t worry about anything that isn’t in their school’s spectrum. They have their overabundance of their social lives and a fairly loving family. If not, they find other things to replace the affection that is missing in their lives. All in all, it’s a basic truth that Americans at that age are cookie cut into what is socially acceptable. Unfortunately, there are always consequences to that. Because of it, most of my generation has become drug addled manic depressives who engage in self-mutilation as a past time and cartoons to relive their youth. It doesn’t always work, but who is to stop them? We have our counselors and psychiatrists who try, yet it is the child - for they still are children at that age despite the shouts of disagreement - that needs to overcome the difficulties of adolescence.
For me, ages 13-15 were the hardest of my life so far. Many crippling events helped create the person I am today. As a survivor of depression, it is crucial that I learn from my mistakes and the things that led to my awakening of it. At the time, it was my worry over my grandmother’s age and her closeness to death as well as personal problems I had.. I began to slack in school and basically became apathetic to all that happened to me. Things that appeared to make me happy only lasted for minutes before fading away into light that vanished into cruel trickery. It eventually led to my attempted suicide.
Before I begin with my story I should create the setting for everything. Imagine you’re a thirteen year old girl who is overweight and has been compared to an increasingly perfect older sister since you can remember. Add that said sister has an IQ of 160 and is incredibly beautiful. It’s not exactly fair to someone in the throes of teenage hell. Puberty is generally terrible for teenagers; self esteem issues don’t help it go away any easier. But my sister wasn’t my only problem; no, it was that I couldn’t stand who I was. Obesity had been in my family for generations. My mother’s constant referral to how much I ate and what I weighed didn’t help matters. It wasn’t until I let all of my insecurities pummel into a swirl of self hatred and destruction that everything began to tumble into it.
As school began to slack so did my social life. Eight grade became a center of wannabe friends that never transferred into the “real” group. It was all a façade of good will and elitism. By then, I was fairly popular. My name was known and anytime someone mentioned curly hair and someone who loved to write, I was the "It" girl. Those faux friendships caught up with me when my innermost secrets couldn’t be told. My fears for the future and all the angst that had developed in my little adolescent soul had begun to spill out into my everyday life. Sadness overwhelmed me to the point that I couldn’t function normally, yet no one noticed. I had finally realized that no one knew the me that I really was.
Depression is usually something that sneaks up on people slowly before it is ever noticed. That is what happened to me. Suddenly I began sleeping more to the point that the second I got home I would just lie in bed and vaguely watch television. Books held no interest for me anymore. It was if all of a sudden my world was completely tilted on its axis, as the cliché says. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize what was happening to me until it was too late. It would take my stomach being pumped for mine and my parents’ wake up call to really kick into gear.
Basically, I wouldn’t recommend overdosing on aspirin to anyone. First, the whole process begins when you take obscene amounts like I did. Apparently swallowing three bottles of pure aspirin is bad for you. Color me intelligent. Of course, it wasn’t until hours later that I started to feel the effects. I wrote a note to my parents, sister, and to anyone else that I would effect if my death would actually follow through. Immediately after, I fell asleep trying to ease the transition. Since I’m here in the now it’s fairly obvious that I didn’t succeed.
There were no dreams, no euphoria. I awoke to my father picking the notes off of the computer chair with a look of something akin to disdain and extreme disappointment. He didn’t speak of it, but dragged me out of bed and into the car. We headed out to a furniture store which only made the pain begin. Stabs of pain shot through my abdomen worse than any cramp a woman could complain about. It felt as if nails raked through my body with no softness to help the transition. After an hour of me complaining, he took me to the hospital where I was forced to parrot it to more than one person repeatedly. All I really remember is the pure discomfort I felt with all the staff. With every retelling I had begun to cry. Within a half hour I was sent to the O.R.
The thing about stomach pumps is that no one tells you the negatives. A tube is shoved into your throat that it completely destroys your gag reflex. You’ll feel it for weeks after, this sort of dry soreness that no amount of water can fix. Once everything is pumped out - food and all which I had - they shove black tar into your stomach to absorb any of the excess medicine that might have dissolved already. In my case it had. There are no words to describe the taste of this. Perhaps pure darkness and disgust works. It stayed in my system for hours, coming from both ends. After the procedure I was forced to drink water. Seconds later it was all thrown up with the tar right after it. My body had begun to reject all that had been done, for the better.
There was one brief moment of comedy in all of this. There was a male nurse who helped in the pumping of my stomach. Through out the whole procedure, vomit included, he made me laugh. Trying to make the situation not as scary or how big it was in the scheme of things helped me in so many ways. It made me feel as if I wasn’t the worst person in the world for trying to escape in the only way I could see.
Afterwards, countless people asked me why I had done it as if I could justify it. To this day I can’t. I think of reasons why; some fit and some don’t, at least not completely. The main one is that I was dissatisfied with my life. As a thirteen year old there wasn’t much I could change about it. I did the only thing I could see that I had control of.
To make matters worse, when I got home I was asked why I had done it to the family that loved me. How could I do that to my father, my mother, etc? How could I be so unbelievably selfish? I wanted to shout out to whoever would hear me that I didn’t know why. That I just wanted an out. It seemed the only way.
That’s not the end of the year from hell that made me harder, someone more sure of herself. A month to the day later my grandmother on my father’s side died. She was almost 89 years old. Her name was Hattie-Anne Provost and she had had nine children and 74 grand and great grandchildren. She had lived a full life, yet that didn’t soothe my already shattered heart. It didn’t seem like it was fair that one more terrible thing could happen to me and the people I cared about.
At her funeral I was the only one to say anything about her life and the way she lived. Afterwards every one of her descendants came to me and claimed I said the words they couldn’t find. They couldn’t say that she was amazing woman who didn’t care about who you were or what you did as long as you were kind to others. Her religious values - she was a very strict Catholic - didn’t stop her from caring for all that she knew. I actually don’t even remember what I said. Those are just the things that I remember about her. Things like her laugh in the middle of a dinner where everything seemed to go into ruins or the way she smiled with her whole face. She was the grandmother every girl or boy should have had.
Because of everything that happened that year I became stronger. When depression struck at me again a year ago, I was able to battle it off. There were brief moments of semi-mania, but I was able to do it. For that I am proud of myself. No medicine was ever used. I once went to counseling but that was soon stopped by my parents who believed I wasn’t improving. Years later after my attempt, my family was still wary of who I was and what I could do. Trust was completely demolished. It wasn’t until the last year or two that everything evolved, changed for the better.
I like to believe that I’m a capable person, someone who can be trusted. I know what it’s like to go through certain things and for that I have become a different person. I’m no longer the miserable adolescent who can’t change anything. I now know that I can change everything about almost anything in my life. It’s one of the reasons I moved to China. I needed change, a new experience despite the loneliness that dominated my life for more than a year. Of course, that is a different story.
Please give me constructive criticism.
Most fourteen year olds don’t worry about anything that isn’t in their school’s spectrum. They have their overabundance of their social lives and a fairly loving family. If not, they find other things to replace the affection that is missing in their lives. All in all, it’s a basic truth that Americans at that age are cookie cut into what is socially acceptable. Unfortunately, there are always consequences to that. Because of it, most of my generation has become drug addled manic depressives who engage in self-mutilation as a past time and cartoons to relive their youth. It doesn’t always work, but who is to stop them? We have our counselors and psychiatrists who try, yet it is the child - for they still are children at that age despite the shouts of disagreement - that needs to overcome the difficulties of adolescence.
For me, ages 13-15 were the hardest of my life so far. Many crippling events helped create the person I am today. As a survivor of depression, it is crucial that I learn from my mistakes and the things that led to my awakening of it. At the time, it was my worry over my grandmother’s age and her closeness to death as well as personal problems I had.. I began to slack in school and basically became apathetic to all that happened to me. Things that appeared to make me happy only lasted for minutes before fading away into light that vanished into cruel trickery. It eventually led to my attempted suicide.
Before I begin with my story I should create the setting for everything. Imagine you’re a thirteen year old girl who is overweight and has been compared to an increasingly perfect older sister since you can remember. Add that said sister has an IQ of 160 and is incredibly beautiful. It’s not exactly fair to someone in the throes of teenage hell. Puberty is generally terrible for teenagers; self esteem issues don’t help it go away any easier. But my sister wasn’t my only problem; no, it was that I couldn’t stand who I was. Obesity had been in my family for generations. My mother’s constant referral to how much I ate and what I weighed didn’t help matters. It wasn’t until I let all of my insecurities pummel into a swirl of self hatred and destruction that everything began to tumble into it.
As school began to slack so did my social life. Eight grade became a center of wannabe friends that never transferred into the “real” group. It was all a façade of good will and elitism. By then, I was fairly popular. My name was known and anytime someone mentioned curly hair and someone who loved to write, I was the "It" girl. Those faux friendships caught up with me when my innermost secrets couldn’t be told. My fears for the future and all the angst that had developed in my little adolescent soul had begun to spill out into my everyday life. Sadness overwhelmed me to the point that I couldn’t function normally, yet no one noticed. I had finally realized that no one knew the me that I really was.
Depression is usually something that sneaks up on people slowly before it is ever noticed. That is what happened to me. Suddenly I began sleeping more to the point that the second I got home I would just lie in bed and vaguely watch television. Books held no interest for me anymore. It was if all of a sudden my world was completely tilted on its axis, as the cliché says. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize what was happening to me until it was too late. It would take my stomach being pumped for mine and my parents’ wake up call to really kick into gear.
Basically, I wouldn’t recommend overdosing on aspirin to anyone. First, the whole process begins when you take obscene amounts like I did. Apparently swallowing three bottles of pure aspirin is bad for you. Color me intelligent. Of course, it wasn’t until hours later that I started to feel the effects. I wrote a note to my parents, sister, and to anyone else that I would effect if my death would actually follow through. Immediately after, I fell asleep trying to ease the transition. Since I’m here in the now it’s fairly obvious that I didn’t succeed.
There were no dreams, no euphoria. I awoke to my father picking the notes off of the computer chair with a look of something akin to disdain and extreme disappointment. He didn’t speak of it, but dragged me out of bed and into the car. We headed out to a furniture store which only made the pain begin. Stabs of pain shot through my abdomen worse than any cramp a woman could complain about. It felt as if nails raked through my body with no softness to help the transition. After an hour of me complaining, he took me to the hospital where I was forced to parrot it to more than one person repeatedly. All I really remember is the pure discomfort I felt with all the staff. With every retelling I had begun to cry. Within a half hour I was sent to the O.R.
The thing about stomach pumps is that no one tells you the negatives. A tube is shoved into your throat that it completely destroys your gag reflex. You’ll feel it for weeks after, this sort of dry soreness that no amount of water can fix. Once everything is pumped out - food and all which I had - they shove black tar into your stomach to absorb any of the excess medicine that might have dissolved already. In my case it had. There are no words to describe the taste of this. Perhaps pure darkness and disgust works. It stayed in my system for hours, coming from both ends. After the procedure I was forced to drink water. Seconds later it was all thrown up with the tar right after it. My body had begun to reject all that had been done, for the better.
There was one brief moment of comedy in all of this. There was a male nurse who helped in the pumping of my stomach. Through out the whole procedure, vomit included, he made me laugh. Trying to make the situation not as scary or how big it was in the scheme of things helped me in so many ways. It made me feel as if I wasn’t the worst person in the world for trying to escape in the only way I could see.
Afterwards, countless people asked me why I had done it as if I could justify it. To this day I can’t. I think of reasons why; some fit and some don’t, at least not completely. The main one is that I was dissatisfied with my life. As a thirteen year old there wasn’t much I could change about it. I did the only thing I could see that I had control of.
To make matters worse, when I got home I was asked why I had done it to the family that loved me. How could I do that to my father, my mother, etc? How could I be so unbelievably selfish? I wanted to shout out to whoever would hear me that I didn’t know why. That I just wanted an out. It seemed the only way.
That’s not the end of the year from hell that made me harder, someone more sure of herself. A month to the day later my grandmother on my father’s side died. She was almost 89 years old. Her name was Hattie-Anne Provost and she had had nine children and 74 grand and great grandchildren. She had lived a full life, yet that didn’t soothe my already shattered heart. It didn’t seem like it was fair that one more terrible thing could happen to me and the people I cared about.
At her funeral I was the only one to say anything about her life and the way she lived. Afterwards every one of her descendants came to me and claimed I said the words they couldn’t find. They couldn’t say that she was amazing woman who didn’t care about who you were or what you did as long as you were kind to others. Her religious values - she was a very strict Catholic - didn’t stop her from caring for all that she knew. I actually don’t even remember what I said. Those are just the things that I remember about her. Things like her laugh in the middle of a dinner where everything seemed to go into ruins or the way she smiled with her whole face. She was the grandmother every girl or boy should have had.
Because of everything that happened that year I became stronger. When depression struck at me again a year ago, I was able to battle it off. There were brief moments of semi-mania, but I was able to do it. For that I am proud of myself. No medicine was ever used. I once went to counseling but that was soon stopped by my parents who believed I wasn’t improving. Years later after my attempt, my family was still wary of who I was and what I could do. Trust was completely demolished. It wasn’t until the last year or two that everything evolved, changed for the better.
I like to believe that I’m a capable person, someone who can be trusted. I know what it’s like to go through certain things and for that I have become a different person. I’m no longer the miserable adolescent who can’t change anything. I now know that I can change everything about almost anything in my life. It’s one of the reasons I moved to China. I needed change, a new experience despite the loneliness that dominated my life for more than a year. Of course, that is a different story.