I thought about it when I was younger. I was about twelve or thirteen years old when it first became more than a thought. I remember sitting in my green circle chair in my sponge bob decorated room. I'm not sure if it was because my dad left or if it was because I felt like nobody connected with me as a person. I was young, but all a child wants is to have a great relationship with their parents... And when my best friend and role model left, so did my urge to exist.
Here in the past three years, it's been more of a thought. It's like a darkness that has crept into my bloodstream. Once the thought becomes an overwhelming desire, there's not much else you can think about. It's a sickness as most people say. But I'm not sick. I wasn't ever sick. The day I made that decision, maybe I was sick. But never did I consider myself to have some sort of sickness.
People undermine it you know. People think it's all fun and games or someone is just out seeking for attention. Maybe some. But I never wanted anyone to know. Because if they knew, they would try to stop me. As I see it, if you really have that "sickness", the last thing you want is someone to know. Those times that the thoughts and urges come across you when you're laying down for rest, or when you're driving down the road and watch the gravel on the highway pass you by, or the times you go out in public and watch people live their lives wondering if they ever feel that darkness within their bones..those are the times I never wanted anyone to know. No matter if I wanted to reach out, those who have felt those urges tend to think they have all the answers for a battle you feel like you can't fight. And those who haven't, end up judging or down playing your inner battles.
So if I never wanted anyone to know, why do I now? Well, I don't think about it everyday. The past year of my life it crept up the worst it ever has. The thoughts went to preparation. The thoughts went to plans and backup plans on how I could go about it. I never wanted someone to come across my dead body lying in a bloody pool on the floor. I never wanted a loved one to walk in and see me hanging lifeless from the ceiling of a place I called home. I always saw myself walking out into the woods of a random town and using a 357 magnum to the head. That's what the darkness kept showing me. Then the gun was taken away from the house, as my darkness started to creep out into the light. I then was going to get a ladder, rope, and go out into the woods with obvious intentions of hanging myself. I wanted to go missing. That was the plan. Then for some reason, the darkness didn't want to disappear. It wanted to make me suffer. Not cut the cord to the pain, just amplify the dosage.
That's when I became what you stereotypical folks like to call Emo. When the urge came to see my own blood and feel some dreadful pain, I had nothing to use. So I took apart a razor blade and started dragging it across my upper arm. Never did I want to die. Never did I want anyone to find out. This is why I never cut my wrists. This is why it was in an easily hidden spot. When I felt the relief... Which wasn't necessarily a relief in good feeling, but a relief that I finally was getting what I deserved... I couldn't stop. Every day I had to do it, or the next day it was worse. Eventually, I talked to someone. It took that. Someone found out and helped me.
Have I stopped forever? Is the darkness gone? Am I no longer sick? No. So what is the point of this post?
Well, in the past five months, what used to happen every day, has happened only twice. My thoughts have not gone away, but I fight it. I fight it because no matter what I've done, I can make up for it in other ways than what I was. My point is, in all my time of not wanting someone to know, I'm glad that they found out. Who knows where I'd be. How much worse it could have gotten. From the person who got rid of the gun, or the person who talked to me about becoming a better person and making a future that's about making up for the past.. They stopped something that could have been a lot worse.
The suicide jokes, the name calling of self harmers, the under estimating how "sick" someone really is... Reach out. Whether you care about this person personally, someone does, and it's not a joke, it's not a game, and whatever we as a human race and society can do to prevent someone taking their life, we should. We should extend our arms for and with what's in our reach. Because if that gun was never taken away or that talk was never had with me... I truthfully don't know if I would have ever seen the light again.
Yours truly,
Amanda Rae