Chapter 4- The Aftermath

In the years to come, I found myself recounting my suicide attempt to various psychiatrists. Each time, I gleefully anticipated the moment when I could mention how I had accidentally gorged myself on laxatives, foiling my own suicide attempt. I took delight in the discomfort each doctor felt, struggling to uphold their composed demeanor as they fought to hold back laughter. It was, in fact funny. Who goes to the extreme of making calculations about lethal doses, taking that many pills to earnestly pursue death, only to then take laxatives and shit them right back out? 

I would eventually reassure the squirming doctors that it was okay to laugh, prompting their compliant laughter. The truth was that even during my darkest moments, I possessed an undeniable sense of humor. But humor was something that lived on my surface. Inside was something much murkier. In the years that followed, I carried the weight of my suicide attempt with me and the profound impact of my last-minute change of heart before losing consciousness. Because at around the same time I tried to die, another 17-year-old in my town also tried to die. 

She succeeded. I did not. We were not close, but we had always exchanged sad glances and small smiles in the school hallways. Sad people always have a way of connecting on a different nonverbal plane. We can feel each other’s distress without saying a word. Sometimes I would get jealous that she got to leave and that I had to stay in this world I truly hate. But mostly, it made me sad- a beautiful 17-year-old- a girl with a kind soul- something I could feel without even speaking to her- lost forever and leaving a hole in so many hearts.

Several years later, once the internet had been invented and taken over human existence, I googled her and found that her sister had written about the devastating incident and what it did to her. I thought about reaching out to her, but I knew the pain I would see on her face would utterly gut me with guilt. I had almost caused the same grief in my sibling.

Flashbacks from that day would deliver images of my sibling’s distraught face that day I woke up in the intensive care unit. The image became a melancholic presence in my mind. As the recollections lingered and tortured me, my guilt and shame stopped me from truly considering suicide again, until a full three decades had passed. Through those three decades, I see-sawed in and out of depression. I could recognize that depression was winning in the fight over my psyche when I would start thinking though what I would say in my suicide letters. 

By the age of 47, I was once again ready to be done with life.  But at the age of 47, unlike my mindset when I was a teenager, I was aware of how many people I would hurt if I acted on my suicidal thoughts. I thought about my teenage classmate a lot. I imagined the piercing pain her sister is now burdened with for the rest of her life. I knew that I needed a plan to keep myself alive. 

And then I started writing my suicide letters. Every time I wrote a suicide letter to someone, I forced myself to feel the gut-wrenching agony I would put that person through. Feeling a stabbing sense of guilt and sorrow spike through my body at the thought of causing the people I love that kind of pain always helped me overpower the depression. At least for that moment. The letters would keep me alive for one more day. And I had a lot of letters to write, which meant my plan would keep me alive for a long time.