My suicide attempt when I was a senior in high school must have puzzled those around me. From the outside, it seemed that I had a lot going for me. I lived in a comfortable middle class home with swimming pool. I was active in sports, a member of the National Honor Society, an editor of the school newspaper. But I was also miserable.
I was convinced that no one understood me, especially my parents. I didn’t see much of my father, who was busy with his work. My mother had died when I was very young, and my stepmother and I didn’t get along. Our personalities clashed, and I felt she didn’t like me. I remember her once telling me, “I didn’t have to take you, you know.”
Socially awkward, I tried to make amends through sports. I remember eagerly waiting for my father to come home from work so I could tell him that I had made the field-hockey team. He just said, “I bet everybody made it.” I interpreted his remark as another message that I was worthless.
When I was 15, my parents began to talk about divorce, and I was sure I was the cause. I knew that my father felt caught between my mother and me. He’d yell at me to “shape up,” then I’d hear him in the next room, asking Mother, “Can’t you give the kid a break?” though I thought of running away from home, I was stopped by the horror stories I’d heard of runaway girls, falling prey to drugs and prostitution. But I did wonder if the world would be better off without me.
Communication had always been a problem at home. And I was afraid to open up to friends. I felt that if people knew my problems and fears, they’d think less of me. So I nursed my hurts and anxieties into a towering self-hatred.
In my junior year, I wrote a paper on Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, an autobiographical novel about despair, which foreshadowed the author’s eventual suicide. Suddenly, suicide seemed a realistic option. My English teacher commented on my report: “You really understand that book!” I thought, you bet I do! I became a closet expert on suicide, looking into serious literature on the topic. Although I wasn’t a drinker and never used drugs, I concluded that a mixture of alcohol and tranquilizers, both available at home, would be my ticket out.
Once the school social worker asked me to list all my good qualities, and I came up with only two: blue eyes and good grades. I felt there wasn’t anything good about me.
By my senior year I was convinced that I was an outcast, unlovable. Thoughts of suicide were ever-present. Though I had done very well on my college-board exams, I saw no reason to go on to college. Sooner or later, I was going to kill myself, so why bother? I applied to college “just in case,”though the idea of going terrified me. I was sure college would be worse than high school. But I couldn’t take the constant fighting at home. I didn’t see any way out.
In February 1981, I chose my date with death. Once I’d picked the time, I felt relieved. I’m sure I seemed more cheerful to those around me as I began to plan. At about 2 a.m., on my “death date,” I sneaked out of the house and wandered back streets, downing my tranquilizers and rum. I had trouble swallowing all the pills—a handful at a time, then a swig of rum. The last thing I recall is heading for the reservoir, where I knew wouldn’t be found for a while. I didn’t make it. I passed out on the sidewalk. A man walking his dog found me and called an ambulance.
I woke up in the intensive-care unit with tubes up my nose and needles in my arms. I was sent home with orders to visit a psychologist twice a week. But I resisted her attempts to help me. I was angry I was alive.
I hoped that my parents would want to discuss the suicide attempt, and finally one night at dinner the subject came up. “Why did you do such a stupid thing?” my mother asked. My father replied quickly,“I’m sure she had her reasons.” End of discussion. Except for the ever-patient psychologist and social worker, even in school the subject was not mentioned. I think that upset me as much as failing with the suicide did. It seemed as if nobody had enough interest in me to want to know why I’d done it.
Suicide was still on my mind when I attended an orientation session at a prestigious college where I had been accepted. That weekend gave me a glimmer of hope. People there seemed to like me.College could be a chance for a fresh start.
In college I began to make some friends, and decided to hand in “a little longer.” I also began to appreciate how my high-school social worker had reached me in ways I hadn’t realized at the time.
In class, I opened up a little more and my confidence improved. I moved into a gift clubhouse. People actually wanted me in their group. By my junior year, I was a field-hockey star.
At the club I made friends with a girl I’ll call Beth. We shared a dark secret, for she, too, had attempted suicide. Now and then we’d discuss suicide—always in objective, intellectual terms. Then,one winter night in my senior year, a club sister burst into my room, crying: “Beth’s not breathing!”
Beth had asked her to call an ambulance, then collapsed on the floor.
Rage swept over me, I saw what her death put her friends through. There was a grief and guilt as we asked ourselves how we could have prevented her suicide.
I slowly began to realize that taking my own life was no longer an option. I could see what a total waste suicide was. Beth would have made a solid contribution to society.
I decided to do something positive with my life. I graduated in 1985. In March 1986 I answered an ad asking volunteers for The Samaritans suicide-prevention hot lines, hoping I could prevent others from making the desperate decision I’d made.
I can understand how I got to the state I was in that night several years ago. I just wish I’d known then that it didn’t—and it doesn’t—have to be that way. That’s what I try to tell them when the hot line rings.
After she had been admitted into the prestigious college the author changed a great deal because_____.