I was thirteen years old when I decided to take my life.
I still remember what I wrote the day I did.

Jo. 155. July 14, 2011.

This is the beginning of the end.
        I am numb.
        Paralyzed.
        I am fading into the nothingness.
        I just want to die.

Nothing should be so terrible as to make a rising freshman want to kill herself. The mere thought of prepubescent children having to deal with serious mental health issues is terrifying in and of itself. Children are supposed to be normal. But I was, and I still am, not like my peers. Ostensibly acting “happy” and silently loathing oneself was not abnormal for me. Self-mutilation with razorblades and lighters was not out of the ordinary. Diets consisting of weeks of starving, vomiting, and tears after each meal were standard. 

By the end of the eighth grade, I knew I was going to kill myself. I had written my letters. I had found the Acetaminophen. I had said goodbye to loved ones. All long before I decided it was time to “fade into the nothingness.” The light had dwindled long before “the beginning of the end.” What happened on July 14 was inevitable- what occurred after, was- ironically- unperceivable.

There is a certain power that death holds over me. A certain predisposition I cannot describe. Perhaps, it is due to an inexplicable void within me, brought about by chronic depression, acute insomnia, anxiety, and a family that can only be described as broken. Perhaps it is caused by the looming shadow with whom I am bound. 

I woke up on July 15, 2011. Vomit smeared the floor. Blood stained the sheets. The bottle was left on the table. No one knew what happened that night: my parents were sleeping upstairs, Grace was at a sleepover.

        Jo. 156. July 15, 2011.
        I dreamed of a happier place. One that is not
        filled with any pain. No one is mad or sad,
        just happy. I dream that one day I may visit
        this place… I’m supposed to be dead. What
        do I do now?

I knew what I had to do even before I wrote it. A decision had to be made. Perhaps it was my age that gave me the quixotic notion that it would simply be made for me and all would be well.

Do I tell? Should I try again or ask for help?

I sat in silence; uncertain what was best for me. I cannot remember how long this emotional limbo lasted until I made my decision. I ascended the stairs, basking in the hazy sunlight and watched haphazard dust motes glitter in the air- I climbed out of the eternal gloaming.
 

It was not easy overcoming my mental illnesses, or as I call them, her. It was not like the movies, where someone saves you and everything gets better in a day, in a week, or even in a year. It was hard. I relapsed often, and bled.  I cried and felt pain in a different way, as I now understood what the issues were. I understood what the frailty was.

Over the past year, I have overcome my chronic depression. I maintain a sleep schedule close to the norm. I no longer have constant panic attacks at school. But I still fear. One may see nothing to fear, nothing I have not overcome. Yet there is no day in my life in which I do not see her appear- an ephemeral recurrence that reminds me of the uncertainty of life and of identity, what it means to be alive.

        Jo. 478. July 15, 2014.

        We are told what to do to survive.
        It is written on the door. It is taught in our classes. It is              

        embedded in our genetics.
        But we were not born to survive.
        Only to live.