I grabbed a knife. I was sick and tired of everybody on my case. Social services were always after me. I was a depressed individual and they wanted to keep me under their watchful eye. They seemed to think they were helping me. In reality, and in so many cases such as mine, they were hurting me more then helping me. They didn't see that. Neither did anyone else. All I wanted was for someone to listen to me. To sympathize with me. To show me they care. "Hey, heifer. What a cow. Are you ever going to loose weight. Quit eating, you'll never loose weight that way!" It hurt me so much. That was a lot of my problem and what drove me to suicide. I come from a broken home. My mom is always working to support my dad's farm. My dad is always farming. My mom picks up a second job just to get away from my dad. I love my dad. But he is the most difficult person I know to live with. "Honor thy father and thy mother." I do. I try. But sometimes a story has to be told and in order for it to be understood, people need to understand where you come from. I do love them. I was an only child for a lot of years. I have a sister. She is ten years my junior. She was and is more of a daughter then a sister to me. Since my dad was alway farming and my mom always working, I got dubbed with the role of mom, I guess. I never really got to enjoy highschool. I never got to go out with my friends, I never got to go to sporting events like all of my friends did. I always thought it was so unfair, and I still think it is. I know life isn't all peaches and cream, but I never really got the chance to be a teenager. I went from ten years old to thirty years old in a year. My sister was born and that was the end of my childhood or what there ever was of it. Someone had to nurture my sister. Neither of my parents were ever around to do it. Once my sister was born and I got to play mommy, as so many of us little girls desire to do, I began becoming very frusterated! I was always at home, cleaning up after everyone else, babysitting my sister. When I wasn't home, I was in school. I started to get so upset that one time, the one and only time to ever occur, I began abusing my sister. My poor, defenseless sister. She wasn't even a year old. She wasn't even old enough to hit me back! I sat and cried and cried after that. I've never totally recovered from that incident. People tell me it isn't my fault. I was a child in an adult's world. But I don't buy very many excuses. Noone made me lift my arm to hit her. Noone made me stay at my parent's house to endure the treatment I was recieving. I chose that. Much of life is based on our decisions. We can't blame anyone for what we do. Noone ever made me pick up that knife. As I got older, and my parents more emotionally abusive towards me, I began to talk to different teachers in junior high school. The first one told me to raise my self asteem. As far as I'm concerned, and ever will be concerned, she doesn't know beans about self asteem. She came from a well to do family. She had money and her world was not falling apart in front of her. Anyone who's fought depression, anyone who's tried to hide it, knows that high self asteem doesn't just jump out of the trees and holler to you to come and get it! If only it were that easy! Anyone who knew me five years ago could atest to the fact that I was not the person I am today. It has taken me a few years to come as far as I have. I had to work so hard to become a more positive person. It didn't happen over night, as the teacher who advised me thought it would. Then another year rolled around and I played with the idea of suicide. I found a different teacher to talk to. One that was much more understanding and sympathetic to me. I started to tell her of my toying around with ideas of suicide and she asked me for permission to talk to the principal about this and that she wouldn't give him my name. Well, anyone who knows anything about school policies, knows that when a student talks of suicide, social services gets to intervene. Well, social services got to intervene, and that was when my world really began to fall apart moreso then before. I really did toy with suicide and even tried it. I remember the night I tried to commit suicide. I grabbed a steak knife from the kitchen counter. I'd had it! I never thought things could get better. My sister was with my dad at my uncle's house feeding cows and my mom was at work. It was around 5 pm in the evening. I had just gotten off of the bus. I took a hour and sat in my room writing out an informal will. I was trying to decide who gets what. Really, it didn't matter. My parents would have had the choice legally. I sat in the chair in front of the window. I slowly "sawed" away at my left wrist. But, because God blessed me with little tollerence to pain, I had to stop. It hurt me too badly physically and emotionally. I couldn't do it anymore. I put the knife away, but I guess I had cut deeper then I thought because I had to wear long sleeves a lot longer then I had intended! But, because of my foolish action, I have to live with the scar, emotionally and physically, for the rest of my life. The scar has faded so people don't visibly see it when they look at my wrist anymore. That, I am thankful for! Then another year rolled around. I found yet a different teacher to talk to. This one was more of what I was looking for in a friend. He trusted me to do smart things, to be responsible for my actions. He listened to me and my thoughts on a subject. If I sent him a note and told him I was suicidal, he'd come and find me and talk to me before going to anyone else about itl. I really respected that about him! At one point I got hooked on caffine pills. He told me to get off of them. That they weren't good for me. I couldn't! When I would try, I go through withdrawl headaches. I simply couldn't take the pain! So I stayed on them for a while until a friend of mine treatened to take them and flush them down the toilet for me if I wouldn't do it myself. Well, I finally did flush them on my own. And for the next week, I had to suffer massive, painful headaches! But I'm over it and to this day, I react with caffine very easily. It really can get me going because I have become so sensetive to it now. And then there was the time during that same year that I got addicted to aspirin. I know it sounds pretty cheesy and unlikely to happen, but it did. I started getting stress headaches, so I'd pop an aspirin. Pretty soon I had to pop two at a time. Then three. Then four. Then I had to take them all day. I couldn't live without them. I finally had to make myself quit because it was too much. I didn't have the money, my parents were wondering where all the aspirin were going. How do you telly your parents, "Hey mom, I'm addicted to aspirin!" How many of you mothers out there would sympathize with your child if they said that? You'd probably look at them like they were out of their mind! When in fact, all I was doing was finding a way to hide the pain. Insead of drugs and alcohol, I did aspirin. I finally did quit them on my own, and as with the caffine pills, I hurt! I hurt so much physically. But at least that could blind my emotional pain. That pretty much sums up that year. Then another year rolls around and I find a new teacher to turn to. This one is totally new to the situation and didn't quite know how to deal with it. When I told him I'd think of suicide, he'd turn me into the principal. That was his job. By law, he had to do it. But how many of you would understand when social services is knocking on your door and threatening you to clean up your act or you get stuck in a mental hospital for a few months to clean it up for you? It just wasn't my idea of fun! I'd pretty much had it with any and everyone! In between all of this I'd had a couple more suicide atttempts. One of the next suicide attemtps I remember quite well. I was upset with my dad, we'd just had a fight. I was told to do the dishes, so I was unloading the dishwasher. I stopped when I'd grabbed a steak knife to put away. I sat down in the chair, my dad and sister were still in the living room, and started cutting away once again. I again stopped because it hurt too much. After this, when my parents found out about all of my cutting, I was made to show them my arms and legs every night before bed. I wasn't allowed to wear jewelry. I hated this daily ritual (thank goodness it ended after a couple of weeks!) and it totally humiliated me! I don't exactly remember when, it was sometime in December a few years ago, I was listening to the radio and heard Pam Thum sing, "Will You Come To Jesus," and that was when I gave my life to Jesus. I asked Him to cleanse me of my past sin, to forgive me. It was kind of a rocky walk with Him in the beginning. Since I couldn't drive to church and my parents weren't church goers, I didn't get to church very much. I did love going though. My relationship with my parents was a bit severed yet, but they finally realized that all the emotional abuse they were throwing at me wasn't doing it. It was hurting me and hurting them. At one point, my dad didn't talk to me for a week because he thought he was the cause to the problem. That certainly didn't help me get over it any faster! My faith continued to grow daily and I was a gung ho christain! I was totally into it after a couple of years. Then I met my husband. That was the best thing that has ever happened to me! He helped me to see that I am worth something and that I'm not just another person on this earth. He certainly was a God sent gift!!! I had been asking God to bless me with a person to help me to get over my mania (manic depression). My husband helped me so much. I moved out of my parents house the day of my 18th birthday. My mom came home from Iowa (she was visiting my grandpa who had just had a leg amputation), gave me a beautiful necklace/bracelet gift, and we said our goodbyes (I almost still cry at the memory), and I left. Things between my mom and I have gotten so much better since I moved out! I really do believe that was the best decision I ever made. My parents and I haven't fought in the last year! Then my husband and I got married about a year after I moved in with him. I am no one to judge anyone about pre-marital sex or having a live in boyfriend/girlfriend. I did it. But, I am proud to say, my only sex partner has and always will be, my husband. He was my first. I don't view it as sinful because it was a loving relationship and we were faithful to one another, and we did marry one another. I am currently working on restrengthening my relationship with God. I have a great marrige and I am in college for Dietary Management. I am 19 years old. I have had a hard life. Not all that I did was the best choices I could have made. But, I am proud to announce that I have learned to forgive myself for all of the pain that I have caused everyone and for the pain I had inficted upon myself. That is one of my biggest accomplishments so far. Besides marrying my husband. I owe everything to God and for Him blessing me with my friends who have helped me through this. This page is dedicated to: Jesus (for blessing me with my husband, wonderful friends, and healing relationship with my parents), & my friends: Kelly, Heidi, Shelly, Heather, Joleen & Sarah. Thank you for your help, guys! Without your help I wouldn't be as far as I have come to this day. May God bless your lives and hearts with joy and happiness and my you always know how much you really helped me, even if I never really told you how much you mean. This is my way of saying thanks! Thank you so much!!! May God bless everyone who reads this and may it help everyone along. I hope it has helped you along and helped to teach you that anything can be overcame with the help of God! TRUST HIM! Feel free to e-mail me and let me know what you think of this. I know it isn't fancy and nice, like so many web pages are! But my whole goal in life is to tell my story and hope that it can save at least one life. Don't let Satan bring you down. Let God help you up! There is so much that I'd like to say, but I never have enough time (my friends could attest to this)! Thanks to you all! God Bless!
