Blog Challenge: Day Five

I'm beginning to wonder why I picked this blog challenge. These topics are pretty heavy for a sarcasm filled blog like mine. However, I'm up for a challenge. I'm not ashamed of the way I feel so there's no reason not to write about it. After today though, it's all love! If there is anyone reading this though, please comment! I like to know who's actually reading my thoughts and feelings! Don't be scared!

This next post is by far my life's most personal story. I am not ashamed of this particular time in my life. Some of you know this story, some know parts of it and others know nothing. There is not one person alive that knows the entire story so there is lots more to be said about it, but by the end you will know more than enough. I don't share it to get pity, because that's the one thing I don't want. I share it so that people realize there are real problems that real kids go through at lots of different ages. I think more people need to talk about it.

Day Five Challenge: A Time I Thought About Ending My Own Life

I was 11 the first time I tried to kill myself. I had gotten to a point in my life that I wanted to be done. I thought I couldn't possibly take it anymore and my only option was to die. Obviously, I wasn't successful at my attempt.

I was in sixth grade. I had somehow convinced myself that I had become friends with the popular group of girls at school. I sat with them at lunch, I played with them at recess and I even had sleepovers with them on the weekends. I suppose some might call that friendship. I thought so. One day, however, they all stopped talking to me. Just like that. I had no idea what I had done, I just felt panicked and afraid. A few days later a boy in my class came up to me and told me he had heard I was a lesbian. I had no idea what he was talking about and he just explained that that's what everyone was saying. Sure enough, it was. The entire grade (and I'm sure others) were talking about it. My so-called friends had been the ones to start the rumors. I suddenly had zero friends. I would walk alone, eat alone, sit alone at recess. People would point and laugh at me. I was called horrible names. The people I thought were my friends laughed about it and pushed the rumors further. I honestly had no idea why it was so bad to be called a lesbian, I just knew that no one wanted to come close to me or be my friend.

On it's own, I might had gotten over this. I like to think I would have been able to handle making new friends and moving on. What destroyed me is what was going on away from school.

For a number of years, including the time I was going through this at school, I was being regularly physically and sexually abused by someone my family knew well. No one knew about it. It was just me and my abuser in a sick little game. I was threatened with the immediate death of both me and my parents if I told anyone. I believed it entirely. I lived my life in terror. I was afraid to be alone, afraid to sleep, even afraid to shower. It consumed me.

I saw myself as worthless. I hated myself, no one else could possibly love me. I didn't know how to lift myself up. I needed something that I couldn't grab hold of. I felt a shadow over me all the time. I sobbed every night as I tried to force myself to sleep.

At 11 years old, I felt I had no where to go. I was alone in my darkest place. Instead of telling my parents and watching them face certain death, I knew my life would be the one less missed. One day, I swallowed a bottle of pills. I uncontrollably threw it up shortly after.

I'm not really sure how I did make it through. A large part of me surviving gets credited to the girls that became my friends later in the year. They took me in and loved me, no matter what the other kids said. I'm still friends with those girls and I can't even express how grateful I am for them.

I know that what I went through at that part of my life shapes who I am today, but it certainly doesn't define me. I feel lucky all the time that I ended up a happy, healthy person. My life could have gone in a very different direction. I do carry it with me, but now I walk over it instead of letting it hang above me.