I recently started taking mood stabilizer again. It took me a long time to decide to go back on medication because I hated the chemicals making me less me. Depriving the way, I feel my feelings. My feelings are like oxygen, I can’t live without it. I was and I still am, too dependent on my feeling. Feeling is living. But I can’t. People do bring the absolute worst colors in me, and usually, they are the ones that I love, deeply. I want their attention if that means hurting them, hurting me also. Gaining their attention made me feel seen, and the way I got attention also made me want to disappear. It is my pattern, from an early age.
Broke up with my first partner, the girl that I in love with for almost seven years broke my heart. The pain twisted me, it wasn’t the worst color for her, but for me, it was the only time I abandoned myself in my life for thirty-one years.
She cheated on me with one of her best friends. The girl who was ugly, unattractive, dull, but loveable. Despite all that, I guess it was hard to stay in love with me because I loved hard, and I still am. It was both too safe and a burden for her. She left me. I begged, begged, and begged. She refused to come back.
Since the abandonment of my mother and the absence of my father, I was so alone. She became the center of my whole world. That scared her and scared me too. She was my girlfriend, my mother, my father, my friend, my caretaker, my oxygen, my water, and everything. She was frightened. No one, no one could comfortably carry someone rotten and dying inside.
So, I went to the drugstore and got a bottle of sleeping pills. I want to erase myself from myself, but not from others. I couldn’t bear the pain of another loved one leaving. But I want her to regret sitting next to my bed crying by my dead body. It was a childlike suicide attempt. It was one of the darkest nights, that was so long I thought the dawn would never come.
On the night streets, everything around me seemed ordinary and in peace. Except for me, I was a soaked towel, heavy. I trembled on the road walking back to my home alone. Every street I had passed was soaked by me. I couldn’t remember when was the last time my father had come back. The kitchen door was closed all the time, during the evening, rats would come out looking for food, making sounds of collision of pots and pans. I lay on my one-meter childhood bed, the warm white light was dim and somehow turned gray. I called her crying, she said she would come over. She did. Grabbed my hand putting it into her underwear, making me touch her clitoris to make her cum. Then she left at 10 pm.
Silence was the harshest province. I swallowed half a bottle of the pills and lay on the bed. Every inch of my body was numb, my heart, my lung, my throat, my fingertips, my toes, even my eyebrow. I waited for a while, but nothing. I wanted to die, but that seemed impossible just like she would never come back again. So, I rushed into the kitchen, no fear of rats and cockroaches, just fear of not being able to close my eyes. I grabbed a fruit knife with a cream plastic handle, went back to bed started cutting my wrist using the tip of the knife. I was terrified of knives or anything sharp as if only looking at them could cut open my skin.
Threatened.
The sharp pain of the knife cutting open my skin brought down my tears. I could still smell her on my fingers. Pathetic. Tears couldn’t measure the amount of suffering. It was hopeless. I was desperate for death. Why didn’t I feel eager to close my eyes besides the pain? I needed to sleep, a deep unconscious permanent sleep. I took another half bottle of pills. I got more and more angry, I was angry at myself being so weak and twisted to beg her to come back, beg my mother not to leave, beg my father to stay with me. I begged myself to stop begging. I was so angry that I was cursing myself while cutting my wrist in the same spot. I could feel my skin opened layer by layer followed by each cut. The physical pain vanished, and the blood drilled out from the wound, first was a drop, then a line.
I woke up at 5 am, feeling my heart was failing. Trembled down to the bathroom, feeling hard to breathe. The dizziness and the weakness made me feel my body was fading and detached. I was scared, wanting to call 120 (911) but I was too self-conscious to do so. What if they found out I took pills, I didn’t know what the process was like. Call them, give them my address then wait for them to pick me up and put me on a trundle bed then get on the ambulance? Instead, I called my father. His phone was turned off. It was the most despairing moment I’ve ever had. No one, no one could save me. I lay on the floor outside the bathroom because I couldn’t stand and sit still waiting for death. I called my aunt’s boyfriend, I knew he wasn’t asleep, they have a snack stall that is open 24/7.
He picked up the phone. I told him to come to take me to the hospital because I couldn’t breathe. Ten minutes later, he was knocking on the door hard. I used all my effort to open the door, and he said he would carry me down, I lived on the fifth floor. But I was too tall. He then dragged me down with both my legs dragging on the stairs. The hospital was quiet and bright, the doctor in the emergency room was taking a nap. He absentmindedly asked me what was going on. I told him I couldn’t breathe. He asked me if I was on my period, and I said no. He said: well, you might’ve gotten cold. He prescribed some cold medicine to me and then sent us away.
I slept on the plastic chair outside their snack stall until 7 am when he finished his shift. He took me to my aunt and his home. I slept on my cousin’s bed. Deep sleep. When I suddenly woke up with a rapid shortness of breath, I sat on the bed, feeling my lungs swell. It was 9 in the morning, I felt like I was dying. I didn’t want to die anymore, the fear of dying climbed up slowly. I pushed myself off the bed, holding onto the wall walking to my aunt and his bedroom. They were asleep. He was snorting, my aunt’s sleep dress was on her wrist, and I saw her black lace underwear in between her legs. I shook her shoulder, she opened her eyes with irritation.
“Take me to the hospital, I can’t breathe.”
“You will be fine. It’s just cold, go back to sleep.”
“No, take me to the hospital, I can’t breathe. Please.”
She went back to sleep.
Why does no one ever listen to my needs? How sorrowful this is?
I shook her again, she turned back toward me. I climbed onto their bed, kneeled on the bed, leaned down, and burry my face in my hands, like when Buddhists pray for their god. I cried and said: I beg you please take me to the hospital, I can’t breathe.”
She didn’t respond.
“Please, I beg you. Please. Please. I can’t breathe.”
Nothing.
“Aunt, I beg you to please take me to the hospital…”
She sat up. Cursed and said I was annoyed to death.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Why can’t you breathe??”
“Please take me to the hospital.”
“Where is your dad?”
“I couldn’t find him.”
“It’s always me who takes care of this shit. He never being responsible even once. Fucking asshole.” She got off the bed, talking to herself or to me too.
She called my father, and he finally picked up the phone. She told him I couldn’t breathe, it looked really bad, that I might need to go to the hospital.
“He will meet us in the hospital in half an hour. Can you wait?”
“I can’t.”
“You have to wait whether you can or not. I got to go brush my fucking teeth and wash my face.”
I still kneel on the bed and bury my face in my hands. I was sweaty, the tears all over my face and hands. Why did I do this to myself?
The hospital was close to her house, so she refused to spend money to take a taxi. She told me to walk myself, but I couldn’t. So she put my arm around her shoulder, she dragged me walking.
“What happened to you? Why can’t you even walk?” She started to worry.
On the way to the hospital was the toughest walk I’ve ever had, my head was falling to the height of my knees.
“Here, your dad is there.”
I saw him standing on the sidewalk, the hospital just across the road. The moment I saw him, my body collapsed. I needed to let go of being strong, I needed someone to carry me physically and emotionally. He was frightened to see me like this. Growing up, I was an athlete in the school, he never saw me as weak as this. He carried me on his back and took me back to the emergency room.
I did an ECG and X-ray of my lungs. They found nothing. I keep quiet about what happened last night. I didn’t want to be blamed. I didn’t want to explain. It wasn’t something that could be explained either. They put me in an emergency room, the same room where my grandfather had passed away a few years ago. They gave me an oxygen tube stuck in my nose to make it easier to breathe.
My father found the empty pill bottle in the pocket of my coat.
“Did you eat this?” He shook the bottle in his hand. “What is this?”
I didn’t say anything. I have nothing to say. He wouldn’t understand, no one would.
He exhaled and put the bottle back in my pocket. It was not something people could easily talk about. The easiest way was to remain silence. Pretend nothing terrible was happening. We close our eyes, pretending that we create the darkness, and so can we create the light.
The doctor refuses to keep me in the hospital. He said I wasn’t going through something life-threatening. At the time, we didn’t know about mental illness, anxiety, or panic attacks. We were ignorant. My father didn’t want to deal with me, so he called my grandmother.
Growing up, I never was my grandmother’s favorite, but she took care of me and gave me her second love. That was the best I could get. She took a bus came to the hospital then took me home.
She put me on her bed. My cousin was playing a video game in another room. Seeing how weak I was it hurt her. She made me some chicken soup noodles. The moment I ate, I vomited back into the bowl.
“哎呀，好造孽。别吃了，睡觉吧.”
“Poor girl. No need to eat then, go to sleep.” She helped me lay down.
I didn’t know how long I was lying in bed. The difficulty of breathing made all my sensations fade away. Every time I inhaled, I could feel the length of my breath in my lungs, it was half as long as my little finger. Every time I inhale, my chest arches like an arch bridge, and my body shrinks like a heart. My grandmother, grandfather, and my cousin were eating in the dining room. I felt like dying again, so I called her. But my voice was too small and weak, nobody could hear me. I waited. My breathing wouldn’t slow down. It was the first time I felt breathing was exhausting. If dying means going through so much physical pain, I couldn’t endure it, so I decided to give up. I held up my breath, the entire room turned upside down and spinning. I was sliding away from the reality, I was going away. The next moment I was conscious was when I had a huge oxygen that went into my lungs, and that was when I noticed I passed out. Then the nightmare started all over again. The difficulty breathing, the held-up breaths, passed out, wakening by my body’s primal survival reflexes. Those were the closest moment I was so close to death.
Grandmother came in, looking at my body cramp alerted her. I heard her called father telling him she thought I might die. She then came back and told me that my father was a useless man who didn’t even care even when she told him I might die. She said he told her the doctor said I was fine.
If not dying meant fine, I guess nothing matters. I wonder where he learned the concept of Japanese Zen.
Grandmother sitting next to me, touching my forehead told me I would be okay. I raised my hand, she put her hand in mine. I believed I would die that night, so I told her in a weak voice that I was sorry. I was so sorry for all the moments that upset her. In the end, she was the only one right next to me. She cried and told me not to be stupid.
Grandmother was in her early seventies, she didn’t sleep all night. Putting water on my lips due to difficulty breathing my lips were all dried and covered with blood. Taken me to the bathroom. Helping me change position in the bed. It was a long, long night.
The next morning, she took me back to the emergency room. I stayed there for seven days, just breathing oxygen.
I survived.
When my therapist asked me questions about suicide and assessing my possibility of suicide. I told her I would never abandon myself again.
A time to die, a time to be born.
