Life or Death

       I had overdosed on all of my many medications and in doing so thought I had assured my own death. Obviously, since you're reading, this I was wrong. Scared but determined, I went to my room, sat at my computer, and on it was my open Facebook chat. In that chat I saw one of my brothers online. I decided that it would be nice to talk to someone one last time before I die and so I messaged him telling him what I did, looking for comfort I suppose. Naturally he or someone he contacted called 911 but at the time I didn't think they could do anything to save me. I was only 15 after all. In the ambulance ride to the hospital I started to black out but the paramedics stuck a breathing tube down my throat which caused involuntary gag reflexes that kept me from passing out. When I got to the hospital they immediately made me drink a cup of charcoal, which absorbed the medication in my stomach thus saving my life. If you're curious charcoal in liquid form looks disgusting and tastes even worse than it looks.

       While in the hospital I got lots of calls from friends and family, who basically told me how upset they would be if I were gone from their lives. These calls didn't cheer me up very much, but they did guilt me into realizing and accepting that if I end my life I would be doing harm to others not just myself. And so I would carry on living for the sake of others rather than myself. Not a very ideal way to live I'm sure you'd agree but it was all I had to go on.

     As is standard protocol after a suicide attempt I was sent to a psych ward for children at a hospital. It was probably the most boring week of my life. Stuck in a ward with kids sometimes as young as 10 with every mental illness you can imagine and very little to keep yourself occupied. I'd meet a couple of times with a doctor who didn't seem to understand my situation or me at all. I'm guessing they weren't used to having teenagers with rare chronic pain conditions that forced them into depression, so can't say I blame them very much for that. I was released fairly quickly but nothing truly got done so I went home in the same state as I left except with the shadow of guilt involved with leaving loved ones to motivate me.  There was still the result of even more school being missed so at this point it become apparent I wouldn't pass some of my courses. With the help of the guidance office I picked courses to drop so I could focus on the rest of them. With the assistance of the Facebook note sharing group my friend made for me I passed those chosen courses (barely in most cases) but would not be able to return to all those that helped me at the Hebrew high school for the rest of my high school years.

       The summer of 2011 was a very important year for my age group at camp. It was the year when my age group from Canad goes to Israel with the same aged group from the sister camp in America for most of the summer. We had already met and been in contact with our friends at the sister camp and pretty much all of out interactions had been hyping up this summer. In fact, pretty much every year at camp you get hyped up about this trip and how it will be the best thing you will ever experience. Accepting that I have to instead sit at home in pain while all of my camp friends were in Israel and all of my school friends were at camp was very difficult. I had spent a year collaborating with my councilors on ways to make me going to Israel work out but a repeat of my family's trip to Israel is the last thing I could bear at that point. With my prospects of a fun summer obliterated I instead subjected myself to summer school at a small private school to try to catch up. Unfortunately most (not all) of the people at summer school are those who were too lazy to get their work done during the normal school year and so were people I had nothing in common with. T'was a summer of loneliness and disappointment.