my family moved when i was in the seventh grade. part of my responsibilities that year was to occasionally start part of dinner when my parents would be getting home slightly late and i used to stand in the kitchen waiting for the water to boil and then put my hands into it. sometimes i would pick up the pot and hold it without potholders. to this day, i cannot come up with a reason why i did that or what made me think of doing it.
slightly before i started ninth grade, my sister got a manicure set as a gift. we were looking at the implements in it while we were watching tv, and i took the scissors and starting cutting out pieces of my wrist, almost without thinking. as i realized what i was doing, i pulled my sleeve down and took the scissors down to my room, where i kept on cutting.
i moved from scissors to shaving razors and knives and exacto-blades pretty quickly. things began to feel out of control. i started referring to si as "going half insane." there are countless entries in my journals from those years referring to "going half insane." i remember coining that term with the thought that comitting suicide would be going completely insane. i was suicidal only some of the time (okay, a lot of the time), and usually not while i was cutting myself, yet even then, there was a connection between SI and suicide.
halfway through my freshman year in high school i confided in my elementary school teacher. actually, after setting a time to talk with her, i found myself unable to speak and pushed my jacket sleeves up and showed her my arms. to this day i have no idea how she managed to keep my confidences for close to a year. i was 14, terrified and objectively? probably in a not insignificant amount of danger, yet this woman loved and loved me and though she kept putshing me to talk to my parents and to see a therapist, she did not ever break my confidences. (many years later, we talked about it, and she confessed to me that she'd spoken to her parents, to mental health workers and to friends (w/out using my name) about the situation and so many times had decided to tell my parents or school principal - but for any number of reasons never did. i still feel guilty about putting her in that position.
)
i knew something was really wrong with me and i didn't know how to fix it. i told my parents i wanted to see a psychiatrist, "because i thought i needed to be on medication." they took me to a therapist, who referred me to a psychiatrist. i began the years of medication-rotations and cycled through quite a few therapists. i had many disappointments and a great "victory" with effexor xr. i went back to being myself for about a year. i lost my appetite and close to 30 lbs on effexor, from an average/slim build, and the psychiatrist took me off of it, for health reasons. i was ok for another 6 months or so before falling apart again. i tried suicide, twice, and failed. i talked my way out of every proposed hospitalization and desperately, desperately tried to hide everything even slightly depression related. i succeeded and to this day have never been hospitalized. (a slightly silly victory...but one that's nevertheless meaningful to me.)
i never completely gave up SI but for a year or two I only injured every couple of months, and not seriously. in college, things fell apart again. the administration got involved. i went through several therapists and found them unable to help me. i went back on effexor, lost more weight, and found to my dismay that the pills were no longer working. i went through a series of medication changes. in frustration and with the sincere belief that therapy could not help, i took myself off of all meds and out of therapy. i struggled through another year. i tried to kill myself, again. my amazingly supportive friends kept me alive throughout everything and just kept loving me.
my senior year in college i had a final, extremely serious, suicide attempt. the good news was that it spurred me to pull myself together. i found a new, excellent, therapist and my psychiatrist took a risk in deciding to prescribe a tricyclic antidepressant. before they'd always said i was too high of a suicide risk to take a tricyclic. i expected nothing. and then, one day, about 11 weeks after i started the new medicine, i looked up from my desk one day and discovered that i "didn't feel terrible." I remember looking around and slowly realizing that, not only did i not feel "terrible," i actually felt okay. it was the first time in years that i felt okay.
things have kept looking up from there. it's been about a year and a half since i've SIed or had any serious suicidal ideation. i had one serious, week long slip that we addressed by tweaking my medication and seeing some pretty quick results. i graduated college, held down a meaningful job for a year, successfully, and applied and was accepted to graduate school.
i still find myself thinking "half insane" thoughts or even just negative and defeatist thoughts. I've learned to actively change my thinking patterns and to effect change within my own mind and life. i consider myself healthy (for the most part!) and not a second passes for me without feeling grateful adn thankful and amazed that i've come as far as i have.
that's it, in a (large) nutshell......
thanks for reading! replies and pms welcomed.
sarah
) 
A bit lost...
I would say it found me....
- May
