TRIGGER WARNING
This post will be going into detail about my suicide attempts. If you struggle with the topic of suicide attempts, this post may not be the one for you. Check out another post of mine! Trigger warnings are posted on all of the posts that include topics similar to this. That being said, let’s get into it!
March 8th, 2020 will be a day my family never forgets. My parents had just flown into Omaha from a vacation with their friends in Jamaica. They’d flown in from Chicago fairly late on that Sunday night, so they decided to stay the night in Omaha and then come back Monday morning. Meanwhile, my grandparents were responsible for watching my sisters and me, which had been a fight for weeks before my parents left. In January, I’d been suicidal and in another psychiatric hospital, so they didn’t want my sister to have to watch me like an eagle to make sure I didn’t harm myself. I’d been embarrassed to be seventeen and have to have my grandparents stay overnight while my parents were out of town, but looking back on it now, I’m so thankful they were there. It was a Sunday night around six when I made the decision. I made the decision to end my life. My grandparents had left us alone most of the day due to my cousin’s wrestling tournament, but told us that morning if we cleaned our rooms, we could stay home from church. Although things had been stable the entire week, I was struggling majorly, but didn’t want to ruin my parent‘s trip. After my grandparents had dropped off my sisters and I’s favorite meal, Subway, I decided I couldn’t eat it. I couldn’t eat it because I was sick to my stomach thinking about what I was going to do in a matter of hours. It was after my sister who watches me like a hawk got in the shower that I went in my parents room to see if I could find the key to the filing cabinet where they stored our pills. I remember looking frantically in nightstands, dress drawers, but finally I found it in a little vase. I found around four bottles of pills once I got into the cabinet and stuck them all in my sweatshirt hoodie. I hid them in my nightstand drawer as soon as I got back to my room. It was around eight when I went to take a shower. I remember sobbing silently, begging and pleading with God for this to be the last time I ever cried in this shower. The shower drain had collected thousands of my tears throughout my life, but I wanted those to be the last. When I got back to my room, I remembered putting on a pair of red plaid pajama pants with a black tshirt I had gotten from post prom my sophomore year. Thoughts like never going to prom again, never going to another speech meet, never graduating didn’t matter to me anymore. It was around ten when my grandma came in my room to say goodnight, then my grandpa who said goodnight and asked if I’d needed up early for speech. I told him I did and we’d agreed he’d wake me up at six. I waited a few hours, in that time I wrote suicide notes. Notes for my parents, my sisters, my favorite teacher, my former speech coaches, my best friend. It wasn’t until later when I went to the kitchen and began filling water bottles. I remember silently shutting my door so I didn’t wake anyone,hoping it’d be the last time. I swallowed the pills by the handful, tears hitting my brand new comforter, the comforter I had gotten for Christmas when I spent my whole Christmas break redecorating my room. I started getting very very hot and got this awful headache. I’d one pill bottle left, but decided I’d save it till morning. I said one last prayer, begging God to take me to Heaven, even though I was sinning. I didn’t feel regret or remorse at that moment. I dozed off to sleep, hoping it’d be the last night I ever went to sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night, in what I thought was a dream, and vomited all over my new sheets, my new pillow cases, my new comforter, everything, but I was so tired I couldn’t even get myself to get up and go to the bathroom, so I laid in my pool of vomit. It wasn’t until around seven when my sister came to wake me up, both my grandpa and I slept through our alarms and I’d missed speech practice. My sister shook me, but couldn’t wake me up. She went to get my grandpa, but he couldn’t wake me up either. I then began seizing. My sister FaceTimed my mom and she was so incredibly shocked, she didn’t want to believe I’d just attempted suicide again because things had been going well. Two ambulance rides, two hospitals, and one psychiatric facility later, I’m glad to say I’m here. God planned everything in that situation perfectly. He knew my grandparents needed to be there, despite me wanting to be independent. He knew to not let me wake up that morning to take another bottle of pills. He knew it all and that’s why I’m here.
The guilt of surviving while so many others don’t. The guilt of the trauma I put my sisters through. The guilt of the hospital bills. The guilt of so many other things that go along with a suicide attempt are things I struggle with daily. A zillion thoughts take over my mind whenever I think about March 8th, 2020. At seventeen-years-old, it’s hard to understand it all. Understand why my mind works the way it does, understand how to get myself help, understand “why me?” out of everyone on this planet. Although these are questions I ask myself at seventeen, I’m sure there’s a lot of adults that don’t know the answers to those questions and that’s ok.
A zillion thoughts flood my mind when I think of March 8th, 2020. I ask God often, why me? Why me out of the thousands of people who want to live? Why me, who doesn’t want to live, versus the seven-year-old with cancer who wants to live to experience all of things I’ve gotten to experience in my short time on Earth. Why me versus the Veteran who ended his own life after the traumatic events he endured while in Iraq?Although no one besides God can answer that question, I have to wait patiently to one day find that answer. I remember talking to a teacher one day after a rough day, this same teacher also suffered with depression during their lifetime. I told her that I know I’m fighting this battle for a reason, maybe the reason she fought through it was to be a support system for me, and maybe the reason I’m fighting it is so that one day I can be there for someone else like she was there for me so many days. Everything happens for a reason is something I have to tell myself whenever the guilt takes over. Maybe God have me a second chance so that I’d be able to share my story and help give someone the courage to share theirs. Last night, someone I knew reached out to me on social media sharing with me that they felt depressed and hopeless. I shared with this individual somethings that have helped me get through those dark and overwhelming thoughts. Something as simple as sharing that information could’ve saved their life, that moment right there could’ve been the reason God gave me a second chance.
Not only do I suffer the guilt of wondering why God chose me over someone else, but I feel the guilt anytime I look at either of my sisters. Not only do I feel guilt for them watching their older sister feel so much hatred toward herself that she wanted to end her life, but also for all of the years their childhood was ruined because of my mental illness. I think the siblings of any child that suffer with an illness, suffer just as much as the child with the illness. My sisters suffered while we weren’t able to do things as a family because I wanted to be alone, so our family of five, was a family of four. My sisters suffered as all of my parent‘s attention was put on me
from taking me to doctor’s appointments, taking me to hospitals, helping me calm down. The guilt of depriving my sisters of a normal childhood is something I will carry on my back forever. The guilt of my sisters’ having a traumatic memory of their older sister laying in her own vomit with suicide notes written to both of them is something I will carry on my back forever. In my suicide note, I’d wrote to each of my sisters. The part that sticks out in my mind is the words, ”I’m sorry for taking your childhood. I pray that some day you forgive me for that.” I still mean those words even two months later. Although it’s hard for a fourteen-year-old and tweve-year-old to forgive someone who took something so special away from them, I pray one day they forgive me. I pray one day God helps them find peace of mind from what they saw in my bedroom at 7am on March 8th, 2020. I pray that however many years we have left together are spent making up for lost time. The fact I remember nothing from my suicide attempt bothers me greatly. I ask about it often, just trying to connect the dots, but asking my fourteen-year-old sister to recall the events of that day, breaks my heart. You can see the pain in her eyes, realizing on that very day she could’ve lost her older sister. Whenever I was released from the hospital, my mom let me read the texts people had sent her, regarding me. Although I probably shouldn’t have read this conversation, I did. My sister admitted for my mom a traumatic moment from that day. The moment she had pushed me in order to wake me up, when she did so, she saw my eyes. They were wide open, my eyes were huge, my pupils were giant, and that moment will be something she lives with forever. I believe the whole event brought my sisters and I closer together. After it all, I believe we realized life is too short to fight over clothes or hit each other even if they are normal sister things.
I deal with the “what if’s,” often. I ask myself, “What if I would’ve died?” As gory as the thoughts of wondering who would be grieving my death and who would be attending my funeral are, it’s these questions that lead me to guilt. The guilt of wondering how long it’d be until my mom was able to function, how long it’d be until my dad could go back to Sioux City, how long it’d be till my sisters would go back to school. There’s all of the guilt of thinking about how much pain and suffering my death could’ve put so many people through if the outcome would’ve been different. What if my grandparents hadn’t stayed with us for the week and my sisters overslept and I wasn’t found in time? What if I would’ve gotten up to my alarm and finished the bottle of pills? These are the what if’s I’m glad will never happen.
I live with the guilt of frivolous things such as the guilt of waking up first responders early on a Monday morning, the guilt of all the paperwork the medical professionals had to do, the guilt of hospital bills. Looking at the bigger picture, I shouldn’t feel guilty for living. I shouldn’t feel guilty for everyone seeing my messy room, I shouldn’t feel guilty for being the reason my parents and their friends had to rush home, I shouldn’t feel guilty for people who decided to disown me after all of it was said and done, I shouldn’t feel guilty for my grandma having to clean up my vomit, I shouldn’t feel guilty because I’m here and I’m alive. I can feel sorry for waking up everyone earlier than they anticipated, I can feel sorry for the EMTs and nurses who had to do paperwork, I can feel sorry for my parents and the amount of money my mental health has cost, but at least it wasn’t the cost of a funeral. I can feel sorry for all of those things, but I can’t be sorry for God’s choice to give me a second chance. I may have been angry with God the first few days after realizing I still had to deal with this, but now I’m grateful and feel fortunate to have been given a second chance.
Although these thoughts creep into my mind often, I’d much rather live with them rather than the consequences of what I‘d wanted to happen that night. The guilt will go away as I get older and as I mature. Some of the guilt may always b there, but that event has shaped me into the person I am today and that’s something I’ll never be ashamed of. I will never feel guilty to say, I’m Taylor Schaaf and I’m a two time suicide attempt survivor.