100 Miles and Running

TypeOne

The depression that followed my breakup with Alex changed my life. Some would have argued I was being dramatic or that I just wanted attention. But I had real feelings for him, and losing him triggered a severe depression. My illness went into overdrive. I laid awake every night that summer, crying until I couldn't breathe or I threw up. I developed this feeling. I described it to friends, and eventually the psychiatrist, as water. I felt like my chest was filling with hot water, and there was all this pressure across my body that I desperately needed to get out of me. It had been a few years, but old habits die hard. In a frenzy to rid my body of this feeling, I got my razor out of my shower, broke it open, and got a small blade.

At first it was my thighs. No one ever saw them so it was a perfectly hidden place. I ran the flimsy blade up and down my thigh, trailing red lines, until the pressure was gone. It was hard to explain that bleeding made the water go away. Maybe the localized physical pain was enough of a distraction. But I had found my solution at last.

It became a frequent thing, my thighs scattered with red lines, scars of different healing stages. At some point it wasn't enough anymore. You see, the thigh doesn't bleed as easily as some other body parts. I wasn't bleeding enough, I wasn't getting the water out. I had never slit my wrists before. That was such a cliché. Plus everyone knows that you go down the road, not across the street, for full effect. So maybe just one. But it bled so smoothly, that one became two, became three, became ten. There was blood everywhere and I cried harder, louder, to the point that it awoke my mother.

When she came through my door, I just kept screaming "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I couldn't stop! I'm sorry!" She started to cry. What had her baby done? She cleaned me up, took my blades, and we didn't talk about it. Until it happened again.

Somewhere around the third time she found me screaming, arms covered in blood, she decided I needed help. She took me to a clinic to be evaluated. I had never admitted to her, or anyone really, about how I had always felt. I wasn't just depressed after the breakup.

I had my first depressive episode at 8 years old. I wrote my mom a note telling her how tired I was. How I was just exhausted from life, and I didn't know how I would live the rest of it feeling this way. At 8 you don't really understand how to kill yourself. So I wrote to her, to just leave me alone in my room to eventually die. In retrospect it makes no sense, and some have even laughed at me because it sounded stupid. But at 8, just a third grade child, I knew life would be too difficult and I was ready to cash out and avoid it. But my mom never saw the note. After I stopped crying, I tore it up, threw it in the trash, and fell asleep.

Fast forward to 19, and I'm sitting in an empty room aside from the two chairs against a wall. That room was depressing enough to do yourself in. I'm asked question after question:

"Have you ever thought about suicide?"

Yes.

"Have you ever had a plan to commit suicide?"

Yes.

"Why did you cut yourself?"

I had to. The pain, the water. I just had to.

"Do you hear voices or see things that aren't there?"

No, I'm not crazy.

"Are you going to kill yourself if you go home?"

No.

They released me with a diagnosis. Bipolar Disorder Type 1 Depressive. They didn't explain anything about it. But when I got home I did research, and everything made sense. From the severe depression to the impulsive tendencies, the promiscuity, the lethargy, the occasional emptiness. My whole life was right there.

Colson really helped me through that summer and the months that followed, where I was still a wreck and I needed a shoulder to cry on. They start you on medication when you're diagnosed, but meds take time to work, and some just don't work for some people. So I kept cutting here and there. I would text him at night crying, telling him what I did, and begging him to let me die. But he would always talk me back down. He would tell me to stop hurting myself, how much he cared about me, and how much it would hurt him if I were gone.

We grew closer. He became my best friend. And those days of him helping me through the worst of my depression set the stage for something more.