My mind was all I could hear. A civil war in my own mind. How f*cked up is that? 

“Breathe, Steph, BREATHE!” That was all I could tell myself as I paced my bedroom, forming craters with each step. I secretly wondered if my eardrums were to bust, maybe that would relieve the drowning pressure in my head. “STOP!” I screamed into the empty house, falling to my knees in pain. My skull seemed to shrink in on my brain, creating enough pressure to compete with Little Boy. A godd*mn nuclear bomb. All I wanted, all I NEEDED was something to relieve the pressure. The pressure of sorrow. The pressure of loneliness, despair, depression.

Then I spotted it. Sitting on my nightstand in all of its glory. Its oil spill-colored frame gleamed under the light of my lamp. The yellow light seemed to focus on the knife like a spotlight for there was no other light. No light in the night sky, no light in the empty house.

“No, Steph, don’t do it. You’re not there yet.” I told my brain. For years I claimed I would never get to this point. This would not be the night. What I was painfully aware of, however, was that my thoughts did not reach my racing mind. They seemed to instead, deflect off its surface like a stone on the river.

“DO IT.” My mind screamed in my head. “You need to. Just f*cking do it, you COWARD!”

“NO!” I screamed back.

“YES! It’s the only option!”
“I don’t want to!”

“But you need to!”

I was officially at that point. This was, indeed, the night. My mind seemed to take control of my body, leading me to pick up the knife with a shaky hand and walk in a trance-like state to the bathroom. I no longer had control. The demon inside of me had it all. The demon I call depression.

“No,” was the last thing I was able to whisper as heart-wrenching sobs racked my body. Sobs that have been held in for months. Emotions that had never been comforted by another being.

With that last, useless plea, I unfolded the knife and plunged it into my thigh. No pain. No sting. No regret. Just blood. Lots of it. With that followed immense relief and manic laughter followed by sobs.

"As long as the evil deed done does not bear fruit, the fool thinks it is like honey; but when it ripens, then the fool suffers grief." This is what Eknath Easwaran states in The Dhammapada. Have you ever committed an evil deed that came back to bite you in the ass later on in life? The answer for me would be an enormous YES! 

Following the breakdown I experienced above, another one occurred. This one included calling the Idaho Suicide Hotline twice in four days. Everything finally capped on October 20, 2021. This time, I was driven to the closest hospital and put on suicide watch. 

As I sat in that hospital bed for hours on end, the only thing I could bring myself to question was how did I end up here? I remember very vividly, being in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, promising to my parents, my counselor, and everyone around me that no matter how bad things got, I would never self-harm nor commit or even consider suicide. I was extremely adamant about this, feeling that these acts would be selfish, illogical, irresponsible, and just plain dumb. I wasn’t wrong, but I did break those promises. I have to give myself a break, though. I’d never gone through depression in its finest and didn’t understand what your mind could do to you. I was really f*cking clueless.

Now here I am. Lying in a hospital bed under suicide watch, with scars and wounds riddling my arms and legs. I did, indeed, commit that evil deed. So where does the story go from here? I’ll tell you where it goes. Let’s take a trip up to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, shall we? 

October 21, one day after my hospital admission, I was sent up to Kootenai Behavioral Health Youth Acute. I was told by my doctors, nurses, therapists, and psychiatrists that I would be there for around five days. This is understandable considering the average stay there is five days. This is never the case with me, though! Average is boring! No, I was there pushing two weeks. 12 days. Holy. Sh*t. Those are my thoughts, too.

So after all of this bullsh*t, what did I learn? That is a more complicated question. I definitely learned new coping, communication, and distraction strategies. But what about the bigger picture? My actual mental health. As of right now, Roughly two weeks out of Kootenai Health, my mental health is around the same. I have committed mirrored actions from the past as well. However, the upside everyone is looking for, my days have been better overall. With the help of puzzles, school, my niece, 24-hour supervision from my parents, having all hazardous objects locked up, and my medication, I feel better overall. Without all of this, my base mental health still sucks as it did before Kootenai, but this is a start. I really learned who will be there to help you in the long run, who to have the utmost respect for, and who to trust. How to have better days and ignore those devastating thoughts. It’s a start. A small one at that, but a step forward. A turn in the right direction. I chip in the mountain that makes up myself.

Sources:

“The Dhammapada: The Buddha’s Path of Wisdom.” Trans. from the Pali by Acharya Buddharakkhita, with an introduction by Bhikkhu Bodhi. Accesstoinsight.org, Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 30 Nov. 2013.