I'm gonna tell you a story that is funny at some moments, really sucky at times, mildly uncomfortable at the bridges and socially awkward in the middle. You're welcome to hold the person's hand next to you, and squeeze it when it gets scary in here. This is an exercise in being a writer again and holds nothing back.
Chapter 1
When I was nine years old, there was this adult that the planet of Me revolved around. She lived in Lima, OH in a doublewide and had three sons who were about 10 years older than me.
She was the kind of aunt who kept her fingernail polish in the refrigerator and would, yes, of course paint your tiny nine year old nails with polka dots or zebra stripes, your choice. She would get in the car and go buy the gel frosting to write your name on your cupcake. She would sneak you out of the trailer window at dusk to take you to see Fievel Goes West at your parents' disapproval. She also took you to get your ears pierced at a Christian's inappropriate age.
She slept on the floor beside me in sleeping bags every other weekend when we were there; even though her adult bed paid for by adult dollars was only an adult's arm-length away. She was just as enamored with Beauty and the Beast in the theater as me; I'll never forget the same youthful look on her face against the flickering yellow dress when I looked at her...as a seven year old expecting her to give me that "Oh, I know little one, it's so cool" look. But she didn't even notice me looking back at her, she was glued to Belle dancing across that big screen.
I bought clothes that looked like hers. I bought boots cuz she only ever wore boots. I counted the school days in between getting down to Lima and going roller skating or drinking hot chocolates like adults or making Christmas ornaments with her. There was no safer place in my life, in the world, than laying across her legs, with her Lee press-on nails ghosting across my back gently.
Sometime around the summer of 1990, she met a guy who would become her second husband. I did not like him from the first time I met him. Some could have argued it was blatant jealousy on my part. She no longer slept on the floor with me in my Rainbow Brite sleeping bag. Her nail polish was replaced by his beer in the fridge. Sometimes she had this look on her face that my retarded dancing couldn't brighten. I even started to annoy her.
It was the morning of Nov 11, 1992 when I was getting ready for school in my new "mexican skirt" just like Aunt Lynnie's, and my new tan lace up boots just like Aunt Lynnie's. I walked down the hallway to the living room and it was as if I had walked into another universe based on atmosphere alone, before anyone even said anything about what happened to her. I distinctly remember finding it hard to breathe through my screaming instincts as I caught the looks on my parents' faces.
The first two bullets she fired went across and through Ron's upper thighs as he was sleeping in bed. The third bullet lodged in the wall behind her head in the front room near the entryway. They said she probably didn't even hear it.
As a nine year old, I was certain that that asshole Ron had murdered her and staged everything. I had long daydreaming sessions of how he could have done it. That's why the bullets missed his penis, cuz he only wanted it to look like she was aiming there and missed. Surely she had been a victim of something easier to understand than severe depression. Surely I could point the finger at a person instead of a concept. Surely she didn't leave me without so much as a personal note.
Being so young at a tragic funeral is a weird bag. It's like everyone is looking at you for signals. I can't recall my brother or I crying once. Even when they led us in and put a tiny step stool in front of her open casket, with a fancy white doily cloth over her disfigured face. It was like we were holding out on tears or emotion because we knew that's just what these adults wanted. I can still clench my jaw to the point of headache if that what it takes.
I remember a lot of time spent in the dimly-lit funeral home kid's room with that shitty wood balls on a wire maze "game" and a lot of daytime TV. I remember looking at a lot of similarly confused children's faces from the other funerals going on at that home. We were marooned there for hours each day while the adults did their adult sad things. But seriously, what is it with that stupid balls on a wire maze thing? All you get to do is move them up and down the same path, over and over. Every time I see one of those I want to kick it.
At one point my other aunts and cousins took me with them to the grocery store. I started to feel somewhat normal again and ran up to one my aunts standing beside Aunt Lynnie's son and called her "Aunt Lynnie" by mistake. Freud applies to nine year olds too. Well everybody just started to cry right there in the store, except for me; I just felt like a big asshole.
Chapter 2
Something strange happens when the adult closest to you commits suicide. You grow up really quick, so you can be there next time and make a difference and be old enough to understand how to help. You feel a smorgasbord of emotions from anger to depression to abandonment, and since the adults are dealing with equally bad feelings, you kind of get through it on your own.
My parents sent us to some different therapists, but I just fucked with them. As if these assholes could understand me. They asked me to draw something, I drew a flower and watched them smile, then colored it black and watched them scribble notes like idiots. My favorite game was to amalgamate the troubled child in isolation so she doesn't get hurt again, with the angry kid who has been abandoned. I could hear them make the decision that they knew me whenever I drew my brick wall, and then left one brick out strategically. One therapist threw her pen across the room one day when I let slip that I was only playing the character she wanted. She said, "Has this been fun for you?"
The real truth is, at nine years old I had already determined that my fate would be the same of my aunt and my grandfather before her, who swallowed a 12 gauge from his own shotgun. I was named after Aunt Lynnie, with my middle name and all. People always said I looked like her, and I reminded them of her all throughout growing up while our family still talked to each other. I frequently freaked my cousins and aunts out as I grew and picked up habits like hers or did things like she did. It became clear to me before my teens that eventually I would die by my own hands when things got bad enough, just like my family had done. Just like my idols had done. At the tender age of nine, I had figured out that none of life mattered and all of it would eventually end in tragedy.
That left a lot of room and a lot of years to be reckless and carefree. I broke a lot of bones as a kid because I had no fear of death. I jumped off balconies and climbed the tallest trees. I rode my bicycle into rose bushes and ate 8 Advils at a time. I didn't really relate to kids at my private Christian school, got picked on by the rich girls, and spent time on the playground learning to swear inside the big half-buried tractor tires.
At sixth grade I entered the public school system and met my best friend on the first day. She thought I was weird and exciting, I thought she was caring and gentle. We rode the choppy waters of middle school together. She had the best parents, patient and kind and still in so much love with each other. It made my mom very jealous that I spent most of my time at their house.
Through high school Jesse watched me increase in rebellious activity. Dating much older dangerous guys, ditching school, jumping out of my window at night, drinking and generally going crazy. I was certain for the last 5 years that I would die at the age of 18, and frankly I had nothing to lose in the few years before that. I was good at music, so I played in a lot of orchestras and bands and sang in choirs. I was good at writing, so I wrote for the school newspaper eventually becoming its Editor-in-Chief. I was good at math, and science and English and history and took a bunch of AP courses. But none of it was for any other purpose than to pass the time. I knew, even though nobody else did, that it was all leading up to my ultimate demise at 18.
Chapter 3
I had made one previous attempt before turning 18. I was 13 at the time and found a full bottle of unmarked pills in my bedroom, left by a grandparent when they borrowed my room, I figured. I found them when I had been sent to my room for some misdeed and was cleaning in an angry state. When the bottle found my hand, I felt like it was fate telling me it was finally time to go. Finally....at the old age of 13.
Here's the funny part of the story I promised you.
Two days after finding that unmarked bottle of pills, I scribbled a note and decided to eat all of them. This is the first time I am ever telling this story. I waited until everyone had gone to sleep, and had Mom buy me some silk pajamas the day before. They were yellow, with big stupid flowers all over them. At 11:11, as a dedication to Aunt Lynnie's death, I got up out of bed, poured a big glass of water and ate all 15 or so pills in that bottle. Which takes a long time, coincidentally. And a lot of water.
I laid back down in bed and accepted my fate in the most emo way before emo was cool: I folded my arms over my chest in an X, like a vampire and waited to fall asleep. I did eventually fall asleep for some period of time. And when I woke, around 4am, I came to find out that grandma had misplaced her Lasix, or a similar water pill that caused me to wet the bed profusely.
My dear mother thought that I had a bad enough dream to make a 13 year old have incontinence. I had become the uncool character on Heathers, who not only failed to commit suicide, but who had to convince her mother that it's not so weird for a 13 year old to pee herself as we flipped the mattress together at 4am.
Chapter 4
Fast forward to 18 years old, I took a whole bottle of Advil but woke up the next morning as if nothing had happened. For a while I was convinced that I had died and everything in my life was actually a part of the afterlife...just a little worse. Have you seen Wristcutters? Just like that. This feeling has intensified mushroom trips for me to an uncomfortable state.
When I hit college, I had surpassed my time limit, and now I REALLY had nothing to lose. The way I saw it, I was working on borrowed time already and getting emotionally hurt was only benefiting my cause if it could drive me to finally do it. I did some really awful things in college. Some really awful things were done to me in college. I fostered relationships with friends who were equally reckless and I feel somewhat responsible for pushing that destructive bar maybe just a little bit higher.
I tried a couple more times in between 18 and 24 to end life, but they were just unsuccessful. I was never careful. I never wore my seatbelt. I sped like crazy. I bought a motorcycle and rode it as fast as I could without holding the handlebars. I drank more than everyone else. I gave way less fuck about everything than everyone else.
In June of 2007, I had graduated by a miracle with a degree from Western Michigan. I moved across the state by myself and lived in Waterford. I didn't know anyone for at least a 40 mile radius. I went to a bar alone. I woke up in the shower beat up and with the water running to maybe keep me alive after whomever put too much in my drink. I was disturbed this had happened to me. I was actually rather disturbed.
I went to a shrink, this time looking for actual help. Thus ensued the radical malpractice and my journey on anti-depressants including Lithium. They caught me in their web and even after the hallucinations and confusion and horribleness started, they told me I couldn't quit taking the meds or else I would die. They really tell you that, too. That you will definitely die. So I took the meds for 3 months, exactly how long these doctors promised it would take for them to settle into my body and start working properly. On the 90th day, I quit all of them and got the tattoo on my forearm: "The hardest victory is the victory over self." Aristotle.
Chapter 5
I had gone 24 years without dying, I'd be damned if some doctors were going to tell me that I needed pills to stay alive. Two weeks after quitting the pills, my friends John and Eron came out to spend the night with me and then help me move the next morning to a new place in Pontiac. I was moving in order to get a fresh beginning and get out of the apartment where bad things had happened. I spent weeks looking for the perfect place, and found a house right on the lake in Pontiac. I felt like it would be a new beginning.
That night also happened to be John's birthday, so we elected to go to a nearby bar and only have a couple of beers to celebrate. Eron had ridden his motorcycle, and John didn't have to drive because it was his birthday; so we hopped into my Pontiac Sunfire and went over to Shorty's in Waterford. Yadda yadda yadda, the band is sitting at our table with their instruments playing requests, the bar owner was putting full fifths on our table, and I was tipping back a bottle of Goldschlager.
We hit the tree at around 60 miles an hour. I came out of my blackout looking down at my bloody hand on the pulled emergency brake, and a waterfall of warm gooey blood falling over my eyes. I pushed the river back into my hair and sat back to hear John say "I can't believe that just happened."
We all got out of the car, I left my hand on my forehead to act a dam for all the blood from my head going into the windshield. Unseatbelted, of course. I looked at the giant oak we crashed into and said "Who plants a tree this big?" When the police floodlight hit our backs, I had one hand on my forehead still for the blood and the other on the back of the car, all three of us trying to push it home and get away. We turned toward the cop, leaned on the back of the car, and passed cigarettes to each other as the cop said "Who was driving?"
Four years later I had moved to two different states and finally got my license back. At the accident, I had a .27 BAC, and it was my second DUI in the state of Michigan. The first one being 2 weeks after turning 21. My police record also boasts multiple speeding tickets, multiple sound violations, and an MIP. It was determined that I was a repeat offender with a major alcohol problem by the state of Michigan. Luckily, the judge listened to me when I told her that I didn't have an alcohol problem...I had a recklessness problem. In scientific terms, I had the "I don't give a fuck" syndrome that AA would not help. I told her that the probation programs wouldn't work for me, because I knew what I was doing when I committed the crime. I asked her to put me in jail for the maximum sentence. She refused, and instead let me leave the state and do a specialized probation program (basically fit to me exclusively.)
So I moved to Phoenix in order to get out of Michigan and comply with the probation on a "Fresh Start" program. I already had a college degree, so I opted to pursue motorcycle mechanics at MMI. Really, I needed to get out Michigan and motorcycles seemed like a good plan to follow.
Well, I don't know if anyone has told you, but Phoenix sucks. Especially if you're a fair-skinned redhead, and accidentally move in with prostitutes. Yeah, that really happened. Craigslist. So, I jumped ship and moved to Seattle without ever having been to Seattle. I sold everything I had accumulated in six months in Phoenix and got on a plane. I worked two and three jobs, I went to school for motorcycles again at Lake Washington Technical Institute for a little bit. I worked at Psycho Cycles as Steg's apprentice.
I was still pretty reckless, but I wasn't really drinking much. I was hanging out with guns and bikes and drugs, and riding really fast with no license, and running from cops. But there was new balance to it. I didn't have a deathwish, I just wasn't afraid to die. I felt like I had squared off with intimidating demons and had survived. I felt like my experiences had given me character and a lot to write about. I was plugging away at fixing motorcycles and living the life. An outlaw, but an educated one. Still biding time, but more receptive to the future.
But there is one more sad story that interrupted my quasi-dangerous life irrevocably.
Chapter 6
A year ago today, August 5th, my phone kept ringing really early in the morning. I slept on a futon at the time and was working two jobs, at something like 60-70 hours a week. The night before, I couldn't sleep at all. I was all in a tizzy and crying and sad and depressed as shit without a real good reason. I called off to the motorcycle shop (not that I needed to call), and finally fell asleep about 5:45 am. I ignored the phone and turned it off. Finally around 9am I turned it on to a dozen missed calls from my dad and brother.
I called my dad back.
He answered the phone with this statement, "Your mom tried to kill herself. She is in intensive care in a coma."
I replied with the typical "What?" and more shock-related one word statements. Based on my reaction, he started to cry and handed the phone to a nurse. She explained to me that my mother had been found by a neighbor in the tub that I grew up using, after spending the whole night dying slowly on an overdose of my grandpa's medication.
Dad had been away on business trips frequently during that time, and my grandpa had a serious case of dementia that my mother supported him throughout. She obsessed over his care and drove over an hour to see him at the nursing home 6 to 7 days a week while working full time and suffering from sleep apnea. This was something like the 10th nursing home he had been in since all the others did not meet her satisfaction. I can't argue that there isn't a nursing home in existence that would meet my standards if I really cared about the person I was forcing to stay there. She was stressed to maximum capacity, my dad resented my grandfather for kidnapping all of his wife's time, and she worried like crazy about her only daughter across the country being a biker. I knew what was going on.
My roommate and good friend lent me $500 to get on the first flight back to Michigan from Seattle. Everything was weird that day. I tried to go about my usual routine and went to Starbucks; but I froze at the counter like a sad deer in the bright lights of needing to make a decision. Bless that girl barista, her human instinct knew I wasn't nuts, and she said so lovingly, "Want me to pick something out for you?" All I could do was nod. It was a delicious frozen mocha that did, in fact, make me feel better while it lasted.
At the airport everyone looked like aliens, completely unaware and unable to communicate with me or make sense of the look in my eyes while I wondered if I'd ever see my mother again...while I comprehended that she had actually committed suicide. As the plane picked up speed at take off, it shook the tears from my eyes and shuttered them down my cheeks. I just started to cry and I knew the lady next to me wanted every juicy detail, but I put my headphones in and tried not to imagine Mom's body getting colder as she laid there alone through the night dying with her regrets.
The night before, my mother's last words to me were in a text that came from left field. "Chryssa, I love you very much. Find a man who really loves you. That has always been my only wish for you." I thought it was a weird text at the time, but I didn't bother to respond to her.
I had a layover in Philadelphia--one of the shittiest and dirtiest airports in America. It was something like 4am when I landed there, feeling so out of my way and trying to get a signal to check in at the hospital and see if she was still alive. The nurse was sympathetic and kind, giving me every detail and telling me that she was still in a coma, but that her vitals were coming back. If the nurse had been an overworked intern just coming to grips with the fact that dying was a part of her job, and had been difficult or a bitch, I might have had a panic attack at the Philadelphia International Airport.
I got a shitty bagel from the shitty bagel stand and put the shitty amount of cream cheese on it with the shitty plastic knife as the workers continued opening for the day. The early morning airport seemed like the most foreign place to be while my body coursed through shock and into anger.
Chapter 7
Part of me didn't want her to live. I wanted to rush in to the ICU with the sound of buzzers and alarms and nurses and doctors rushing everywhere trying to revive her lifeless body in an unforgiving fight. I wanted to say Good Fucking Riddence to a woman who left me and did something we know in my family hurts like shit. Our family is well-versed in suicide and what it feels like for the survivors. It feels like utter shit.
You are left mourning a person, only you can't just miss them because you also kinda have to be mad at them, but also feel kinda responsible even though everyone jumps all over you to tell you that it's not your fault. And it's not your fault, cuz you didn't pull the trigger; BUT, it is kinda too. Yeah, I said it. It is. Cuz that person is dead and you were their daughter, their mother, their friend, their whatever that should be able to make them feel better. Oh no, you can't BLAME yourself because a human can't carry that kind of guilt, but you also can't dismiss it entirely. There are always signs, we are just lulled into thinking that we can't rock the boat.
So I landed in Detroit and rushed out to the pickup spot and had to wait for what felt like an hour, but might have been 30 minutes for my friends to pick me up. I was pretty pissed about them being late since I had just flown across the country and did want a fighting chance to get there before she stopped breathing for some kind of closure. Or something.
The car ride was weird. They tried to lift the atmosphere; and did well for their efforts. One of my friends there, Rachel, is a nurse at the UofM hospital where my mom was. The day it happened, I called her and she went right over to be with my dad and to check in on my mom. My dad kept telling me how grateful he was to have her there. Lateness doesn't matter shit when someone will do that for you when you are 2500 miles away.
When we got to the hospital 45 minutes later, Rachel took me right up to the ICU and rushed me to my mom's room. The door was closed, but the whole room is made of windows. I saw my mom's eyes were open, people all around her and she was talking slowly to a tall, young doctor at the foot of her bed. When I came around the corner in a bustle, everyone looked my way. She looked right at me.
For the rest of my life I will never forget every minute detail of that moment.
The look on her face was a mixture of disgust, anger, embarrassment and the deepest depths of sadness. I froze in that spot even after she had quickly looked away and back to the doctor like a good pupil. I suddenly became aware of my appearance, unshowered and greasy from a couple nights without sleep and from flying. I felt like I embarrassed her to the doctor when Rachel ushered me in. I heard my mom say in a labored and scratchy voice "This is my daughter."
The doctor put his hand out to shake mine, but I could barely see him in my tunneled vision and walked right by him. I hugged my mom gently and quickly. It was awkward and awful. I wouldn't wish it on a person that I hate dearly. She held my hand to keep me right beside her and gave me another look that said a thousand words as the doctor began to ask her questions again. My cousins, my father, the nurses, some other people were all gathered in this tiny room around her. He asked her if she got along with her husband...the guy sitting right beside her in complete apathy from major shock. He asked her if she had been sad for a long time. He asked her if she felt like there was no other way out. She stroked my thumb with hers over and over to keep me there.
Finally having enough of the circus, I went outside and shut her door to give her some semblance of privacy and feigned dignity. I was immediately angry that the doctor was asking her all of these questions in front of a crowd. I know they give suicide attempts to interns because they basically can't kill them...but I found this public questioning ludicrous. I stood outside her room until one of the ICU nurses told me I couldn't be there and chased me outside of the unit and into the waiting room.
Nothing could have prepared me for what had just happened.
After a wait there, my dad and the others came to tell me I could go in. I closed the door behind me so we were alone. I said to her, "Well, you had your chance. You don't get to do this again."
Chapter 8
A month after returning from Michigan I met a guy out here in Seattle. On our first couple dates I had mild panic attacks, and even though I didn't tell him about my mom, he was sympathetic and told me he could protect me. I fell into my first truly committed love affair. After two months we moved in together. I stopped working at the motorcycle shop and sold my tool box. I got a full-time job and quit working at UPS after an 8 year career there as a part-time supervisor. Life became quiet.
I was truly in love with this guy, but he has wicked jealousy issues and started going through my phone, my computer, my notebooks, my Tmobile account. I put up with it for a long time when it comes to acceptable behavior standards, among other things that I thought were a part of "the hard part" of relationships. Plus, I couldn't believe life hadn't handed me my soulmate just in time to save me from all the bad feelings of my mom's suicide attempt. I mean, that would be fair right?
As a result of my fervent need for stability, that boy is heartbroken and I am in an apartment paying double the rent. Working a job that I hate to buy things I don't need. Nah, just quoting Fight Club. It's not that bad.
My job could be worse. My life could be worse. There is always worse.
But I can't deny that nagging voice that tells me I am destined for more than faxing and answering phones. That maybe life isn't as tragic as having a skill that I earned a degree for but never use. I may not write the next American Novel, or get the Pulitzer to hang next to my Sobriety Court certificate. But if the words aren't in black and white, I can't really say I ever tried.
At 28, I can finally let go of something a nine year old told me was fact. I tried to be tragic like everyone around me, but it just never worked out. I never anticipated needing to make a career, or figure out what I wanted to be as I grew up under fucked up beliefs. I was always, perpetually, just on a collision course of destruction and just-throw-it-on-the-carpet-cuz-we're-moving-out-tomorrow mentality. My great unknown is living like tomorrow actually does matter, and every choice counts for somethin.
Chapter 1
When I was nine years old, there was this adult that the planet of Me revolved around. She lived in Lima, OH in a doublewide and had three sons who were about 10 years older than me.
She was the kind of aunt who kept her fingernail polish in the refrigerator and would, yes, of course paint your tiny nine year old nails with polka dots or zebra stripes, your choice. She would get in the car and go buy the gel frosting to write your name on your cupcake. She would sneak you out of the trailer window at dusk to take you to see Fievel Goes West at your parents' disapproval. She also took you to get your ears pierced at a Christian's inappropriate age.
She slept on the floor beside me in sleeping bags every other weekend when we were there; even though her adult bed paid for by adult dollars was only an adult's arm-length away. She was just as enamored with Beauty and the Beast in the theater as me; I'll never forget the same youthful look on her face against the flickering yellow dress when I looked at her...as a seven year old expecting her to give me that "Oh, I know little one, it's so cool" look. But she didn't even notice me looking back at her, she was glued to Belle dancing across that big screen.
I bought clothes that looked like hers. I bought boots cuz she only ever wore boots. I counted the school days in between getting down to Lima and going roller skating or drinking hot chocolates like adults or making Christmas ornaments with her. There was no safer place in my life, in the world, than laying across her legs, with her Lee press-on nails ghosting across my back gently.
Sometime around the summer of 1990, she met a guy who would become her second husband. I did not like him from the first time I met him. Some could have argued it was blatant jealousy on my part. She no longer slept on the floor with me in my Rainbow Brite sleeping bag. Her nail polish was replaced by his beer in the fridge. Sometimes she had this look on her face that my retarded dancing couldn't brighten. I even started to annoy her.
It was the morning of Nov 11, 1992 when I was getting ready for school in my new "mexican skirt" just like Aunt Lynnie's, and my new tan lace up boots just like Aunt Lynnie's. I walked down the hallway to the living room and it was as if I had walked into another universe based on atmosphere alone, before anyone even said anything about what happened to her. I distinctly remember finding it hard to breathe through my screaming instincts as I caught the looks on my parents' faces.
The first two bullets she fired went across and through Ron's upper thighs as he was sleeping in bed. The third bullet lodged in the wall behind her head in the front room near the entryway. They said she probably didn't even hear it.
As a nine year old, I was certain that that asshole Ron had murdered her and staged everything. I had long daydreaming sessions of how he could have done it. That's why the bullets missed his penis, cuz he only wanted it to look like she was aiming there and missed. Surely she had been a victim of something easier to understand than severe depression. Surely I could point the finger at a person instead of a concept. Surely she didn't leave me without so much as a personal note.
Being so young at a tragic funeral is a weird bag. It's like everyone is looking at you for signals. I can't recall my brother or I crying once. Even when they led us in and put a tiny step stool in front of her open casket, with a fancy white doily cloth over her disfigured face. It was like we were holding out on tears or emotion because we knew that's just what these adults wanted. I can still clench my jaw to the point of headache if that what it takes.
I remember a lot of time spent in the dimly-lit funeral home kid's room with that shitty wood balls on a wire maze "game" and a lot of daytime TV. I remember looking at a lot of similarly confused children's faces from the other funerals going on at that home. We were marooned there for hours each day while the adults did their adult sad things. But seriously, what is it with that stupid balls on a wire maze thing? All you get to do is move them up and down the same path, over and over. Every time I see one of those I want to kick it.
At one point my other aunts and cousins took me with them to the grocery store. I started to feel somewhat normal again and ran up to one my aunts standing beside Aunt Lynnie's son and called her "Aunt Lynnie" by mistake. Freud applies to nine year olds too. Well everybody just started to cry right there in the store, except for me; I just felt like a big asshole.
Chapter 2
Something strange happens when the adult closest to you commits suicide. You grow up really quick, so you can be there next time and make a difference and be old enough to understand how to help. You feel a smorgasbord of emotions from anger to depression to abandonment, and since the adults are dealing with equally bad feelings, you kind of get through it on your own.
My parents sent us to some different therapists, but I just fucked with them. As if these assholes could understand me. They asked me to draw something, I drew a flower and watched them smile, then colored it black and watched them scribble notes like idiots. My favorite game was to amalgamate the troubled child in isolation so she doesn't get hurt again, with the angry kid who has been abandoned. I could hear them make the decision that they knew me whenever I drew my brick wall, and then left one brick out strategically. One therapist threw her pen across the room one day when I let slip that I was only playing the character she wanted. She said, "Has this been fun for you?"
The real truth is, at nine years old I had already determined that my fate would be the same of my aunt and my grandfather before her, who swallowed a 12 gauge from his own shotgun. I was named after Aunt Lynnie, with my middle name and all. People always said I looked like her, and I reminded them of her all throughout growing up while our family still talked to each other. I frequently freaked my cousins and aunts out as I grew and picked up habits like hers or did things like she did. It became clear to me before my teens that eventually I would die by my own hands when things got bad enough, just like my family had done. Just like my idols had done. At the tender age of nine, I had figured out that none of life mattered and all of it would eventually end in tragedy.
That left a lot of room and a lot of years to be reckless and carefree. I broke a lot of bones as a kid because I had no fear of death. I jumped off balconies and climbed the tallest trees. I rode my bicycle into rose bushes and ate 8 Advils at a time. I didn't really relate to kids at my private Christian school, got picked on by the rich girls, and spent time on the playground learning to swear inside the big half-buried tractor tires.
At sixth grade I entered the public school system and met my best friend on the first day. She thought I was weird and exciting, I thought she was caring and gentle. We rode the choppy waters of middle school together. She had the best parents, patient and kind and still in so much love with each other. It made my mom very jealous that I spent most of my time at their house.
Through high school Jesse watched me increase in rebellious activity. Dating much older dangerous guys, ditching school, jumping out of my window at night, drinking and generally going crazy. I was certain for the last 5 years that I would die at the age of 18, and frankly I had nothing to lose in the few years before that. I was good at music, so I played in a lot of orchestras and bands and sang in choirs. I was good at writing, so I wrote for the school newspaper eventually becoming its Editor-in-Chief. I was good at math, and science and English and history and took a bunch of AP courses. But none of it was for any other purpose than to pass the time. I knew, even though nobody else did, that it was all leading up to my ultimate demise at 18.
Chapter 3
I had made one previous attempt before turning 18. I was 13 at the time and found a full bottle of unmarked pills in my bedroom, left by a grandparent when they borrowed my room, I figured. I found them when I had been sent to my room for some misdeed and was cleaning in an angry state. When the bottle found my hand, I felt like it was fate telling me it was finally time to go. Finally....at the old age of 13.
Here's the funny part of the story I promised you.
Two days after finding that unmarked bottle of pills, I scribbled a note and decided to eat all of them. This is the first time I am ever telling this story. I waited until everyone had gone to sleep, and had Mom buy me some silk pajamas the day before. They were yellow, with big stupid flowers all over them. At 11:11, as a dedication to Aunt Lynnie's death, I got up out of bed, poured a big glass of water and ate all 15 or so pills in that bottle. Which takes a long time, coincidentally. And a lot of water.
I laid back down in bed and accepted my fate in the most emo way before emo was cool: I folded my arms over my chest in an X, like a vampire and waited to fall asleep. I did eventually fall asleep for some period of time. And when I woke, around 4am, I came to find out that grandma had misplaced her Lasix, or a similar water pill that caused me to wet the bed profusely.
My dear mother thought that I had a bad enough dream to make a 13 year old have incontinence. I had become the uncool character on Heathers, who not only failed to commit suicide, but who had to convince her mother that it's not so weird for a 13 year old to pee herself as we flipped the mattress together at 4am.
Chapter 4
Fast forward to 18 years old, I took a whole bottle of Advil but woke up the next morning as if nothing had happened. For a while I was convinced that I had died and everything in my life was actually a part of the afterlife...just a little worse. Have you seen Wristcutters? Just like that. This feeling has intensified mushroom trips for me to an uncomfortable state.
When I hit college, I had surpassed my time limit, and now I REALLY had nothing to lose. The way I saw it, I was working on borrowed time already and getting emotionally hurt was only benefiting my cause if it could drive me to finally do it. I did some really awful things in college. Some really awful things were done to me in college. I fostered relationships with friends who were equally reckless and I feel somewhat responsible for pushing that destructive bar maybe just a little bit higher.
I tried a couple more times in between 18 and 24 to end life, but they were just unsuccessful. I was never careful. I never wore my seatbelt. I sped like crazy. I bought a motorcycle and rode it as fast as I could without holding the handlebars. I drank more than everyone else. I gave way less fuck about everything than everyone else.
In June of 2007, I had graduated by a miracle with a degree from Western Michigan. I moved across the state by myself and lived in Waterford. I didn't know anyone for at least a 40 mile radius. I went to a bar alone. I woke up in the shower beat up and with the water running to maybe keep me alive after whomever put too much in my drink. I was disturbed this had happened to me. I was actually rather disturbed.
I went to a shrink, this time looking for actual help. Thus ensued the radical malpractice and my journey on anti-depressants including Lithium. They caught me in their web and even after the hallucinations and confusion and horribleness started, they told me I couldn't quit taking the meds or else I would die. They really tell you that, too. That you will definitely die. So I took the meds for 3 months, exactly how long these doctors promised it would take for them to settle into my body and start working properly. On the 90th day, I quit all of them and got the tattoo on my forearm: "The hardest victory is the victory over self." Aristotle.
Chapter 5
I had gone 24 years without dying, I'd be damned if some doctors were going to tell me that I needed pills to stay alive. Two weeks after quitting the pills, my friends John and Eron came out to spend the night with me and then help me move the next morning to a new place in Pontiac. I was moving in order to get a fresh beginning and get out of the apartment where bad things had happened. I spent weeks looking for the perfect place, and found a house right on the lake in Pontiac. I felt like it would be a new beginning.
That night also happened to be John's birthday, so we elected to go to a nearby bar and only have a couple of beers to celebrate. Eron had ridden his motorcycle, and John didn't have to drive because it was his birthday; so we hopped into my Pontiac Sunfire and went over to Shorty's in Waterford. Yadda yadda yadda, the band is sitting at our table with their instruments playing requests, the bar owner was putting full fifths on our table, and I was tipping back a bottle of Goldschlager.
We hit the tree at around 60 miles an hour. I came out of my blackout looking down at my bloody hand on the pulled emergency brake, and a waterfall of warm gooey blood falling over my eyes. I pushed the river back into my hair and sat back to hear John say "I can't believe that just happened."
We all got out of the car, I left my hand on my forehead to act a dam for all the blood from my head going into the windshield. Unseatbelted, of course. I looked at the giant oak we crashed into and said "Who plants a tree this big?" When the police floodlight hit our backs, I had one hand on my forehead still for the blood and the other on the back of the car, all three of us trying to push it home and get away. We turned toward the cop, leaned on the back of the car, and passed cigarettes to each other as the cop said "Who was driving?"
Four years later I had moved to two different states and finally got my license back. At the accident, I had a .27 BAC, and it was my second DUI in the state of Michigan. The first one being 2 weeks after turning 21. My police record also boasts multiple speeding tickets, multiple sound violations, and an MIP. It was determined that I was a repeat offender with a major alcohol problem by the state of Michigan. Luckily, the judge listened to me when I told her that I didn't have an alcohol problem...I had a recklessness problem. In scientific terms, I had the "I don't give a fuck" syndrome that AA would not help. I told her that the probation programs wouldn't work for me, because I knew what I was doing when I committed the crime. I asked her to put me in jail for the maximum sentence. She refused, and instead let me leave the state and do a specialized probation program (basically fit to me exclusively.)
So I moved to Phoenix in order to get out of Michigan and comply with the probation on a "Fresh Start" program. I already had a college degree, so I opted to pursue motorcycle mechanics at MMI. Really, I needed to get out Michigan and motorcycles seemed like a good plan to follow.
Well, I don't know if anyone has told you, but Phoenix sucks. Especially if you're a fair-skinned redhead, and accidentally move in with prostitutes. Yeah, that really happened. Craigslist. So, I jumped ship and moved to Seattle without ever having been to Seattle. I sold everything I had accumulated in six months in Phoenix and got on a plane. I worked two and three jobs, I went to school for motorcycles again at Lake Washington Technical Institute for a little bit. I worked at Psycho Cycles as Steg's apprentice.
I was still pretty reckless, but I wasn't really drinking much. I was hanging out with guns and bikes and drugs, and riding really fast with no license, and running from cops. But there was new balance to it. I didn't have a deathwish, I just wasn't afraid to die. I felt like I had squared off with intimidating demons and had survived. I felt like my experiences had given me character and a lot to write about. I was plugging away at fixing motorcycles and living the life. An outlaw, but an educated one. Still biding time, but more receptive to the future.
But there is one more sad story that interrupted my quasi-dangerous life irrevocably.
Chapter 6
A year ago today, August 5th, my phone kept ringing really early in the morning. I slept on a futon at the time and was working two jobs, at something like 60-70 hours a week. The night before, I couldn't sleep at all. I was all in a tizzy and crying and sad and depressed as shit without a real good reason. I called off to the motorcycle shop (not that I needed to call), and finally fell asleep about 5:45 am. I ignored the phone and turned it off. Finally around 9am I turned it on to a dozen missed calls from my dad and brother.
I called my dad back.
He answered the phone with this statement, "Your mom tried to kill herself. She is in intensive care in a coma."
I replied with the typical "What?" and more shock-related one word statements. Based on my reaction, he started to cry and handed the phone to a nurse. She explained to me that my mother had been found by a neighbor in the tub that I grew up using, after spending the whole night dying slowly on an overdose of my grandpa's medication.
Dad had been away on business trips frequently during that time, and my grandpa had a serious case of dementia that my mother supported him throughout. She obsessed over his care and drove over an hour to see him at the nursing home 6 to 7 days a week while working full time and suffering from sleep apnea. This was something like the 10th nursing home he had been in since all the others did not meet her satisfaction. I can't argue that there isn't a nursing home in existence that would meet my standards if I really cared about the person I was forcing to stay there. She was stressed to maximum capacity, my dad resented my grandfather for kidnapping all of his wife's time, and she worried like crazy about her only daughter across the country being a biker. I knew what was going on.
My roommate and good friend lent me $500 to get on the first flight back to Michigan from Seattle. Everything was weird that day. I tried to go about my usual routine and went to Starbucks; but I froze at the counter like a sad deer in the bright lights of needing to make a decision. Bless that girl barista, her human instinct knew I wasn't nuts, and she said so lovingly, "Want me to pick something out for you?" All I could do was nod. It was a delicious frozen mocha that did, in fact, make me feel better while it lasted.
At the airport everyone looked like aliens, completely unaware and unable to communicate with me or make sense of the look in my eyes while I wondered if I'd ever see my mother again...while I comprehended that she had actually committed suicide. As the plane picked up speed at take off, it shook the tears from my eyes and shuttered them down my cheeks. I just started to cry and I knew the lady next to me wanted every juicy detail, but I put my headphones in and tried not to imagine Mom's body getting colder as she laid there alone through the night dying with her regrets.
The night before, my mother's last words to me were in a text that came from left field. "Chryssa, I love you very much. Find a man who really loves you. That has always been my only wish for you." I thought it was a weird text at the time, but I didn't bother to respond to her.
I had a layover in Philadelphia--one of the shittiest and dirtiest airports in America. It was something like 4am when I landed there, feeling so out of my way and trying to get a signal to check in at the hospital and see if she was still alive. The nurse was sympathetic and kind, giving me every detail and telling me that she was still in a coma, but that her vitals were coming back. If the nurse had been an overworked intern just coming to grips with the fact that dying was a part of her job, and had been difficult or a bitch, I might have had a panic attack at the Philadelphia International Airport.
I got a shitty bagel from the shitty bagel stand and put the shitty amount of cream cheese on it with the shitty plastic knife as the workers continued opening for the day. The early morning airport seemed like the most foreign place to be while my body coursed through shock and into anger.
Chapter 7
Part of me didn't want her to live. I wanted to rush in to the ICU with the sound of buzzers and alarms and nurses and doctors rushing everywhere trying to revive her lifeless body in an unforgiving fight. I wanted to say Good Fucking Riddence to a woman who left me and did something we know in my family hurts like shit. Our family is well-versed in suicide and what it feels like for the survivors. It feels like utter shit.
You are left mourning a person, only you can't just miss them because you also kinda have to be mad at them, but also feel kinda responsible even though everyone jumps all over you to tell you that it's not your fault. And it's not your fault, cuz you didn't pull the trigger; BUT, it is kinda too. Yeah, I said it. It is. Cuz that person is dead and you were their daughter, their mother, their friend, their whatever that should be able to make them feel better. Oh no, you can't BLAME yourself because a human can't carry that kind of guilt, but you also can't dismiss it entirely. There are always signs, we are just lulled into thinking that we can't rock the boat.
So I landed in Detroit and rushed out to the pickup spot and had to wait for what felt like an hour, but might have been 30 minutes for my friends to pick me up. I was pretty pissed about them being late since I had just flown across the country and did want a fighting chance to get there before she stopped breathing for some kind of closure. Or something.
The car ride was weird. They tried to lift the atmosphere; and did well for their efforts. One of my friends there, Rachel, is a nurse at the UofM hospital where my mom was. The day it happened, I called her and she went right over to be with my dad and to check in on my mom. My dad kept telling me how grateful he was to have her there. Lateness doesn't matter shit when someone will do that for you when you are 2500 miles away.
When we got to the hospital 45 minutes later, Rachel took me right up to the ICU and rushed me to my mom's room. The door was closed, but the whole room is made of windows. I saw my mom's eyes were open, people all around her and she was talking slowly to a tall, young doctor at the foot of her bed. When I came around the corner in a bustle, everyone looked my way. She looked right at me.
For the rest of my life I will never forget every minute detail of that moment.
The look on her face was a mixture of disgust, anger, embarrassment and the deepest depths of sadness. I froze in that spot even after she had quickly looked away and back to the doctor like a good pupil. I suddenly became aware of my appearance, unshowered and greasy from a couple nights without sleep and from flying. I felt like I embarrassed her to the doctor when Rachel ushered me in. I heard my mom say in a labored and scratchy voice "This is my daughter."
The doctor put his hand out to shake mine, but I could barely see him in my tunneled vision and walked right by him. I hugged my mom gently and quickly. It was awkward and awful. I wouldn't wish it on a person that I hate dearly. She held my hand to keep me right beside her and gave me another look that said a thousand words as the doctor began to ask her questions again. My cousins, my father, the nurses, some other people were all gathered in this tiny room around her. He asked her if she got along with her husband...the guy sitting right beside her in complete apathy from major shock. He asked her if she had been sad for a long time. He asked her if she felt like there was no other way out. She stroked my thumb with hers over and over to keep me there.
Finally having enough of the circus, I went outside and shut her door to give her some semblance of privacy and feigned dignity. I was immediately angry that the doctor was asking her all of these questions in front of a crowd. I know they give suicide attempts to interns because they basically can't kill them...but I found this public questioning ludicrous. I stood outside her room until one of the ICU nurses told me I couldn't be there and chased me outside of the unit and into the waiting room.
Nothing could have prepared me for what had just happened.
After a wait there, my dad and the others came to tell me I could go in. I closed the door behind me so we were alone. I said to her, "Well, you had your chance. You don't get to do this again."
Chapter 8
A month after returning from Michigan I met a guy out here in Seattle. On our first couple dates I had mild panic attacks, and even though I didn't tell him about my mom, he was sympathetic and told me he could protect me. I fell into my first truly committed love affair. After two months we moved in together. I stopped working at the motorcycle shop and sold my tool box. I got a full-time job and quit working at UPS after an 8 year career there as a part-time supervisor. Life became quiet.
I was truly in love with this guy, but he has wicked jealousy issues and started going through my phone, my computer, my notebooks, my Tmobile account. I put up with it for a long time when it comes to acceptable behavior standards, among other things that I thought were a part of "the hard part" of relationships. Plus, I couldn't believe life hadn't handed me my soulmate just in time to save me from all the bad feelings of my mom's suicide attempt. I mean, that would be fair right?
As a result of my fervent need for stability, that boy is heartbroken and I am in an apartment paying double the rent. Working a job that I hate to buy things I don't need. Nah, just quoting Fight Club. It's not that bad.
My job could be worse. My life could be worse. There is always worse.
But I can't deny that nagging voice that tells me I am destined for more than faxing and answering phones. That maybe life isn't as tragic as having a skill that I earned a degree for but never use. I may not write the next American Novel, or get the Pulitzer to hang next to my Sobriety Court certificate. But if the words aren't in black and white, I can't really say I ever tried.
At 28, I can finally let go of something a nine year old told me was fact. I tried to be tragic like everyone around me, but it just never worked out. I never anticipated needing to make a career, or figure out what I wanted to be as I grew up under fucked up beliefs. I was always, perpetually, just on a collision course of destruction and just-throw-it-on-the-carpet-cuz-we're-moving-out-tomorrow mentality. My great unknown is living like tomorrow actually does matter, and every choice counts for somethin.
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