The hell years were between suicide attempts 1&3, but the memories I'm struggling with today are between suicide attempts 2&3. Suicide attempt #2 had me throwing myself in front of a car on Cary Parkway. I stayed in Dorothea Dix over Christmas and when released, moved into the basement apartment of a sweet older couple from my parents' church. It was a nice apartment and they charged pennies for rent. I did not have a car or a phone, but I had a bike and two jobs: one at the veternarian clinic(that didn't last long due to needing to be coherant at 6am) and one at a steak house. Honestly - I was rolling in the dough. I mean, I didn't go shopping, I really didn't have any serious bills and I didn't buy groceries because - well - I didn't eat pretty much at all. No, that's not an exageration. I didn't eat. When I'm stresed, my appetite is the first thing that goes. No, it's not a perk. By the time suicide #3 came around I weighed 95 lbs -- when, as an adult who is 5'6" and with my body shape -- a healthy weight for me is around 140, particularly if I have muscle. I had SO little muscle then that I perpetually shook. I had a permanent tremor, that I was very good at concealing. What I couldn't conceal was my inability to carry anything for longer han a second or two. I was seen as pathetic by many for how weak I was. Some thought I was faking it. Then again, it wasn't hard to come up with reasons to hate me. All the people I hung out with were at the steakhouse and that environment is what drove me to suicide #3.
My family and I had split and I've never felt more alone than my time away from them. So, here I am, a bleach blonde tiny girl, 20 years old with my own place and no desire to live. Add a toxic environment with people who are just as lonely and coping any way they can, and you produce the worst of my hell years. It wasn't only food I couldn't stomach, so I wasn't much of a drinker. I kept smirnoff ice in the fridge, cause occasionally I could get half of one of those down. And while pot was everwhere I went, it was never my thing. People would drink or smoke to fill that void in their stomach. Me? I would use the guys. Being a young underweight blonde girl with issues appeals to a high percentage of the male population. Night after night I found someone to tell me I was worth something. Every morning I would wake up, and curse at the slut staring at me through the mirror. But as I told everyone, girls give sex for love and guys give love for sex. I figured it was a fair trade. I didn't understand that every guy who walked away from me was cementing my Identity as Worthless.
Before suicide #3 I was sleeping with 2 guys a day trying to hold onto that fleeting feeling of being cared about, of not being alone, of being wjole and unbroken. But there was a massive hole in my stomach, a void that kept sucking me in until it had everything. I remember sitting on the couch, texting my family for the first time in months, to tell them goodbye. I remember my only friend freaking out and taking me to the hospital. The same friend who spread a false rumor to everyone that I had herpes after I slept with him and then his housemate in the same week. I remember going back to work after they released me from the hospital and everyone actually being nice to me...for about a week, which meant not stealing my tips, gossiping about how much of a slut I was and warning people to stay away from me. I mean, there were actual crack whores at this place, but I was the fucked up one because I didn't charge the men I screwed. I knew my place, and it hurt, but I was comfortable with my identity as the worthless, fucked up, crazy workplace slut. It's what I knew. It's what I believe I deserved.
And that's how it was, for months. Alone and numb, I did anything to not feel. I didn't cry once. No matter what I was called, no matter what they did, no matter what they said. I never cried. I kept busy. I would work double shifts constantly(late morning until midnight), force myself to eat a fourth of a bigmac every couple of days, go out every night and find a guy who would bring me back to work in the morning. Every week I'd go back to my place and crash for 10-12 hours, and then the routine would start over. This was my life. It killed me, or would have if God didn't have other plans for this Broken woman remembering.
After suicide three, God brought me a man who gave me the rest I needed from Life. It's not hard to see the Impossible as Possible with God. Not for me, not with the !ife I have had. And having this guy show up in the hell years, a week after a suicide attempt, with the reputation I had rightly earned, be warned against me -- yet he still took me out?? He called me Sweet. Fuck. I hadn't had a kind word in months and that memory still makes me cry. And he didn't leave! Two weeks later he asked me to be his girlfriend and a week after that I moved in. He is an Amazing man and I am SO Grateful God placed him in my life when He knew I couldn't go on the way I was. And after we broke up, I never wanted to disrespect the Worth one man saw in me when I was at my Most Fucked up point, to go back to that lifestyle. Funny how God can be SO Sneaky in teaching us Truth. It would be years later that I would figure out my Value in Christ. But that really was where He first started worming His way into my heart...during the Hell years when I only saw Him as the reason for my Pain.
What a GREAT GOD we have. That He cares SO Much and has Such Patience -- even when we are hellbent on fearing and fleeing Him. That He would rescue and heal a Broken Slut like me. That He would show me the Value in Brokenness, the Value in Pain, the Value in even the Hell Years.
Those years were truly the worst of my life, but I am also at the point where, even though I regret them, I am Genuinely Grateful for them. Cool how God can do weird shit like that huh? But seriously - how many Christian women have my history? I can empathize in a way that tend to be rare. Why do people open up to me so easily with their shit? Because I have no room to judge. And I certainly have no wish to do so. You also can't shock me. If I haven't done it, I have known someone who has. Empathy is high nigh impossible without a basis of understanding, and I have hella more than that. I also have something that I find Super Exciting lately.
That void, that feeling of a black hole sucking everything of me into it? That's what people have when they are seperated from God. Whether you are fleeing Him like me, angry at Him, whatever your reason -- a hole develops deep in the pit of your stomach that has to be filled(and nothing temporal will do)....or you will you lose all of you and end up killing yourself. Everybody in the psych wards know about this hole. It's common knowledge among the Hopeless. Which is why people who attempt and fail suicide will either end up becoming Hella Strong and Crazy Weird Christians...or become regular residents of their local psyh ward. This is also a common scenario in Prisons. And I remember that Void! I remember how much it Hurt! How it HAD to be filled! How it could Never STAY Filled! I remember how it controlled my life. And this Intense Memory of a Feeling gives me the ability to empathize and interact in ways that is uncommon and incredibly refreshing to others struggling with such a thing. And so I find I am Thankful for the Memory and even more so, for the Hell Years that created it. Empathy is one of the Strongest Components of Love. And without Love, Himself...we would ALL be Lost.
That is all I wish to say today. Do with it what you will. I think my memories of that year will start to Hurt less now.
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