“I can remember looking over at my brother who was still asleep. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I was too scared so I laid there, not speaking, thinking about the innocence I would never get back. He hurt me in the worst way that night.”
‘Don’t tell nobody. I’ll give you some money when I get paid,’ he said as he was getting off me. I was scared out of my mind. My uncle, my favorite uncle, had hurt me.’
‘It’s fine. It’s fine.’ His words replayed on a cruel loop after he left. I sat on a table in a dark room, bleeding and trying to make them mean something like comfort. This stuff did not happen to ME.’
“He told me to follow him to a section of the warehouse I had never been in. There was nothing necessarily violent about it, but it was forceful. My ‘no’ was not an angry scream, but it was repeated several times.”
‘He told me he didn’t feel attached to our baby, and he didn’t love me anymore. I secretly hoped I would die in childbirth. My life as I knew it, was completely dismantled.’
“I decided to clean out her bedroom. It was a virtual cesspool. As I was clearing away the reminders of her unwell state, I found her suicide note.”
‘I begged for you to stay the night, but you said you had to go. I gave you a big hug, not knowing it would be the last. You told me you would see me soon. I believed you.’
“As it hit midnight, I felt this overwhelming urge to call you. I knew something wasn’t right. I fell to the floor in shock. ‘Your sister has taken her life.’ I could not believe you were gone.”
‘Everything went dark, and when I came to, I had no idea if I had been out for 5 minutes or 5 hours. There was no one left to call, and no one was coming.’
“I started drinking at what felt like a normal age – 12 or 13 years old. I was in 7th grade. I had no idea pretty, little girls from affluent East Coast towns could wind up alcoholic.”
‘Nobody thought I had a problem, I was just the life of the party. I was reaching out for help, but doctors didn’t believe me. I was even suicidal on my wedding day.’
“I knew something was terribly wrong. I was in law school about to collapse on the floor of my dorm room when I realized my life would never be the same again. It was like an all-night-long strobe light party in my brain.”
‘I was writing my goodbye letter. I had gone out to my car, had a handful of pills in one hand, a bottle of water in the other, and then my husband called.’
“In kindergarten I tried to walk in front of a semi truck in the street. I lived with this demon all my childhood. Then I met the one.”
‘My husband passed away from a sudden heart attack at 32. I felt like my world was crashing in. Although I had two beautiful babies, I thought multiple times about suicide.’
“My best friend had enough of my sorrow and stole my phone to add me to Tinder. I absolutely HATED the idea. There was no way I would let a man near myself or my children.”
‘I discovered cocaine in my mom’s purse while we were shopping. She had it hidden in a mint case along with a razor blade and a straw. Then she married her drug dealer.’
“She stayed with him because he was always ‘sorry.’ He ‘never meant to hurt her.'”
‘I finally got the words out, ‘I DON’T WANT TO LIVE ANYMORE!’ I grabbed a bottle of ibuprofen, filled my hand and swallowed. I will never, ever forget the look on her face.’
“The last message she sent to me read, ‘You don’t matter anyways, maybe you should just disappear.’”
