Waking Up

*For a long time I wondered if I would share this on an open social media site because I know that parts of it may be triggering, but suicide rates are heartbreakingly high, and I needed to share my story to show that there is hope, hope even after you've attempted suicide.I have been in that darkest hour and I am here to say that I am so blessed and happy to have lived through my suicide attempt, and my heart hurts for those who were successful. If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts or any thoughts of hurting yourself there is help out there. Please feel free to reach out to me and I will help guide you into finding suicide help lines and even doctors who can help you. I promise you there is no shame in surviving, not shame in getting help*

     I was twenty three years old, when I looked in the mirror I saw a broken girl who could never be fixed. My arms were covered in cuts, each time deeper and deeper gathering the courage to make the pain stop. I had been trapped in my anorexia and self harm since I was fifteen with no hope that I could ever break free, my life had gone from bad to rock bottom in a matter of two years. I lost my innocence to a guy I thought I could trust and a few months later my mom died. My life had become nothing but starving, cutting, and swallowing pills that some crack pot psychiatrist wrote for me. I was done, to be honest I didn't just think I was broken, you can put broken back together, when I looked at me I was shattered and when something shatters you simply throw it away. 
     Now let me tell you that I tried with everything in me to reach out for help before I turned to ending my life. I went to the psych ER at our local hospital and some doctor sat me down in a room and began asking me questions. I told him that I had lost my mom to alcoholism, I was raped, and I couldn't beat the anorexia, couldn't put down the razor blades. He asked me what my plan was, and in no bs words I told him that I was going to crush up my many meds, put them down my tube, and then I was going to take a blade to my wrists. I thought for sure he would help me, they would keep me from harming myself, but he looked at my paperwork and then at me. He had the nerve to ask me about the tube in my abdomen, the tube that was the only way I could get nutrition because of the gastroparesis, and he told me that I couldn't come into mental health services because with a tube the other residents might try to pull it out and hurt me thinking I was some sort of robot or something. Here I was telling this man that I was going to hurt myself and the only thing he could tell me was to come back if the feelings got worse. In my mind I wasn't even good enough to get help from the hospital so I went home.
     I got home and it was like I was walking around out of my body, I knew I had to get the pain to stop. I wasn't trying to hurt the people who still cared about me, to be honest I thought I was doing them a favor. They would no longer have to worry about me, stress over why I didn't eat, why I cut, why I wouldn't leave the house...they could finally move on with their lives. I wasn't trying to be selfish, in my sick brain I was being selfless. It was almost like an outer body experience as I watched my own hands empty pill after pill until warm water. I watched as they melted into nothing, ready for a syringe that I used to pull up all those meds. I opened the tube, and I remember seeing the blood on my wrist from where I had cut trying to gather up the courage to finish what I had started. Almost like watching someone else gather up all those meds in that syringe I watched as I placed the syringe into the port of my tube that would send these meds into my small intestine where they would absorb in a matter of minutes with no way of getting them out. I was scared, but I thought this is what I had deserved after all the pain I caused my family and friends, after letting down my God. 
       My mind raced as the meds began to take hold, I was scared and yet convinced that I somehow deserved what I was doing, I would face God and whatever punishment he gave me I knew that I wholeheartedly deserved...I was dirty, cut up, starved, wasting every talent, every gift He had ever given me. I was throwing it all away. As the fog began to take hold I felt myself drifting to sleep never expecting to see another sunrise or disappoint anyone ever again. But, I forget something through all of this...God is a powerful being and He knew that my time wasn't over, that shattered girl I thought I was was a lie. I had been sinful, I had been hurt, I had lost, but I wasn't shattered there was a purpose for this girl slipping away alone in her room. 
     As I felt myself drift off I knew I would never see the sun shine again...I was wrong. A wonderful friend txted me at some point through all of this and I guess I just wasn't able to return a coherent sentence and she became increasingly worried. She rushed home and burst through my apartment, she has told me later what she found. I was laying in bed cold  and immoible, whatever incoherent things I managed to get out as she smacked me and screamed at me to wake up showed that I was pretty much gone at that point. She did what any friend or decent person would have done despite knowing I might be angry at her, she dialed 911 and with in ten minutes I had a room full of EMTs and Firemen. I vaguely remember anything about that, they were yelling at me and at each other saying they had to hurry.
     I came to a little bit in the ambulance when the EMT flat out smacked me in the face. He was stern and yelling and only now I understand he was trying to save my life. My blood pressure was dangerously low and my lack of veins was making it impossible for them to get a good line in me. When I would pass back out I would stop breathing, one of the only clear memories I have of that night is the EMT grabbing my face and screaming at me. I heard him, a man who had never met me and had no reason to care whether I lived or die scream, "BREATHE ANDREA! I am going to put a tube down your throat if you don't look at me, if you close your eyes one more time that is it...you are not meant to go out this way kid"! 
     The next time I manage to open my eyes I'm in a trauma room with docs and nurses everywhere discussing what they were going to do. I had put the meds in my tube and they weren't sure what to do at that point. I had somehow clear headed enough to tell them they couldn't put an NG down my nose because of the partial gastrectomy. The doctor that saved my life was late to the trauma room party, he was an ICU doc and when he walked in that room everything went quite. He walked up to me laying there barely able to follow the conversation or keep my eyes open and got in my face and his words somehow cut through the fog and the drugs that were trying to keep me out of it. He grabbed my head until I was able to look at his face and began to speak, "Andrea, you are going to stop breathing, I can promise you that. We are going up to the ICU right now and I am going to be there when it happens. I will not let you go even if it means I have to breathe for you...you are waking up in the morning"! My moment of clarity was gone and I honestly can't tell you much about what happened after that. 
    I opened my eyes the next morning laying in the intensive care unit listening to the beeping of all the monitors and noticing the oxygen mask on my face which I immediately tried to pull off and a nurse immediately put back on. It was my first day of a ten day hospital stay where I fought the docs and nurses tooth and nail who were trying to help me. I was refusing to let them tube feed me because I wasn't tolerating feeds. I was moved to a sitter room where I wasn't even allowed to get out of bed the first two days to walk to the bathroom. They fought with me and took the toxic level of meds that the crazy psychiatrist had given me. Since I was already very sick with gastroparesis and couldn't eat food I was not allowed in any of the mental health units or programs to help me so they worked with me in the hospital. 
     I left the hospital not much changed than I had when I took all those meds, the seed had been planted in my heart and my head that maybe I had something to fight for. Don't think I'm saying things changed overnight because they didn't. It was the beginning of a very long battle that at some points I thought I wouldn't win and didn't want to win. I was still running to cutting every night, it was the only way to quiet the screaming in my head, the only way I could get all those feelings that were consuming me to disappear for awhile. It was around that time that I meant Josh and he immediately did what so many had done in the past...he cared, he wanted to help, and I couldn't let myself trust him to be different than the ones before. 
     I was destroying myself, had a whole new batch of meds from that wonderful psychiatrist and was overusing the to escape my life. On July Fourth I locked myself in the bedroom, the screaming wouldn't stop I had to do it and before I knew it there was blood all over the bed and instead of freaking out I simply  just lay there staring at this. I guess Josh had come home at some point during all of this and the person who was living there was just sitting at the computer doing whatever. Josh's first thought was me and why I was missing from the equation. The other one looked at Josh and said, "the door was locked I guess she wanted to be alone". That didn't sit well with Josh so he broke in and found me laying there with blood all over the bed that showed little signs of stopping on its own anytime soon. He made sure I went to the ER to get stitched up and the proper infection protocols and from that moment on he became my bodyguard, my caregiver, and the man I loved. 
     It was a long rocky way to pull myself out of where I had ended up. I still wouldn't eat if left to my own choice, razor blades and all sharp objects were kept away from my reach, and the death cocktail I was on was locked in a box to which Josh had the key. Each day I would have a meltdown and want to quit, beg for more meds, for a razor, anything to make it stop. He helped me, never saying he was done or walking away with his hands up. Slowly my head began to clear and I began to see what I had done, what I had almost succeeded in doing. I tried to give up on my life before I even began to try to live, i believed the lies in my head that said no one could ever love me, God couldn't want me like this. I was so incredibly wrong about so many things. 
     I tried to commit suicide, for a long time I tried to hide behind the accidental overdose more for my own naivety than others. But, I can say it now...I tried to kill myself, I thought there was no way I could face another day of this pain, that there was no way out, I was shattered and doing the world a favor and I was wrong. I survived for a reason...I survived to recovery from my demons, to meet the man that will be my husband, to be come a mommy to a beautiful little boy, and to help others who feel like they have no way out, who are lost in eating disorders, self harm, depression, addiction, and feel like this world would be better off without them because no one really cares. 
     Suicide is no the way out, giving up is never the way to go because there isn't a thing that you can't overcome. You are not damaged no matter what has happened to you. A man took from me what I refused to give him and that doesn't make me shameful or dirty it makes me a survivor and not willing to let him have that control over me, that fear that he hoped to plant inside me forever, it was not my fault and that has taken a long time to accept. We all have it in us to survive and when you think you are alone and there is no one that could possibly understand you or what you've been through I promise you there is. I fall on my knees and I thank God for saving this soul that I was so willing to throw away. I know you are probably thinking I'm going to go on a Jesus freak rant, but I'm not. I know for a fact deep in my heart that He was there that night because I woke up the next morning.
     There is nothing we can't face if we aren't forced to stand alone. I know people have hurt you and most of the time they haven't meant to. It is hard to watch someone fall further and further away and you can't bring them back. I promise you help is there, and there are people ready to open their arms to you and love you no matter how damaged or shattered you think you are. We are losing so many young people everyday because they feel so alone, people make them feel worthless and say things that crack them even more, but I promise you that you are the worthless they say you are, you are so much more and you have purpose. Please reach out because not everyone has the luck to wake up that next morning and it breaks my heart to think that was the only solution they could find to the problem. 
    Please don't give up, I've been rock bottom and I've climbed out of it and it wasn't easy by any means but it is so very worth it. My demons still live in my head and some days they try to find their way to the surface and I've learned that I am stronger than them, I am a survivor and you can be to...don't give up because you are never too damaged to be repaired and you deserve the chance to see what life has in store for you if you just keep fighting the clouds will part and it will get easy to see the sun.

     Today I am a survivor, and I work very hard in my recovery. There are days that I want to starve, days I want to cut, but I know where those things get me, and it just isn't worth it anymore. You are worth so much more than your addictions, and your life is precious no matter what you have been through God loves you and there are people out there that will love you, please don't give up.