I continued
to suffer from insomnia. The pace of my thoughts was firing like a machine gun,
executing every cell in my brain. My head was aching beyond reason. I felt like
a monster was furiously growing underneath my skull, pounding and cracking my
lobes. Every insomniac night made that creature beefier and lousier.
My
mom was sleeping by me every night. Every toss and turn of mine would awaken her.
She was like a puppet and I was her master. The strings on her body were
twitching along with my movement. Once every half hour, she would sit up and
lightly pat my chest, “Don’t think of anything, try to calm down, let your mind
go blank.” When dawn came, she slowly rose from her bed and dragged her
weariness to work. I had no idea how she managed to go to work without any rest
at night. “Don’t worry about me. I will eat lunch quickly and sleep during the
rest of the break. I am able to fall asleep.” I heard her say that to my dad
before going to work, “I will sleep beside her tonight.” My dad offered to take
her place. “No, you snore very loud. Plus, if you fall asleep, you cannot watch
her, what if she . . .” The rest was said in a whisper.
During
the day, my dad was glued onto me. He was guarding every move I made. All the
knives in the kitchen were hidden from my reach. The handle of the balcony door
was wired shut. Common sense told me that the quickest way would be to jump off
a subway platform or throw myself over a highway bridge, but part of me was
afraid of the pain and torture before dying. Death mocked me for being a coward.
The act of living was not easy, but I didn’t expect death would be this hard
too. I started searching on the Internet for inspirations. Hopefully, people
would share their “recommended” methods to commit suicide. I needed an easy way
out of this world, instant and painless. But as it turned out, all the websites
I went to were trying to talk people out of their suicidal ideation. I didn’t
want to read them anymore. I didn’t want my determination to waver.
One
day, while my dad was on the phone with his brother, I opened my mom’s closet
and rummaged through her drawers. There, buried under layers of clothes, I
found a bottle of sleeping pills prescribed for my insomnia. It was newly
obtained from the pharmacy. Sixty pills were inside the bottle. Perfect.
Before bedtime, I wrote a farewell note to my
parents. I told them how
sorry I was for forsaking them. I wished that they would carry on after my
death and have another child to replace me. The words were a bunch of bullshit
inspired by cheesy soaps. After folding that piece of paper under my pillow, I
was ready.
That
night, I acted like I had finally “snapped out of my depression”. I told my
parents all the wonderful lies and successfully convinced my mom to sleep in
her own room. Right before bedtime, I locked myself in
the bathroom, poured out all of the pills and shoveled them down at once. I choked.
I spat out a mouthful and swallowed them in three smaller
lots. Suddenly I regretted everything, just like that night on the balcony. The
last sliver of sanity was struggling to keep me alive. I then thrust my fingers down my throat
to retrieve the pills. I vomited at least ten pills into the toilet. They were wrapped with
thin strings of blood. Should I call for
help? It’s still not too late to change my mind . . . The last thing I
remembered was walking back to my room, the moment I laid my body down, I was
out of this world . . .
Next morning, I woke up! I
tried to get up, but quickly realized my body had lost
all of its strength. My fingers were as weak as strings of cooked
noodles. I was dizzy and the world was spinning above me. Ironically, after a night
of deep sedation, my brain finally caught a break. My desire to die was
replaced by my instinct to live. I wanted to live again. Then I called my dad and
told him about consuming the pills last night. He slapped me across the face,
but I was too numb to feel any pain. He scolded me in a trembling voice, “Look
at you! Where is my daughter! You are not
her!” He wanted to take me to the hospital right away. My legs were too weak to
walk and I was too heavy to be carried. He wrapped my arm around his shoulder like
a solider helping a comrade and dragged me all the way through the corridor,
the elevator and into the garage. He was crying and cursing every step of the
way. On the road to the hospital, I dozed off again on the backseat.
When
we arrived at Scarborough Grace Hospital, we were turned back by two
paramedics. I vaguely heard that the hospital was closed because it was
infected with SARS, a serious pandemic which had originated in China. It was a
lethal air-borne disease that had already killed several patients and health
care professionals in and around Toronto. The city, the country and the world
were as chaotic as my tiny universe.
The
two paramedics decided to take me in their ambulance to another hospital
located about twenty minutes away. As one drove, the other one began to measure
my blood pressure and other vital signs. He seemed nice. Gently he asked me about
what had happened. I shamelessly told him the truth, “My boyfriend broke up
with me.” This was the reason everyone in my life believed in. But did I really die for love? If he were to
take me back, would that be my remedy? The paramedic comforted me by
saying, “You are only eighteen. You will soon move on.” I will soon move on . . . I wanted to believe him so badly.
When
we arrived at Centenary Hospital, I was placed in a wheelchair and pushed to
the triage nurse. Unlike the paramedic, this female nurse was devoid of
compassion. She asked me the same question in a rigid voice, “Why did you do
what you did?”
“My
boyfriend broke up with me.” I curled into a ball, not wanting to face her cold
and judgmental look.
“How
long were you together?”
“About
one month.”
“WHAT!”
I
felt a big wave of shame drowning me.
“Did
you think of killing another person?”
“Yes.”
For some reason I was more honest than I needed to be.
“Who?”
“Will.”
“How
did you think of killing him?”
“.
. . I don’t know.” This time I lied.
The sleeping pills I took
were the mildest type. It did not do any lasting damage to my brain and body.
In fact, the only treatment required was to wait for the drug to urinate out of
my system. Later that day, I was admitted to the observation unit. At bedtime,
I told my nurse, “I have insomnia. I need some sleeping pills to help me
sleep.” She laughed, “You still have a lot in you.”
That first night in the hospital, I managed to get an
extremely shallow sleep for at least three hours. A stream of laughter entered
my consciousness from the nursing station. Are
they mocking me? Are they talking about how stupid I am? I used to be a
mean-spirited person who despised people who resorted to suicide. I thought
they were weak and cowards, but now . . . Karma
is a damn bitch. I began to recall all the ugly things I had done and said
against other people. My mind was roused again. My resurrected ability to sleep
died its second death.
The next day, I was moved to
a psychiatric ward for juveniles. I was given a single room with a large window
that looked out to the street and the parking lot. The facility was cozy and
tidy, definitely favorable as a break from the outside world. I could not tell
if there was anything wrong with my fellow patients. They all appeared to be
normal. Some of them even looked happy.
One
afternoon, while I was playing with a jigsaw puzzle in the lounge, a young
nurse came to me and sat beside me. At first, she was helping me with finding
the puzzle pieces and we talked about trivial things. After warming up, she
began her real mission. She tried to be assertive, but there was no other way
to do it without pinching my most sensitive nerve, “How long were you
together?”
“One
month.”
She
must have read my file. It wasn’t surprising to her. Very carefully she asked
again, “Was it very intense? Did you . . .” I violently swung my head to stop
her from completing the question. No,
technically we did not have sex.
The
nurse continued, “Do you know that depression is treatable? Sometimes, thoughts
of suicide are temporary. A lot of people we’ve seen only attempted once and
recovered eventually. It takes time and patience.”
“How
long will it take me to feel better?”
“You
are on medications now. In at least two months or so you should feel the effects.”
“Two
months!” I was startled. It had only been a month since my depression, I
already felt like I had been in this pitch dark battle for life.
“Yes,
part of the work depends on the medication; the other part depends on you. You
have the power to overcome this.” Everyone kept on telling me I could overcome
my depression with will power. Well, at least this nurse only expected me to
meet her half way.
Later
that day I saw my father. He looked even more broken than Mom. He took my hands
and said, “We talked to your uncle in Washington DC, he said it would be
beneficial to take you on a vacation. That’s what a lot of people do when they
are stressed. After you are discharged from this hospital, we will drive to his
city. It has the most amazing museums in the world. You will be fascinated and
you will forget about all your problems.” That actually sounded like a great
idea. Indeed, that is what a lot of people do after a dramatic breakup. They go
away on a vacation, shop like there is no tomorrow, drink like the world is
ending, defile their body to finish off their bucket list, and come back
redeemed. It might just be the cure for me. I had a flicker of hope.
