Story #355

Hi I’m Sam. I wish I was dead but I don’t want to die, and here’s why.

One time, my roommates jumped down my throat about the apartment not being clean. I was in such a depressed state of mind, I thought about taking the kitchen knife I was holding and slashing down my forearm, spraying blood everywhere. In my mind I used my last breath to laugh and ask how about you clean us this.

Gross right? These thoughts often run threw my head, yet all they do is just stay there. I don’t want to die, I just want this pain, these thoughts to stop. Here let me rewind a little.

I’ve always had lived with my mother. The psychopathic bitch who gave birth to me. I didnt get meet my father till I was 18. The man who took his place in my childhood (at 8 years old) was wonderful until the day he snapped. I spent the next 11 years being verbally, physically and emotionally abused. I was told on a daily bases it would have been better if I was never born, that I was a whore and stupid and never would amount to nothing, watching my mother hold a knife to her chest saying she was going to kill me and her. My “dad” turned my mother and my little sister against me, i wasn’t “part of the family” anymore. I had nobody. I cooked my own meals. I was left out of Christmas family photos. When I went in the living room to watch TV with them, he turned it off. He told me that I made his life hell by being alive so he was going to make every second of mine hell. I spent my entire childhood being told I was nothing, worthless, by my own family, by everyone I was ever around. I seeked “god” and found nothing. I was udder alone.

At 15 I rebelled. I lost my virginity, I smoked pot, I drank, anything I could do to pissed my parents off. Though I myself defeated my own purpose. I did it all in secret. I kept up my perfect grades and sports, everything. I just wanted them to be proud of me, notice me, love me like they did my little sister. But I was never good enough. I started giving myself to any and everyone. I let myself be raped and hurt. Anything to feel something right? Pain is better than nothing at all.

I started self harming. It made me feel actual physical pain and let me focus on getting myself out of my head. I did it more and more. Over and over again. But unlike most, I cut on my thigh. I didn’t want them to be seen. I didn’t want anyone to know the pain I was going threw. I didn’t want to be noticed. All the while my brain was screaming for help… No one noticed a thing.

My senior year and the year that followed is what changed me, for both the better and the worse. That year I found out my “dad” had been molesting my little sister. She got taken away and given to the custody of my aunt. And I chose to stay. I guess part of me thought with her gone, maybe now they would love me. I was wrong. They blamed her being taken on me. It was my fault. I did it. Christmas that year we didn’t even put up a tree. My “dad” spent all of Christmas trying to take different shelters to take me. He tried everything to get rid of me but nothing worked.

I fell in love with a guy my senior year. We all know how it goes. I was crazy in love with him and he just wanted my body. Yet I was continuously stupid enough to believe he loved me. He fucked with my head, kept telling me it was to complicated, that we couldn’t be together. I graduated thinking it was my freedom from him, I wouldn’t have to see him anymore. I was finally free from his web.

A week after I graduated, I finally decided to leave. I knew my “dad” wasn’t going to let go to college because he didn’t believe women deserved an education. He believed that all women should be doing “wifely duties” like cooking, cleaning and having children. I had had enough. I asked my mom to borrow her phone and I called a friend asking them to come and get me. I packed 3 tshirts and a pair of underwear and walked out the backdoor. The only thing my mother was worried about was where her phone was.

I spent the next 2 months moving between friends houses. The 4th of July came around and guess what? I saw the guy I was in love with senior year. I kept telling myself I was over him, but when I saw him again… there was not doubt that my feelings had never changed. I took down his new phone number and started talking to him again. A few days later I was moved in with him and his parents and was beyond happy. He was finally mine and I had a family who loved me. I soon found I was pregnant and we were all beyond excited. My life was beyond perfect.

Soon it was my birthday, I was able to go a state away and visit my biological father and his family for the first time. I remember being so nervous I hid in the bathtub with a bucket on my head. My life just getting better and better. While with my father I had no way to message my boyfriend, so when the nleeding and the excruciating pain started I had no way of letting him know. I didn’t want my family to know I was pregnant so I hid it from them knowing they would shame me for it, talking it off as just super bad cramps. I knew something wasn’t right, and I had no other option than to suffer alone. I knew I had misscarried.

When I got back to my boyfriends place I explained everything that was happened and he cried. An hour after me getting there his father pulled me aside and told me that I had to leave. It was either me leave or they all got kicked out. Apparently the landlord were friends of my “dads” and heard from them I was nothing my a “lying, stealing whore” and they didn’t want me there. I begged to stay just that night, but I was told I had one hour to get what I could and leave. My perfect life… gone.

I spent the next 3 weeks curled up in a ball in my best friends bed. I didn’t eat, I didn’t drink anything. I kept text and calling my boyfriend, yet he never answered me. It was obvious. I’m damaged goods. I miscarried. Who wants someone who can’t even give them children. Who would want someone fucked up like me?

Have you ever felt you’re soul shatter? It’s deeper than just you’re heart breaking. I can’t really explain it, but promise me it hurt like fucking hell. I laid there, basically a zombie, and all I did was stare at walls and stay constantly stoned. It’s the only thing that kept me “sane”. At the end of those 3 weeks was my first day of college. I picked my self up, showered, and gathered my shit. I’m a fighter. I may be a fuck up but I’ll be damned if I’m a quitter. I HAD to prove my “dad” and everyone else wrong. I WILL make make it….somehow.

Those three weeks changed me. My depression got worse. I “taught” myself how to completely shut off all emotions. My depression controls me. I’m drowning in myself. These thoughts, their vines twisting and tying themselves around me. They control me. This time I didn’t sit back quietly and let everyone believe I was okay. This time I screamed out, literally begging someone, anyone to help me. Some people tried to helped, I tried dating again. And still nothing.

Over a year has passed. I should be holding my 6 month old baby in my arms, sitting beside the person I loved more than any other, but I’m not. I’m alone, it’s 4am and I’m bawling so badly I can barely type. Why does my body hate me so much it killed my own child. Why am I this way. Why are these thoughts still here? These thoughts telling me to just go outside and walk until I pass out and pray I freeze to death. These thoughts telling me to “go take a shower” and slide that shiny steel across my skin, just to see if I can feel it, and if not keep cutting deeper until I do.

This is only part of my story. Part of what goes on up inside this crazy mind of mine. This, this is not me. I am not my depression, but my depression is me. Someday I will find my purpose for being alive, I don’t know how, or when or anything. But this is not my end.

Hi, I’m Sam. I wish I was dead, but don’t want to die.

Now do you see why?

– Samantha, Lawton