What Happened on Wednesday

Part Eight

And then came Oliver's birthday. I had just started my Sophomore year, I was only a month and a half into the school year, and the memories of Oliver pressing down on me came flooding back to me and I felt helpless. The suicidal thoughts and the whisper in my mind that I would be better off dead rushed into my body and I couldn't do anything about it. I started becoming more quiet once again and I stopped trying. I started to hate him and things around me more. At that point, I believed that feeling suicidal was one of the scariest feelings imaginable, even scarier than thinking you're about to die. The ability to cause your own death is terrifying.

I opened up to the school counselor about my suicidal thoughts after a few days of them not going away. I felt betrayed when she told me that she had to call home. I begged her not to call my parents, and to call my grandma instead. We compromised, though, with my mother. My mom lived in Clinton, Iowa, multiple hours away and I wouldn't have to look her in the eye and tell her I wanted to die. Nonetheless, that night, my mother received a phone call.

It was late October of 2020 when the thoughts turned to actions. I fell into habits of self harm and biting my lips until they were raw. I didn't eat as much as I needed to. I was just so tired all of the time. I was put into therapy around this time and diagnosed with depression and PTSD, and put on a medication called Prozac. I felt like a burden and I truly thought that Oliver was winning. I wanted to tell my grandmother and Mrs. Mirum about what was going on, but I just couldn't open up my mouth. I wasn't able to stand there and tell two of the most important people in my life how much I didn't want to continue on my own. So I didn't. I couldn't sit there and look at me with the face of disappointment. I couldn't. It is so hard to speak in general when you are thinking about ending things. It was physically hard to open my mouth and express the numbness within me.

I would try so hard to open up to Joliene and Madison but instead of my words coming out like the fluid mess that I thought it would, but more like an ice machine that had been broken for weeks, but I decided to just stay quiet. Life is a lie, I would write frequently on my skin. There was no point.

Except there were. I could sit down and come up with one hundred reasons just to do it and get over it, to commit suicide and follow through with my plan. I could think of exactly five reasons to keep fighting, to keep going. Those five reasons were as follows:

Catherine Joliene Mrs. Mirum Mr. Mirum Grandma

Five people that inspired me to keep going. My five reasons to have hope in life, my five reasons to keep going. I was miserable, but because of them, I am still here. But because I was still there, I wanted to get things off of my chest, and I did that in a terrible way. I became more reckless. Failing math, contemplating suicide, yet still put my education above my mental health. Biology and math became my enemy, I never was good at those but with my ever deteriorating mental health, there was no way in hell I was going to get good grades now.

It was November when I really started to slip. I was no longer riding a C or D in math or biology, I was failing both, and I had a high chance of getting kicked off of the cheer team. I was the only male cheerleader Schuyler County had seen in a long time. I felt so proud to be Oscar Spurgeon on that cheer team, the entire school (as unsupportive as they were behind my back) would cheer to my face as I kicked and lifted the girls into the air. But failing class after class, I just didn't seem to care. I didn't even bat an eye. Each day I was speaking to my friends less and less and I even stopped talking to Mrs. Mirum. I felt like no one cared, and that all I was good for was my grades. Of course, that wasn't the case, but I didn't know that then.

Schuyler County seemed to just suck the energy out of me and there was nothing I could do. I decided one day that I did want to kill myself, but I didn't want to be the cause. In other words, I stopped looking both ways before crossing the street. I stopped paying attention to how many pills I took. The memories and terrible feeling of his hands on my collarbone made me feel numb and took all of my emotions and whisked them away. I felt miserable. Every time I looked at the night sky, I no longer saw my sweet Catherine in the universe but once again saw the bruise. Even in three years it didn't feel like it had healed enough at all. That was a terrible thought and I felt horrible for it, but I couldn't help it. Everything felt horrible. What was wrong with me? I felt sick when I ate, so I just didn't eat. I didn't have the energy to care about taking care of myself. Once again, I stayed in my bed and skipped school frequently.