Suicide Survivor
By: Georgia Raye Dunn
For as long as I can remember, I suffered from depression and anxiety. When I was a little girl, I would randomly want to cry which I did. As I got older into fourth grade I began to self harm by cutting, burning, and erasing my skin. Sadly I was so young and I didn't know what I was doing or why, I just knew it made me feel better mentally and emotionally.
As I was getting older I began to start smoking at the fine age of twelve. I thought that smoking would help me feel better, which in turn it didn't. I was now self harming and smoking at such a young age and when you're that young I believe you have more of an addicted personality so I would assume anyways.
I struggled with my self worth and image. I've struggled with my weight for many of years and to this day I still do. Sadly that had an impact on my teenage life.
My sisters always had boyfriends and girlfriends and I was always alone with just me and my thoughts. Which I know sounds silly and pretty selfish but to say the least I was jealous of my sisters for the fact of always having someone.
I remember one Valentines Day my sisters significant others were over and my parents had each other as I had no one, as they celebrated Valentines Day I went into the bathroom and cried because I was alone. Mind you I was maybe thirteen at the time so there is that.
I struggled more through out the years of my teenage life with depression and anxiety, which come to find out I suffered from bi-polar disorder which I was diagnosed at twenty-seven years old.
With my self esteem and self worth was down the drain my mental illnesses got worst. I found away to find myself worth in anybody who showed me the littlest attention and I would cling to that for dear life.
When I was nineteen I was going through a divorce which devastated me, which then opened new feelings I haven't felt before like betrayal, worthlessness, replaceable, and unloved.
At the age of nineteen feeling that way really does play tricks on the mind. While my feelings of desperation and irrationality consumed me I would try to find myself worth in men whom I thought would make me feel better about myself, which it did at the time but after the night was done and over with I just felt worst. Self loathing and hatred became a thing of my everyday life.
With all these feelings still undiagnosed or talked about continued to bottle up the only release I've know was self harming.
I'm now in my twenties and still never got my emotions or mental illnesses checked out because in my family psychotic medications were a scam and were unrealistic. Therapy was a joke to my family as well.
I've known there was something wrong with me but could never express it because I was ashamed and I didn't want to be judged by anybody.
Dealing with bi-polar disorder that has gone unchecked for so long can mess with the mind so much. I would be on such a high and the crash after wards was atrocious. The best way I can explain bi-polar disorder is where you drink an energy drink and you have all this energy and you feel the rush of all these positive endorphins run through your mind even though knowing the come down was going to hurt worst then the high. Once you hit the top of the energy drink and its time for the come down you know you're not going to feel good and you'll just want to lay in bed and sleep. That's kind of like having bi-polar disorder except the energy drink is all done in a few hours with BPD it hits in waves of weeks and months. The low is always longer than the high.
Bi-polar disorder is something that cannot go unchecked for to long because when it comes to the depression part of it, it hurts really bad. In one of the lowest I've been I attempted suicide at the age of twenty-six.
I just had my son a few months prior to my suicide attempt which post partum was still in full swing with me because I didn't want to talk to my doctor about it. Having post partum depression on top of untreated bi-polar disorder, was a terrible mixture in the making. I had asked my sister in law to watch my son while I went and took a bath. She said she would and after I strapped him in his swing I went to the bedroom grabbed a bottle of prescription pills and popped the entire bottle, then I proceeded to go and take a bath and cry. Before I went and took the bath I had wrote a suicide not reading "sorry mom, dad, Waylon and Austin. I love y'all very much but I cant do it anymore."
In the time frame after I took the pills, taking a bath, and from my sister in law telling me my son had a fever, it snapped me back into reality and made me realize what I had done. I went to talk to Austin after I got the news about Waylon having a fever so I proceeded to let Austin know that he had a fever and that I had taken a full bottle of pills.
Austin and I bickered back and forth for about thirty minutes while we waited for the ambulance to show up. Once the ambulance showed up I was escorted to the hospital rather quickly. I was given an IV to keep me hydrated. The only symptoms I had of the overdose were slightly slurred words, tiredness, and thirsty. I got to the hospital where I was put under watch.
We got the results back from the blood test to where it showed that the pills had no effect on my body which the pills were basically Benadryl on steroids. My stomach didn't need to pumped or anything like that. The pills should have killed me and the doctors and nurses were questioning if I took as much as I said I did, which I took almost fifty pills.
Here pegs the question how did I survive suicide? Well let me tell you. The simple answer is God. As many pills as I took that should have killed me rather quickly in about an hour or so give or take. I didn't have any deficits from the over dose or any long lasting symptoms.
My fiancé Austin and I talked and decided the best option was for me to go into a mental hospital to get on the right medications and get the mental help that I needed which I did just that.
Now the mental hospital wasn't straight jackets and padded rooms like the movies show. I was lucky enough to go to a nice facility where they had great staff. The rooms had a bed, a little side table, and a place for our clothes and the little amount of belongings we were able to have.
I was in the hospital for a week and I got on stronger anti depressants, sleeping medication, and an antipsychotic. I was able to leave the hospital and make amends with my family and loved ones. I had/have a long road ahead of me for recovery!
Now that I'm on these medications I can really live life the way it should be lived. I still have my days but with God, medications and all my family and loved ones I can really say I'm doing ten times better than I ever have in my life.
I have two beautiful children whom I love with all my heart and I want to live to see them become parents and have children of their own one day.
I would like to add the fact that without God I wouldn't be here, and I wouldn't have my two beautiful children Waylon and Cora. I had gotten pregnant with Cora after the suicide attempt which in my mind was why God kept me alive was because he knew he wanted me to have another baby. Which if it wasn't for God I was deemed infertile at nineteen. God gave me life, let me give life, and let me live from my own selfish deeds. I'm a walking testament of God and I thank him every day for the life his has given me and let me keep. I can honestly say I don't want to die.
