Honor Aside

Chapter 4

I felt suicidal for the first time in that house too, when I was 15. I had argued with my mom over a shirt she'd bought me. She often deliberately bought clothes so large that I'd be swimming in them, for modesty's sake. If I tried to buy something she considered inappropriate, she'd shame me, as if I was deliberately acting inappropriately to bother her rather than trying to exert some control over my life. This particular shirt was very structured, so it needed to fit through the shoulders to look good. But it did not. I ranted bitterly, trying to tell her that I felt like an idiot trying to make such ill-fitting clothes look normal on me. My mom told me I needed to fix the rage inside myself and, more importantly, pray so I could change my personality to become more patient, kind, and religious. I was so frustrated that I cried. By the end of our argument, I agreed with her and said I'd do my best not to act out again. We hugged and she reminded me again of what I needed to do to be less angry and irrational. She'd speak these things with such gentleness sometimes that I was convinced I was a monster. That night, as I sat in the basement watching The Bachelorette, I felt numb and something more. I hated myself, and I couldn't change it. I thought, "I should kill myself," for the first time. The impulse had been there for years, unspoken and unacknowledged.

According to most religions, it is a sin to think about ending one's life. I wanted so badly to be good and worth the trouble. I wanted to be what I should have been all along, but I kept disappointing everyone. I would want to be nice and end up yelling at my mom or my siblings. I no longer believe that I deserved to suffer. However, it is hard knowing that a world exists in which people can suffer so greatly from a lack of support and feel the lowest a human can feel without any way of understanding that they deserve better. If you don't have anyone who can tell you anything different, you do not know. And that's how it stays for a long, dark time.

My first suicidal night, I sat in the basement like I had so many times before. My parents didn't allow me to visit friends in their homes and I was never enrolled in any clubs, teams, or camps. I sat and watched television. I lost myself in the storylines and the escape became addictive. Lazy fucking loser. But even the characters I watched irritated me. I couldn't understand or manage my emotions. I have been anxious for most of my life. I had chest pains from a young age due to stress and it got worse throughout high school. I slept poorly from stress about school, my family, and my failure to do anything meaningful that would lead to a better future. I cried and begged God to forgive me for thinking about ending my life, and to ease the stress. There was no release.

I remained suicidal for years. I had a good few days here and there, but overall, I was miserable in my own head. I tried to tell my mom sometimes, but that led to more fretting and nagging about prayer and my many shortcomings on her part. I don't think that a kind God would want me to suffer like I did. I am no longer religious for this and other reasons. Back then, I knew deep down that it wasn't normal or sustainable. I was at times very withdrawn and at others numb but artificially happy, almost manic, because I needed to get over-the-top excited about something to distract myself. I went to places and thought about ways to kill myself, then hated myself for not being able to enjoy things like a normal person would. The feeling would emerge as I walked home from school, when I saw a car drive down the street, when my parents fought, when they got along, when I was tired, and when I thought things might just be okay. Once, the urge to kill myself became so strong that I decided to tell my English teacher if it ever got really, really bad. I knew that I would never actually tell her, which meant that I couldn't be serious about killing myself.

When I was in 11th grade, the chest pains became debilitating. I always felt out of breath, which often happens when I am anxious (which includes most of my childhood). Since I was a kid, I believed that I wouldn't live to see my 20s because I assumed I'd have a heart attack before then. I didn't know what else the chest pains could indicate, besides that I was going to die young. Once when I tried to tell my mom that my chest hurt, she accused me of eating too much junk food and not praying enough. I was nine, and I didn't speak of it again until years later, when the pain was much worse because I was more stressed. I was terrified to bring it up, because I was obviously doing something wrong. I told my dad about it years later. He asked if I needed to see a doctor, and I said I did. I was worried that I was close to dying. I would awaken many times throughout my childhood with searing chest pain that came with every breath. I would try to find a better position to sleep, sometimes sitting up in bed for hours, sick with worry, until the pain subsided somewhat. That time, I wanted him to help. But he ignored me. My mom had somehow been listening and came in screaming about how I was doing this to make her life harder. I cried and left. I hugged my clock radio close to my ear in the blue early-morning light, snuggled under my blanket. I hoped my mom wouldn't barge into my room to continue yelling at me. I wanted to disappear.

I was forced to go to a doctor the next day and explain myself. He listened to my breathing and heart and found nothing wrong. After that, whenever I had chest pain, I told myself that it wasn't real. That reduced the anxiety I had about my health, but I was still suicidal. And I was tired. The emotional overwhelm led to burnout. I had courses to complete and university applications to submit. I didn't have the option to choose a university far enough away from home that I'd have to live there. However, I did sometimes think that it would be nice to get away from a situation that caused headaches, shortness of breath, and perpetual knots in my stomach. "Good" children didn't move out for school, though. They didn't make their parents worry about them all the time and give everyone a reason to gossip, especially if they were girls. Who knows what you could be up to - drugs, pre-marital sex, alcohol, having sex before you were supposed to, eating junk food all day, or even compromising your virginity (which was, as I learned over many years, still the basic value of a daughter). I was under a lot of pressure to go to the same university my sister was attending. I had seen her commute for hours every day, participate in countless clubs and volunteer, study all the time, and lose weight from stress. I chose a university I wasn't supposed to. I still thought I was going to medical school.

I remember the heaviness of the depression when I was in my final year of high school. I felt so tired all the time. My mom bothered me about joining clubs to strengthen my applications. After years of being told not to bother getting involved in order to avoid interactions with boys, it was hard to motivate myself to join anything that required me to stay at school even longer. I hated being around people and being seen and judged harshly for what I was. I hated myself a lot. I usually wanted to return home, where there was food, a bed, and a television if I needed to disappear. By the end of high school and its tortuous gamut of health-related, academic, and social anxiety, I felt like a nervous wreck. I hoped that things would change somewhat when I started university.

I still don't understand the mentality that you should just stop, for example, watching movies or engrossing yourself in books, and just face your life - as if it were necessary and noble to jolt yourself into better habits. It's an extension of the idea that people can make huge, life-changing decisions if they want something badly enough and carry out the required actions if they just keep putting effort into it. The manic tendency toward action precludes lasting progress because there's no room for reflection. The emphasis on action also implies that people who haven't or haven't yet made such decisions are wasting their lives. I think the idea is expressed mainly by people who are hard on themselves and are projecting that on others, or by people who are lucky and privileged enough to have never been in the position to need an engrossing mental escape. Not everyone agrees, especially not people who belong to that latter category. A person can't understand what they can't even fathom. And that's alright, but I do wish people were generally more aware of their own limitations. It would have made things easier to not have to listen to so much advice that didn't apply to me at all.