03/25/01 - 08:32 PM

I can�t remember how old I was exactly when suicide began to appeal to me.

I think I was 14.

I would take handfuls and handfuls of over-the-counter painkillers, even though I had access to real medication. I took the painkillers because I wasn�t trying to kill myself. Not exactly anyway.

What I wanted was a coma or hospitalization. Anything to bring attention to what I was doing, I just wanted someone to look at me and say, �Why? Why did you do that? Why did you try to kill yourself?� just so I could tell them why.

I had no idea how much or how little I was supposed to take to achieve a coma. I knew that the chances of actually committing suicide were dangerously high but if I did die at least someone would notice. Someone would look at my life and think �Why did this girl want to die?� And maybe in the process the reasons would be found out and some of the people I loved could be rescued.

I hated being punished. Everyone hates punishment. I tried everything to avoid punishment. My punishments came only at night or very early morning. And nobody knew about them except me and him. Punishments came whether I was good or bad. Not always every night, not on a regular basis, just surprises, horrible surprises.

I said something about them once and no one believed me. So I never said anything again.

If I knew one was coming, on nights when I knew it would be particularly awful, that�s when the pill gulping began. Just to avoid them. But I never took enough. At the most, I passed out in my bed at night when I was supposed to be sleeping anyway. My heart raced, I felt nauseous. But my coma never came, no one ever noticed, no one paid attention.

I should have never let him know how to punish me. I remember how it happened. I had pissed him off and when he started to slap me, I begged for him not to hit me, that I would do anything, just don�t hit me.

He stopped. Light in his eyes. He said okay and walked away. And I knew. I knew then that I had said a stupid, stupid thing. I should have just let him hit me and hit me, anything, anything instead of what happened.

I learned a lot of things after that.

Never say anything. Take a beating. Sneak out handfuls of pills without anyone noticing. And how to hide extreme hatred.

And that God doesn�t listen.