By Haylee Millikan
Fall 2016 Kaplan Award Winner
I was eight the first time I tried to kill myself. It was as simple as eating those “Do not eat” packets in the bottom of a shoebox: maybe it was harmless, but I didn’t know that. It was the intent that mattered.
The feeling isn’t easy to explain to people who have never personally dealt with suicidal ideation. It’s the wanting to die so explicitly, so desperately, even if everything in your life is going right. Sometimes it comes to me in a panic, or after a hard day, and sometimes it envelops my every thought and I am unable to function normally. I used to think that everyone thought about death the same way, as an escape. But the older I got, and the more everyone around me told me to “think about the happy things,” the more I realized that my reality was different than the people I knew.
***
I call my suicide attempt at thirteen my “turning point.” I was in the eighth grade, and it was a few weeks after a humiliation in the clique-filled lunchroom of my middle school. A group of my best friends told me I was no longer allowed to sit with them at lunch, and soon after, I found out that a rumor had been spread that I was a lesbian. A rumor that was partly true, but made it so I didn’t come out as queer until I was in college.
I took a handful of Nyquil and Dayquil, a couple of my dad’s blood thinners, took a shower, tucked myself into bed, and fell asleep with my cat on my stomach purring. I can still remember exactly what it felt like to go to sleep knowing I would not wake up. It was a feeling of relief, of release.
But I did wake up, vomiting and peeing myself, green clumps of medication sticking to my legs. I stayed home for three days. My feelings then were mostly emptiness, failure. My parents thought it was the flu, and it took me almost three years to tell them otherwise.
For a few years after, I thought I was “over it,” that I was “better.” I would tell people I was a survivor and that it was related to the incessant bullying I was dealing with, but really it was much more complicated than that. Sometimes it felt like it was out of my control, that no matter how much I succeeded in school or in extracurriculars or in leadership, I would never feel worthy enough to enjoy living.
***
I had a friend in high school whose father committed suicide in their family truck. She was one of the only people I knew at that age who had also dealt with suicide, and we connected over being able to share feelings with each other about how suicide affects people, though our experiences were the inverse.
And then, when I was seventeen, my favorite aunt committed suicide, and suddenly I knew both sides of the story. It was hard, the first few months, adjusting to the constant feeling of dread. We were researching guns in my AP U.S. History class, and I barely kept it together when I did my presentation. Even then, I prefaced it with the caveat that my aunt had recently shot herself and that if I couldn’t make it through and needed to leave, that was why. I found myself extra-attentive when it came to people saying “I’m going to kill myself” flippantly, and I was incredibly triggered (and still am) by someone miming shooting themselves in the head.
Even with my own family, I found myself having to remind them I knew how it felt. When they would call her selfish, when they implied she should’ve found a way to help herself, I was reminded that for people who don’t live with suicidal ideation, waking up each morning is a given, not a triumph.
And that’s why I can’t go to suicide prevention walks.
***
I was eighteen when I learned what the difference was between “suicide survivor” and “suicide attempt survivor.”
At a charity walk for suicide prevention, Out of the Darkness, we tied ribbons around our wrists to signify why we were there: red for if you had lost a loved one, if you were a “suicide survivor,” and white if you had survived a suicide attempt, if you were a “suicide attempt survivor.” There were other colors, but I was fixated on my own, of course.
I noticed that there were not many people wearing white. The booths filled with notes to lost loved ones, with “Just hang on!” and “You’re beautiful” and “Reach out, someone loves you” made me sick to my stomach.
I hated it every time someone called themselves a suicide survivor. What did they survive? I recognize the trauma that comes with losing someone you love, I do. But centering it on you, instead of that person, ultimately contributes to the feelings that real suicide (attempt) survivors have of worthlessness.
***
Imagine being both, a suicide and suicide attempt survivor. I was absolutely crushed when my aunt died. It made me angry and filled me with sorrow that she felt her only option was to die. But beyond the anger there was understanding. Because ultimately, I understand wanting to die. I wonder sometimes if she had known I was suffering too, if she would’ve reached out. If anything would have been different. But it can’t be different, because we cremated her. My father spread her ashes.
I wear her jewelry almost every day, and I think of her every time I pull out her camera, every time I listen to “Sally’s Got A Gun” (she worked at a theater, gave me a CD with a cover of that song by the cast.)
Her death wasn’t about me. I didn’t survive anything. She was the one that pulled the trigger. She was the one that didn’t survive. That doesn’t mean those of us who have lost loved ones shouldn’t celebrate their lives, shouldn’t wish for the world to be free of suicide. It just means we need to confront the ways we speak about their deaths, the ways we perpetuate the idea that mental illness can be “fixed” and isn’t something you live with. Sometimes, when you’re a person who isn’t mentally stable, it feels like if you can’t live with it, you shouldn’t live at all. And that shouldn’t be what we are reinforcing, especially in suicide prevention.
***
I’m at a point in my life where I rarely think about committing suicide. And I’m proud of that, because I’ve worked really hard to get here. I pay close attention to my stress levels, to how much I’m sleeping and eating, to how much exercise I’m getting. I’m not currently on medication, but would go back on in a heartbeat if I noticed my mental health declining. And I would notice. I think about it every day.
I can’t go to suicide prevention walks. In all honesty, they make me want to kill myself. I wish I liked them, I do, and I know that for some people they are sources of empowerment, of community, and of strength. But I can’t do it. Instead, I speak out in support of folks who live with mental illness often, and I am not afraid to tell my story.
I can’t go back and tell my aunt that she is not alone in wanting to die.
But, I can use every day to remind the people in my life that they are not alone in the feeling of triumph when their eyes open in the morning and they know they have another day to try.