Part 11 - My First Attempt

"Basket Case" - Green Day

I came home, after a final blow-out with my boyfriend and best friend, calmly told my Mother I just wanted to be left alone (both of my parents had gotten used to my black moods by this time), went upstairs, locked the bathroom doors, and cut my wrist.

My Mother came to check on me, and finding me nowhere but in a locked bathroom, she practically battered the door down. I laugh now, as we all do, now that I’m out of the woods depression wise, because my Mom was so shocked when she found me, she wrapped the nearest towel she could find around my wrist, to stem the bleeding, sat me on the side of the bath tub, and proceeded to clean up my blood, which was all over the tiled floor! But in all seriousness, the humour is a way for both me, and my parents, to cope with one of the darkest moments of my life.

She collected my Dad from work, on the way to the hospital. By this time, all my anger and pain had literally bled out of me, and I fell into an extremely unresponsive temper. I don’t remember a lot about being at the hospital, except a Doctor trying to get me to talk, and then telling my Mother that the solution was Prozac. A few pills and I’d be fine, but "better make sure she attends counselling so we can nip this in the bud".
I was stitched up, and sent home, with a brand new repeat prescription, and the telephone number for the crisis counselling service.

My Mom kept me off school for a fortnight, whilst I adjusted to my medication, and in that time, I was not alone for five minutes. She was terrified there would be a re-occurrence, but strangely enough, I think the time went someway towards healing me. She took astonishingly good care of me, considering she had absolutely no clue how to handle the situation. I’m not sure any parents would know the appropriate way to act at times such as this, and I’m not really sure there even is an "appropriate" way to act.

I went back to school, minus one boyfriend, on strained terms with my best friend, but with a brand new sweat band to hide the scar that’s still on my wrist to this day. It even goes slightly purple when the weather is really cold. I felt like an empty shell with no where to run, but carried on going through the motions of every day life, if nothing else, but to keep my parents happy.

Eventually, my best friend dropped out of sixth form schooling (A-Level studies), and my ex-boyfriend signed up to the Army. Over the months, we had become friends again, and grew used to being only that. Whereas my five year strong friendship with my "bessie" was officially dead. But deep down inside, that’s exactly what I wanted to be, and it took along time for that feeling to go away.