i was fourteen when i wanted to die

 dear diary,

    i have never known a time when my sadness did not want to swallow me whole. i have spent the better part of my life mourning the potential of a girl that does not drown in her own mind. 

    there's something so eerily strange about writing that sentence now. fourteen feels impossibly young when i say it aloud. young enough that somewhere beneath al the darkness at least, i was still a little girl. maybe that in itself is the part i have the hardest part reconciling. when i think back on my childhood, i don't remember it as a dark place. i remember it in colour. like a lot of it. preserved in one of those snow globes and if i shook hard on it, glitter would fall into place. 

    i remember this pink plastic world of the 2000's. the world was enormous then and everything important was small: a tooth underneath my pillow, a strawberry-shaped eraser, a secret written in glitter pen, a butterfly cupped gently between my hands. it all sounds so deliciously innocent. sidealk chalk bleeding under summer rain. rolling down grassy hills until i was dizzy, coming inside with grass stains on my knees and runs in my striped tights. there were butterfly barrettes tangled in my hair and fairy dust on my bedroom floor. there were popsicles melting down my hands and friendship bracelets stacked up on my arms. i believed in fairies. i believed in dandelion wishes. like really, if i wished with enough solemn conviction, they would come true. i believed i would be happier when i was older. 

    i had glitter gel pens and a bedroom covered in flower and fairy stickers. i played outside until the sky turned pink. i made fairy houses beneath lilac bushes and flower petals. i collected pretty rocks and acorns and shells, keeping them in little boxes because i was certain that one day i would discover what they would be for. 

    i don't want to erase the girl i was in order to tell the truth about what happened to her. she really did roll down grassy hills and draw suns and flowers in sidewalk chalk. she really did laugh until her stomach hurt and she really did believe in magic. i don't want to rewrite my childhood into something it wasn't just because she eventually grew into a sad girl. 

    she loved things. brightly coloured things. she loved stories and magic and animals and making little worlds inside bigger ones. she loved the feeling of pavement after it rained and collecting pretty pieces of sea glass. she loved the secret architecture of childhood: the tiny treasures kept in drawers and friendship bracelets tied too tightly and glow in the dark stars stuck crookedly to the ceiling. she believed the world was enchanted. and then somehow she become a teenager who did not want to be alive. 

    i think there's a social tendency to imagine suicidal children and teenagers as having always been visibly broken. like a child who is going to grow into someone who cannot imagine surviving adulthood must look different in photographs. 

     i was eight years old when i first felt like i was drowning. it was the fourth grade and i woke up every morning feeling like i was dying with this insurmountable anxiety that would not ease. at that time, i didn't have the vocabulary to describe what i was feeling. all i knew was waking up every morning with a weight pressing me deep into my bed. going to school and socializing with strangers made my throat close up and seemed like the most torturous thing that could ever exist. now this year was also the year i got my first concussion. in my eight-year-old mind, this was a blessing from the gods. i had the ability to stay at home where it was safe, in my bed that wouldn't let me go, and be alone. of course, this wasn't a sustainable coping mechanism and i got better over time- meaning everything that seemed daunting to me suddenly leered at me. 

    for a while, i went about life with this tightness in my chest and heaviness in my heart that never truly went away. i would have these "blue days" when i could not get out of bed and my mind was at war with itself. there would be nights i could not stand up in the shower and instead chose to sit down and pray the water would wash away my misery. 

    at fourteen, i didn't believe i would ever get better. that's not to say i didn't enjoy life. i really did. i think that the two can coexist- a lust for life and also the desire to not live anymore. the beginning of high school paralyzed me in the morning with fear and my own mind poisoned me every day with the recurring thought: everything would feel better if i just didn't exist. at fourteen i thought back on the fourth grade and i remembered i was eight years old when i first felt like i was drowning. and the respite from my anxiety with the simple solution of a concussion. without going into too many triggering details, i will say this: i gave myself one. for a while, i was so ashamed at what i had done. it was the secret i carried close to my heart like if i loosened my hold, it would infect others with its dark and twisted nature. over time i came to realize i had just done what i did because i thought there was no other way to escape. and i have empathy for the girl who thought there was no other way. 

    now this is one of my most strangest memories to remember. that summer, i went to iceland with my family. there, i stood beneath a sky bigger than anything i had ever known before. i saw these gorgeous waterfalls and rugged black sand beaches and enormous mountainous landscapes that looked like they belonged on another planet if not another reality where elves and hobbits existed. i remember the strange light from the midnight sun and looking out the window of our camper van at all this untouched and wild land. i remember thinking it was the most beautiful i have ever seen mother earth. i also remember wanting to die. and nobody even knew.

    actually, maybe that's not true. i didn't want to die, i just didn't want to live. and i think that's an important distinction to make. i remember walking to school in the mornings and saying hi to every stranger i would see on the street. the exchange was enough to brighten my day. i've noticed recently that things have changed and the quick but rewarding human interaction is long lost to headphones and phones and indifference. eye contact and the simple act of a smile is a dying art form. when i walk in the city, i try to look into people's eyes as much as possible. many people suffer in silence. for the longest time i was too. you never know who you pass by has the passing thought of dying.

    i don't want to romanticize the girl who wanted to die and turn her suffering into something beautiful just because i can write about it now. sometimes the girl who is drowning is still wearing butterfly barrettes. sometime she is still making plans for saturday. and mostly all the time, she is still laughing. you can love life and still want to take your own. 

    i look back on this girl and think: you had so much life in you. i want to tell her that the sadness was never going to be forever and the voice in her mind that told her there was no way forward was lying, lying, lying. she didn't need to be dying for her suffering to mean something. there would be people she loved and people who loved her. she would make things. she would write. 

    now at nineteen (and on anti-depressants), i realize growing up isn't always growing into the person you were supposed to be. in my case its learning to love the person who kept surviving even when i was certain i wouldn't. i think back on my fourteen year old self and it brings tears to my eyes when i realize she never thought i would be alive telling her story now. 

    so to the little girl i once was, with grass stains on her knees and glitter tattoos: this is a eulogy to you. 

xoxo, 

dani