"Must keep on. Even though the mistakes, even though the self-
loathing. It's going to be all right. It's going to be all right.
It's got to be."
Sept 11th 1994.
"Quietly. Be gone. BE GONE. I'm so tired. So scared. Right
now I don't even have the strength to [try to] kill myself. Just
want to go to sleep. And never wake up. No more."
Jan 9th
1995.
On bus ride to campus."..thinking maybe the bus will plunge into
the ravine... Going so fast. Road seemed icy enough. I felt a sense
of eager anticipation. Hope. Never happened. I'm still here."
Jan 24/95
"Kinda depressed because in a financial rut. Rent yet to be paid.
I'm broke. Emergency loan from Student Affairs to be deposited tomorrow.
Will feel better when it's all over. I hope. Classes as usual, even
though I was worried sick over money problems....
Mar 6/95
"Stressed over bills. Sometimes can't afford lunch..."
Apr 2nd 1995
"Yesterday - thesis and Sosc4300 final papers turned in. All
over. Now FINALS...."
Apr 11/95
On graduation day...
"Would have been more excited is I'd known Jenie was
going to show up!!! I was making my way (grumpily) out of the crowd
when someone said "Smile, Carey" [When I say it was Jenie].....never
felt so glad and excited at the same time.....She said she wouldn't miss
this for the world."
June 14/95
"Sometimes my obssession in trying to keep records of my thoughts
puzzle me. Because there is so much of the past that I try so hard
to forget - to leave behind - to pretend never occurred."
July 30/95.
"Empty promises, Jenie..... She never called."
As a child, I wrote everywhere. On my palm, on napkins, on little
pieces of paper, on the wall, even on the sand in the playgrounds. I
liked to draw as well. When I entered high school, I would write
my thoughts in my note books
while the teacher taught (it made high school go by pretty quickly for me,
and it made my teachers think I was diligently making good notes).
During break, I would sneak back into the classrooms (we were not allowed
into the classrooms during break time) and write some more. Sometimes, when
a monitor caught me, I would hide in a stairwell with my pen and note book.
Nobody, none of my classmates would miss me. It was just as well.
I started keeping a
more organized journal around the time I was 15. Five years later,
and a lot of volumes later (I forget how many there were), I destroyed each and
every single one. It took me three days to eliminate all of them by
tearing them sheet by sheet apart. This happened around the Fall of 1993,
and after a summer of what I call "resignation". I had decided to die and
I had already made a clear plan to terminate my life.
I needed to get rid of my journals for two reasons: One, I didn't want
anybody to peer into the life I had led; painful as it was to me,
I didn't want to share it at my death for the reason that it was never
shared while I was alive. Two, it became a symbolic action (the tearing
of my notebook journals) to ending the life I dreaded and loathed.
On November 18th 1993, (it was a Thursday night) and pub night on
campus, I resumed my normal activities throughout the day, from attending
classes to showing up at 4:30pm for my part time job in the residence
building I lived in. I never once felt afraid. I only felt great relieve
and quite eagerly anticipated the moment when there would be nothingness
around me. I signed off my job at 9:30pm, went down to the pub for a couple
of drinks(maybe one too many), and said goodbye to my best friend and neighbour
in my residence (I had told everyone I was leaving early Friday morning to
spend my weekend off campus with an old friend).
I locked my door and swallowed 90 Amitryptyline
pills(each was 25mg)
that night and put myself
to bed. It was supposed to be well over the lethal dose.
I can't remember what happened after that, but I do
know I threw up (evidence still in my room after
I had returned from the hospital). I have heard many accounts of what
exactly happened, and I could only try to piece them together, but I can't
care to say them here. My point is,
I failed to kill myself. My point is, it just didn't
happen even though I was ready.
So here I am, with that event a giant black hole among many in my brain
, and here I am, still writing because I
still don't say very much, and I don't know any other way.......
I choose to write because I have always written. As a child, writing
was my only source of outpouring my grief and hurts. I spoke little,
and was taught to speak only when spoken to. "Silence is golden",
"An empty vessel makes the most noise","children should be seen and
not heard". Those were only a few of the cliches that became my
mantra of punishment.
Carey
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