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Suicide Thoughts

by


Jessica Protzman

When I was in the 4th grade, my parents got a divorce. At that age it didn’t really take a huge toll on my life. But when I entered 6th grade things took a turn for the worse. I started feeling like I wanted to kill myself.

In 6th grade I started to realize that most of my friends’ parents were together and that they were happy. And that most other families didn’t have abusive fathers that drank a lot. This problem made me feel so unwanted, because on all the weekends he had my brother and I, he would end up going out and coming home drunk. I thought it was my fault because he didn’t love me enough to stay home. I was running myself into a brick wall. What I didn’t realize until recently was that my so-called dad had been taken over by a bottle many years ago. He needed it. He felt like he couldn’t live without it. This alone is what drove me into a corner. I felt as if I had no other choice but to kill myself. The reason being I wasn’t good enough for him so I shouldn’t deserve a life to live. The middle of my 6th grade year, I shared this with my brother, Matt. He then wrote a long letter to my school counselor, Ms. Cassidy. She talked to me and then told my mom. Ms. Cassidy and I developed a great friendship. By the end of 6th grade, I wasn’t thinking about death anymore. But yet, I still wasn’t over my suicide thoughts and I knew it.

All through 7th grade Ms. Cassidy and I kept talking. Deep down inside I wanted to die, but by this time I knew that I would never have the guts to kill myself.

Halfway through 8th grade my father finally did enough to make me not want to be in his life anymore. One night he came home drunk. Matt and I had told him before that we didn’t like him drinking as much as he was. That night Matt was on the internet at his house, I was sleeping. My father came home and said something to set off my brother. They started yelling and woke me up. I heard my dad tell Matt that if he didn’t want to be there then he could go ahead and leave.

Matt said fine, and got up to try and go to his room and pack his things. My father realized what he said was wrong, and that this time it was him that messed up. He grabbed my brother in a bear hug like position, where he couldn’t move. Matt was screaming at my father to let him go, saying things like he was never a good  father, and that he never cared before so why did he care now. I distinctly remember hearing that he was nothing more than a selfish drunk. Then hearing nothing, I could hear my dad panting from trying to hold Matt from going anywhere.

At this point I thought to myself that this time was different than all the others and my father was drunker than he had ever been before. I ran out of my room, down the hallway, pushing my dad and brother out of the way so that I could get to the phone to call help. I picked up the phone, looked at the numbers, and dialed 9-1-1 as fast as I could. So many emotions were running through my mind right then. When the lady on the other end asked me what the emergency was I told her my dad was drunk and had just told my brother and I to leave the house and now he wouldn’t let us go. She said someone would be there soon to help us. She then asked if he had hurt us that night. I told her not yet; she asked if he had ever hurt us before, I guess it was an answer by itself when I started bawling even harder than I already was. She said she would stay on the phone with me until the cop got there to make sure we were safe. I told her it was okay, because I knew my brother wouldn’t let anything happen to me. At that point, my own brother felt more like a father to me than my actual father ever had been.

After I hung up the phone I went into my room to pack my things. When I walked past my father and Matt, I mumbled that this was it. My dad drunkenly asked what I said. Without any hesitation, I yelled back at him that everything between him and I was over, that I didn’t want him to be my father anymore. When I finished my screaming session at him, I ripped his grip off of my brothers’ shoulders and told him to stop making my life a living hell. When I did this the look on his face was priceless. He hit the wall behind him and then made his way to his bedroom with his head facing the ground. Matt and I packed our things and went out to the driveway right when the cop was pulling up to my fathers’ house. Matt had told him that everything was just blown out of proportion and I got scared and didn’t know what else to do.

Earlier we had called our grandma and told her that we needed a place to stay. He offered to escort us to our grandmothers house, Matt declined, knowing that the cop had better things to do rather than show a couple of teenage kids to their grandma’s house. On the ride to grandmas, Matt kept reassuring me that it wasn’t my fault that this happened to us. And that I had done nothing wrong. While walking to my grandmas front door, with my brother’s arm around my shoulder I realized Matt was the closest thing I had ever had to a father. And that he would be the only man in my life for a long time because I wasn’t willing to put myself out there to get hurt again. Then I thought about me getting married and if I ever would be able to forgive my father enough to trust another man. All I knew then was that I loved Matt to death and I was so thankful that he was there going through this with me.

My grandma ended up staying up most of the night trying to comfort Matt and me. I had been crying from the time I got there until I finally fell asleep. About 4 a.m. I heard Matt finally let out his frustration, I was already in bed, and grandma was in there trying to calm him down. I imagine all she could do was hold him and tell him that he had done the right thing by coming over here. Hearing Matt bawl, trying to be quiet so that I wouldn’t wake up, made me break down once again. I knew he hadn’t wanted me to see him cry and that’s why he had held it in, but I wanted so bad to just go into the other room which he was in and lay beside him and just cry. But I knew he would act like he hadn’t been crying and try to hide his eyes from me knowing they would be as red and bloodshot as mine.

A couple of weeks later Matt and I decided to give our dad a phone call. I told Matt that I was tired of having dad hurt me physically, emotionally, and most of all mentally. I shared with him what I was planning on saying. That unless he could stay sober for the two weekends a month I was there, that I wouldn’t be there anymore. I remember a long silence before my father finally said that he was not gong to give up drinking for me. Trying as hard as I could not to bawl, I told him to have a nice life. He said that he would, and hoped I had a good life too. That’s when I hung up the phone, ran upstairs, and bawled for what seemed like two hours straight. Matt had continued to talk to dad on the phone; I figure that he was trying to convince him that he had said the wrong thing and that he didn’t want to lose his daughter over this. After Matt was done talking to dad, he walked into my room and whispered to me that dad didn’t know what he was saying. He tried to explain what it was like to try and answer an ultimatum like that coming from one of your own children. And in return I tried to explain to him how much dad had hurt me in the past, and I that I wasn’t willing to put myself through the pain of that ever again. I looked at him dead square in the eye and said that I never wanted to see our so-called “dad” again.

The next few weeks at school are all a blur to me. Maybe I'm just choosing to block them all out of my memory, or maybe I was just like a zombie walking in the halls, not talking to anyone, and not expressing any kind of emotion. But one of the main things I do remember about 8th grade is my science teacher, Mr. Phillips. I had made a connection with Mr. P from the first or second week of school. I remember the day that I had written my best friend a letter telling her that I woke up every morning feeling like I wanted to die. Not knowing where else to turn she gave this letter to Mr. P. In third period, his class, he took me out in the hall and asked if I had anything on my mind. As a single tear ran down my face, I said that I was fine. Then he told me to go ahead and start the walk to Miss Cassidy’s office. To this day I don’t know why he felt like he had to be there for me, he had always told me it was part of his job. I don’t think so. I believe his job is to make me understand, or even partially get the mysteries of science. And to try and stuff all the information he can into my little brain so that I can pass a quiz; and to my surprise, I passed quizzes. Even more, I understood it. What he thought was his job, I think was just him helping a lost little girl who didn’t know what else to do, who thought she had no one else to turn to.

Ever since the day at my father’s house, I've felt like I don’t have a father. I know I do, but I would rather not show that off to everyone I know. For about a month after this happened all I could think about was killing myself and how much better my life and everyone else’s would be if I was dead. It seemed pointless to me, living without a father that didn’t love his daughter enough to know her. Now I am going to be a sophomore in high school. My freshmen year is just about over, and I'm about to turn 16. I've only tried to commit suicide once this year; luckily, that didn’t work. I'm trying to live my life for the moment and just enjoy the life I do have instead of wishing for all the things I want and don’t have. I'm trying to have the mindset that everything in my life will happen for a reason and will in fact make me stronger in the end. Everything is done for a reason. With this I know my life is going in the right direction.

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