The first time I tried to kill myself I was 13 – I took a few pills from my parents bedside drawer. I couldn’t take too many of one type cause I was scared of being busted if my plan failed. I had no idea of what I was taking; looking back now it was probably a combination of antihypertensives; valium and horse pee (Premarin).
I suppose I’d always been a little odd, a bit of a dreamer. A condition which led one teacher to comment (on my year one report card) that ‘Suzy lives in a world of her own & it definitely isn’t ours’. This earmarked my pleasant entry into the public school system.
Now some people love school, you know the type - can’t wait for school term to start, spend the last week of their Christmas break covering their books meticulously with contact paper and maybe even reading text books. Well I wasn’t one of them. I hated school. I’d convinced myself that my hatred stemmed mostly from the architecture. Being a public school kid in Queensland in the mid 1980’s this consisted typically of a series of temporary colorbond demountables (which are still there today) and the straight line of parallel A-B-C-D-E-F blocks that closely resembled factory farms, complete with drinking troughs and cages. The only building which showed any kind of promise being the science block which I never got to enter until my senior years at school.
Prior to turning 13 I had quite a 'sunny' disposition, I also believed that I possessed the ability to 'heal' - a belief that persisted in varying degrees until quite recently. Now I do believe that you can aid people in the healing process but to believe my touch could actually miraculously 'heal' people was really my first 'delusion'.
You are probably wondering what the outcome of the suicide attempt was.............nothing! I felt a bit woozy, I confided in a friend who told the school headmaster which lead to some counselling that I cannot even recall. My parents, not knowing what hit them, threatened to send me off to a boarding school for being 'difficult'. In hindsight they have now recognised the significance of this event, that I was not 'seeking attention', that my mind was telling me for the first time (with many times to follow) that 'I had to kill myself'. I now know that I was in fact experiencing my first episode of bipolar depression.
I suppose I’d always been a little odd, a bit of a dreamer. A condition which led one teacher to comment (on my year one report card) that ‘Suzy lives in a world of her own & it definitely isn’t ours’. This earmarked my pleasant entry into the public school system.
Now some people love school, you know the type - can’t wait for school term to start, spend the last week of their Christmas break covering their books meticulously with contact paper and maybe even reading text books. Well I wasn’t one of them. I hated school. I’d convinced myself that my hatred stemmed mostly from the architecture. Being a public school kid in Queensland in the mid 1980’s this consisted typically of a series of temporary colorbond demountables (which are still there today) and the straight line of parallel A-B-C-D-E-F blocks that closely resembled factory farms, complete with drinking troughs and cages. The only building which showed any kind of promise being the science block which I never got to enter until my senior years at school.
Prior to turning 13 I had quite a 'sunny' disposition, I also believed that I possessed the ability to 'heal' - a belief that persisted in varying degrees until quite recently. Now I do believe that you can aid people in the healing process but to believe my touch could actually miraculously 'heal' people was really my first 'delusion'.
You are probably wondering what the outcome of the suicide attempt was.............nothing! I felt a bit woozy, I confided in a friend who told the school headmaster which lead to some counselling that I cannot even recall. My parents, not knowing what hit them, threatened to send me off to a boarding school for being 'difficult'. In hindsight they have now recognised the significance of this event, that I was not 'seeking attention', that my mind was telling me for the first time (with many times to follow) that 'I had to kill myself'. I now know that I was in fact experiencing my first episode of bipolar depression.
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