The first time I experienced suicidal thoughts I was fourteen years old. It was the summer before my sophomore year of high school, my psychiatrist had just increased the dosage on all of my medications until I was taking 1600mg of lithium, 25mg of abilify, and 60mg of strattera. I was sick constantly, my liver working overtime to process my medicine intake and was coming up on 10 years of taking medication daily. It started small, depression coming on strong and feeling a crushing sense of nothingness. I disassociated about two weeks into the school year, completely cut myself off from everything. The only thing I focused on was my boyfriend, and even he couldn’t seem to make me smile. I began cutting the second week of september, and didn’t stop the whole month. I was wearing hoodies, arm warmers, bracelets, anything I could to keep them hidden, terrified of getting put on more medication. I was already throwing up weekly because my liver was becoming toxic.
October rolled around, and my boyfriend found out I was cutting. He was horrified, and demanded that I stop and get help. He then proceeded to do daily checks on my arms, peeling away whatever cover I had to make sure I hadn’t done it again. Whenever I did, he would look like I’d gutted him and ask me why I wouldn’t stop. Each time I would tell him that I couldn’t, and leave feeling even worse for hurting him. I wasn’t trying to, I was…
