On my seventeenth birthday I got a phone call from out of the clear blue sky. My birth family had found my family’s phone number in the directory.
I had known I was adopted for as long as I can remember, my parents never believed in hiding that away. My first memory is of a wishing well cake, with chocolate frogs and jelly for water, for my adoption party, when I was three and a half – I had been fostered since four or five months by the same couple, which led to my long held belief that all foster children should stay with the same family and is a natural progression to adoption. I am too cynical these days to believe that, and I was and have been very lucky with the family I found myself with.
My parents had kept all the correspondence from my birth family, waiting for me to be old enough to digest the information. I believe I was thirteen when I read it all. I then contacted my birth family, writing letters, sending photos perhaps every four to six months or so.
Being rung by my ‘brothers’ to be wished a happy birthday and to be told that I should visit them by the time I turned twenty one was not part of the overall contact plan. As the conversation progressed on the phone, I turned gray in complexion, and felt sick to the stomach. When I got off the phone I brushed the incident off, though told my parents as much as I could remember.
Less than a week after my seventeenth birthday, my self worth plunged precipitously.
I personally believe it was due to me suffering burn out towards my schoolwork. Ergo, I would not go to university. Ergo, I would not get an interesting and fulfilling job. Ergo, my life would be a waste. Ergo, why bother, and let’s just give up.
I had concentrated for four years on my high school grades, and had been getting more and more frustrated by the combination of my procrastination and the last minute efforts I had to put in to do projects and such like. Combined with a sense that even my best effort would not get me into university, a civil war broke out inside me.
This was fought with the sense of responsibility I have had throughout my life, opposing the desperation of helplessness that even my best would not be good enough to get me through. My helplessness was ably abetted by the chasm of the unknown that would be my life without grades, homework and the like. I just snapped and wanted OUT.
The silly, very silly thing is, I could have left high school the year before my breakdown, gone to a polytechnic institute and learnt a trade that I had a great degree of interest in. But I insisted that I could put it off for a year, join the herd mentality of final year of high school and THEN going separate ways after that. Boy, do I regret that decision every single time I think about it. And yes, my parents were right in that argument.
It was a Tuesday, maybe a week or two after my birthday, when things came to a head. I stayed home, with the intention of killing myself. Somehow, I can’t remember how, I managed to psych myself up to the point of cutting my wrists. The pain, bearable. The blood, beautiful, in its destructive way. But although I felt faint, I didn’t feel particularly close to death.
I cut deeper. The pain got more intense, yet still somehow bearable. This wasn’t going anywhere fast. I had lunch, and then worked at my wounds, almost like a craftsman, whittling a bit here, another bit there, deeper, always deeper. But the blood wasn’t flowing as I felt it should, and it started clotting as well.
Evening came. My family came home. Being winter, I put on a long sleeved woolen jersey, to hide my wounds, flirting desperately close to insanity with that decision. I was quieter than usual in my interactions, but still managed to make the effort to appear normal. My family not having an inkling of what was going on in my head, they took the acting at face value.
The above three paragraphs repeated over the next three days as well, Wednesday to Friday. I felt trapped. I couldn’t tell my family what was going on, I couldn’t just go back to school without a sick note and go cheerily on, all I felt I could do was cut deeper, even though by now I knew I wasn’t going to die because of this, and treat my wounds as if they were works of art, making them as ‘perfect’ as they could be.
Saturday was ordinary enough as well. Sunday, I went to a friend’s place, to play wargames - yes, I was in the geek section of the whole high school experience. Before I left, I penned a quick note about what was going on, and put it on my parents’ bed. And left it to fate, if they read it then it was meant to be, if not then I would battle on myself for a time yet.
I came home, and went to my room. Everything seemed normal. Five or ten minutes later, my mother knocked on the door, red rimmed eyes as she looked in and said we need to talk. We went into the lounge, where my father was also, and showed my wounds, everyone bursting into tears. The conversation after that is a blur.
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