I started this letter as a letter to my ex, but it ended up being a letter to myself. I have to issue a trigger warning though, I am going to go into details of suicidality, active suicide attempts, and self injurious behavior. Additionally I mention a few things some people might find physically gross, e.g. vomit, blood. With that said, I just want to share this because I feel proud of the work I've done in myself: I am no longer suicidal and I am receiving professional help.
I have to say that I've been through a very, very rough patch. After we broke up I was so hurt and angry at myself that I just couldn't accept that our relationship hadn't worked out.
You had no way of knowing this, but the only other relationship I had was with my dad. And as you know, he committed suicide when I was seventeen. All throughout my childhood, and even more after his death, I blamed myself for him abandoning me. Somehow I internalized the idea that my purpose in this world was to fix my parents' relationship, by loving my dad back into my life and, eventually, my mom's life. My parents divorced when I was very young, about four or five years old. This translated into deep resentment and feelings of failure towards me and my one and only "responsibility". I saw myself as unworthy of love because I couldn't even love my dad enough so that he'd stay with my mom, not even enough so that he'd stay alive. I know that this makes absolutely no sense, but that is what I told myself for years. I grew up trying to be the perfect kid to make up for my failure in making ammends within my parents' relationship.
Why am I sharing this with you, Loki? Well, when we broke up and I actually started to feel the sadness and grief, I was immediately transported to five year old me. I started to feel like I had done something wrong within our relationship. I felt like I was failing again at loving the most important person in my life. I couldn't accept your rejection because I couldn't deal with the fact that another crucial relationship in my life failed. I was totally blinded by a deep fear of abandonment and I went into survival mode.
I am not proud of the things I said and did after the phone call where we mutually agreed that our relationship had to end. I started begging you to take me back in every way I could possibly think of. You were so kind and patient with me afterwards that I took those caring gestures and interpret them as hopeful signs that you still loved me. I am sorry for trying to manipulate my way back into a relationship with you. I am sorry for using your own words and beliefs against you. I am truly sorry.
I write this apology in hope that you can make sense of our last conversations. I know that everything I said and did cannot be undone nor unsaid. However, I want you to know that I am truly, deeply sorry for hurting you.
I also have to admit that this apology isn't only for you, Loki. I really do need to forgive myself for all the choices I made. After our last call on September 22nd I tried to overdose on paracetamol. That had been my back-up suicide plan for years, so I had a growing stash of pills hidden in my bedroom. I was so ashamed of everything I said in that call without meaning it, just to get you to agree to restart our relationship. I felt so empty, so scared, so desperate. It didn't help that throughout the days in between our calls I started to feel progressively worse. I stopped taking my antidepressants, I started to self harm again (almost as often as I did, when I first started cutting myself), and I just couldn't bring myself to go to college classes (they seemed so boring, absurd, and I was constantly dissociating through them). So consider that I was severly unhappy with most of my life choices and add to that mess the failure of my attempts to get you back. I truly felt like I had nothing left to fight for.
On September 22nd, after our last call, I realized that I was being manipulative to you and to myself. I couldn't feel any joy or excitement for anything at all. I hated my college classes, I hated the version of myself that showed up in that last call, I felt like I had been lying to me and to everyone else in my life. And obviously, I felt the pain of failing at trying to love someone else and at letting that someone else love me.
I just felt that these failures were proof that I actually was unlovable, that I actually was worthless. Somehow, I concluded that I had given life a good, honest try and that it wasn't worth it. I felt like my family would be better off without me. I felt like all of my worst nightmares were actually true. I felt like you had seen me as I see myself: A disgusting, worthless, perverted, psychopathic, sadistic slut. So, I believed that if I had proven to myself that I was a monster, it just didn't make any sense to convince the world otherwise.
I simply cannot explain how I got out of that mindest. I had truly given up on my life. I just couldn't see anything good in being alive. I felt ashamed and disgusted at myself. Regardless of all of my thoughts and feelings, in spite of my efforts to end my life, I couldn't do it. I tried and tried to kill myself. Granted, most of my attempts were reckless, impulsive, and badly planned. However, I didn't die and I know it wasn't because of a lack of willpower. I have to admit that I believe God was actually saving me from myself. In other circumstances I would give a million arguments against that belief. I know logically, scientifically, and naturally you could find explenations of what I'm about to tell you. However, I am choosing to believe. How could I not do so?
As poorly planned as my plans were, I feel they were quite lethal. When I tried to overdose on paracetamol I took five times the lethal dose and plenty of sleeping pills. The sleeping pills were intended to make me fall asleep as quickly as possible so that even if I ended up throwing up, I'd be lying down asleep, so I'd aspirate my vomit and die. So I took the pills and I fell asleep and I did throw up. I clearly remember suddenly waking up just in time to bend over the side of my bed to throw up. Call it a natural refllex if you will, but I truly feel like God woke me up. I know I was too drugged to make any decisions on my own, I mean I slept for like 36 hours straight after that. I just don't think that I would reflexively gain full consciousness for a spare second to bend over and throw up. I can see how one's body would be naturally inclined to bend over, but if it was truly a reflex what made me do that, why do I have conscious awareness of that second? Again, you can still say this doesn't proove anything, in fact, I didn't actually believe this at first glance.
On my second attempt I tried cutting my wrists and planned to bleed out in the shower. Definetely an ill-thought idea because I was constantly watched and I wouldn't have had time to actually bleed out before someone found me. However that didn't even happen.
I have self harmed for years and the deepest cuts I ever made on myself were done with a boxcutter. I also knew that I had a better chance of actually bleeding out if I made deep, vertical cuts along my forearms. Again, I was used to the sting that felt the boxcutter in its way. And I also knew that I had to press the blade very hard into my skin. I did. I even tried stabbing myself because I got so frustrated that my skin just wouldn't give in. I only managed to get scratches on my arm, but there was hardly any blood. Who or what made the blade of my boxcutter blunt? I knew that it wasn't blunt because I had used it less than a week before that to make deep-ish cuts on my thighs (I mean the cuts easily bled when I self harmed), and to make those cuts I applied a small fraction of the pressure I was trying to apply on my second attempt. I had also hidden it after self harming and nobody had found it. My family took away scissors and stuff like that after my first suicide attempt. So nobody could have actually used it. Now I see it as God's doing, but honestly I could think of a million other reasons why that attempt failed, so I get it if you don't think it was God's work.
For my third, and last, attempt I tried choking myself with a belt. I tightened the belt around my neck as much as I could. The belt was made out of braided leather with each leather strand wrapped in fabric, so it didn't have actual holes to adjust it at a standard withd. To fasten the belt you just kindda wiggle the stick of the buckle through the braid wherever you wanted to adjust it. So believe me when I say, I tried as hard as I could to asphixiate myself. However, regardless of how much I tightened the belt I could still breathe through my mouth. I insisted and gagged myself with socks rolled into a ball and procedded with the belt tightening. I passed out three times while doing this. Every time I passed out, I woke up feeling just like on that first attempt. I truly felt as if someone or something had woken me up just in time to escape death. It took me three attempts to realize that maybe something bigger than me wanted me alive. Now I know there is a natural reflex that will make you try to remove whatever item is blocking the flow of oxygen to the brain. I know that it is instinctive to fight to keep breathing. But honestly I just find it hard to see my failures in any light other than the fact that God wanted me alive. I know I cannot really state that as a fact, but since it is my letter and my experience I'll take the license of calling it however I want to. Call it chance, call me lucky, but I really feel blessed.
My life is God's. I truly surrendered to Him after that. I whole-heartedly believe that God loves me, even if the psychopathic slutty monster within me is real, God still loves all of me.
Even if I take off any religious beliefs I do think that I had to meet you, Loki. I know I had to fall in love with you. To me, everything had to happen like that so that I could understand that all along God was really trying to tell me He loves me unconditionally. God has immense power and that power translates into immesurable love. However I also think that things happened so that I could actually learn a lot about myself. I truly learned a lot through this experience.
Thank you for prooving to me that, in spite of my demons, I am worthy of love. Thank you for being my first boyfriend. Thank you for being part of my testimony. Thank you for showing me that I can love other people, but most importantly, that I can be loved.
I am scared as hell to try to go and find love again. I am not ready to date. I have a lot of underlying issues to address before I can truly think about dating someone. For starters, I have to figure out how to love myself. I want to have a clearer understanding of my values and of who am I so that I don't end up trying (and failing) to mold into someone else's ideal partner. I don't want to manipulate people so that they love me. I don't want to change who am I in order to be loved. I don't want to give in to everything other people want before asking what do I really want.
So thank you, Loki, for being that leap of faith, that hope, that maybe, that chance I took that forced me to face my issues while prooving to me that I can love and I can be in love.
