I Still Smell the Bottle
Content Note: This entry discusses childhood suicidality, overdose, neglect, and olfactory trauma. Please take care while reading.
I saw a bottle today—the same kind of Costco-sized Tylenol bottle from when I was twelve. Big. Red. Too many pills. I don’t even think it was open, but the second I saw it, I smelled it. That plastic-medication scent that used to hover around the one I hid under my bed.
It’s so weird how the smell still exists for me. Like my body keeps it stored somewhere, waiting. And when the memory shows up, even just visually, it releases it—like a trapdoor opening in my brain. Suddenly, I’m there again.
That day. Alone.
My parents were gone on a trip. My stepdad’s parents were supposed to be watching us, but no one was really around. I called my mom to say I was sick so I didn’t have to go to school. She said okay. That was it. No one checked on me. No one came into my room.
I kept taking more. Handful after handful. I don’t know what I thought would happen. I didn’t even know if Tylenol could kill me. I just knew I didn’t want to feel how I was feeling anymore.
I remember vomiting so hard my whole body ached. I remember how long the sickness lasted. I remember thinking maybe I’d done it wrong—like even that, I’d failed at. I was too ashamed to tell anyone. I didn’t want to admit I’d tried and it hadn’t worked. So I shoved the bottle under my bed with a few stray pills left and never touched it again. But I could always smell it. For weeks. Or maybe months.
I still can.
It shows up in waves. At the pharmacy. In someone’s bathroom. When I pass by a plastic container that’s been sitting too long in the sun.
And it’s not about the bottle anymore. It’s about what no one saw. About the version of me that was sick, scared, and completely alone while the world just... kept going.
I guess I thought if I got sick enough, someone would help me. That if it was bad enough, they’d notice. But they didn’t. And maybe that’s what hurts the most.
I survived. I don’t always know how. But sometimes the air still smells like twelve. And my body still remembers not being saved.