January 1970

January 1970. The morning was beautiful and I was awake.  Twelve hours before I had swallowed 250 aspirin hoping to die.  I was not even eighteen and I wanted to die. What could be so earth shattering that I was ready to kill myself?  No one knew of my pain and torment. I had suffered for several years and just gave up. How did get to this place of desperation and see no other way out?  It began four years earlier.

While a member of a popular youth organization, some older boys had sexually molested me. At first I was told it was an initiation rite, but there was no way out. I was threatened with harm if I told.  I was trapped.  When others began to corner me I shut down mentally.  I no longer cared about school, grades, but only wanted the hurt and shame to be gone.  Somehow this was my fault.  It had to be. I mean how else could I have been placed into such a situation?

The abuse continued for three years until one day I quit the organization. I just could not face myself anymore and I told my parents I was through. My dad had suspected something was wrong but he backed down.  I wish he had kept on with his inquiry, but it appeared to me he just did not want to know.  After all there would be family embarrassment. Perhaps even more persecution than I already faced. In the end nothing was done. Two years later I took the pills.

The event that caused me to attempt suicide was the loss of my girl friend. I had never been in love before.  It was great. I thought about marriage after high school, but mother had other ideas. Even with poor grades I was going to college.  I had written letters every day, and would put them in my girl friends locker.  She would write back.  We only dated one semester and then at Christmas my parents made us stop seeing each other.  I was crushed, defeated and hated life.

My mom told me she was trying to protect me. My dad had married his sweetheart, fathered a child, but the girl’s mother was against the marriage. My dad moved out and enlisted in the army. He never saw his son again. After the war he met my mom in college and after graduation they were married. My dad went on the medical school and had his own practice for seventeen years until his death.  They both believed in higher education. To get married after high school was not a mistake to be repeated. Surely it would not last. And how would I make a living? I had a job at the grocery store, but that would not do.  The fact that my parents were running my life made me mad.  How could they destroy my happiness?

I attempted suicide two more times in later life.  I had married someone else at age twenty-three and ten years later we adopted a child, and I still fought my demons.  The hurt and anger of my childhood spilled over into my marriage, jobs, and friendships.  My last time in the emergency room I was given no choice. Either go to the psychiatric ward or they would green warrant me.  I signed the forms. 

For three days I went through therapy, and after my discharge I met once a week for six months.  The hurt did not go away but I realized that it never would.  There was no more reason to struggle. I could not erase the memory of my past, there was no way to turn back the clock, and time was not going to make any difference. Killing myself was to admit failure. I realized that to go through life damaged was better than checking out early. Through all of the mess of my life there were bright spots. Places that were fun, but still the clouds of my past sometimes covered the joy.  In the end I knew that if God had given up on me I would be dead. But He did not.

He would find use for me later and I would help others.

But that is part of another story.