The Total 100% Truth of When (and why) I Tried to Kill Myself

Picture it. Summer, 2014. It was the summer before my senior year in college. I got a job at my university living in a dorm helping out with summer camps. I lived totally on my own for the first time ever, my own private room and free time out the wazoo. And this was the year that the app Tinder was used by everyone. Obviously that included me.

For those of you unfamiliar with Tinder, it's an app that allows you to make a profile that members of whichever sex you choose will see. And based on your profile photo and bio they'd swipe left for "you're gross and also no" and right for "yeah, I'd totally tap that". If you and the person both swiped right, congrats. You were now able to message one another.

Boys greatly outnumbered the girls. Or at least they were much less picky. So guys could swipe on a hundred pictures and get maybe six matches while a girl swiping would get 90% of the guys she swiped. It was a gold mine for girls. I took advantage of that because I wanted to feel gorgeous and get flirted with.

I would swipe for as long as there were boys, sometimes seeing ridiculously hot ones that had to be fake (they weren't, which was great) and others that were so awful I was sorry for any girl who accidentally matched with them. That summer I wanted to experience it all. When a boy messaged me, was intelligent and nice and above all attractive, I would agree to a date. Or straight up meet at his place.

I went on dates with a lot of guys. And I had one night stands a lot. I found that I loved them, the newness of the men and the exhilaration of reinventing yourself for a night. I was very surprised at the number of boys who wanted to see me again for not sex. But I used them and went on. I was reckless. I would drive forty miles to meet a guy at his house. Sometimes I went for the sole purpose of hooking up. I saw no danger--or at least I didn't care. If something bad happened, I could kill myself. Problem solved.

Near the end of summer I hooked up with Markus, a cute guy who lived in the big city over. I don't know why, but we went on lots of dates (obviously slept together the first date). I wasn't on birth control. And I didn't care. If I got pregnant, I could kill myself! I just had fun. I even made a sex tape. Y'all. I cannot believe I was that person for months.

Because I'm deceptively physically very healthy (seriously, my diet would make a nutritionist faint) I inevitably got pregnant. After missing a period I just knew. I'd had scares before, but now I knew. The test proved it. I didn't panic. It was mostly "Well, this is weird. I'm pregnant! I don't feel any different." I called the dude and told him I was. This guy, bless his heart, got excited and suggested a dinner at Olive Garden to celebrate. I stopped that right in its tracks with one word: abortion.

After him getting very upset and threatening to kill himself (he didn't) we hung up and I literally never talked to him again. He had a new girlfriend very quickly after that. I wasn't scared. Mostly that was a relief. He was out of the picture.

I called my Planned Parenthood the next day and scheduled a quote "hasty abortion". Throwback to the movie Juno? Well, it made me chuckle. After that all the destruction and awful things I'd done over the summer started to matter. I came back down from that high. I was disgusted at the fact that over one summer I'd had relations with more then ten guys. What kind of person was I? And now I was pregnant.

You know that straw that breaks the camel's back? Mine was not fitting into my choir dress for my end-of-college concert. It wouldn't zip at all. I was so angry and sad and just done with it all. I was calm. I left and skipped that concert and walked to my on-campus apartment. I gathered a pillow, some sweats, my positive pregnancy test from the summer before and a few bottles of water. Oh, and a 500-pill bottle of acetaminophen.

I got into my car and drove. Why did it matter where I went? I drove for an hour into the unknown and eventually decided "I'm tired, here's a good spot" and slid off the road into a ditch. Sitting there, on a road in the middle of nowhere, no lights or houses and barely any cars, I leaned back and relaxed. When you do this you can't stop to think because then you'll stop. And I didn't want to deal with the fallout of these very actions if I lived.

I just took some handfuls of the pills. I tried to lie back and relax. But my (not) fatal mistake was texting my boyfriend a goodbye. He knows me better than even I do and knew immediately what was happening. Eventually through a stream of calls a police officer (deputy? Sheriff? I don't know) called and was nice and calm and tried to pinpoint my location. I didn't know what to say. I didn't have any idea where I was.

I kept talking and I don't know why. Maybe I loved the attention. Maybe I loved having people come to help me. Maybe I was subconsciously begging for help. Either way an ambulance found its way to me, and I assisted myself into the back. I didn't fight back at all. I hate needles and I didn't care that they were being slipped into my arm. I answered everything truthfully and with no emotion. Just the facts. I was rolled into the nearest hospital and saw something that will always haunt me. My beloved father's red, tear-stained face as he held onto the gurney and followed us inside.

My car had been searched and my bag of stuff was brought so they could find out how to fix me. A nurse, with obvious disgust in her voice, asked if the pregnancy test was recent. I told her now. I still didn't react to anything. If I did it would be worse. It would hurt. I let them insert a catheter. Draw blood. Even shove a tube up my nose down to my stomach (I cannot explain how awful that was). I drank their charcoal (not bad, really) and vomited into a trash can for them.

I was just done. I didn't have a fight or any desires or feelings in me. I was moved to a hospital closer to my home in the early hours of morning where I remember maybe 4% of what happened in my two day stay. I could not stay awake. If I woke up I'd pass out after a few minutes and remember nothing. I didn't know my friends and family (other than my parents) visited until after everything.

I knew somewhere, though, that my voice didn't matter. Protocol dictated at least three days at some institution. I didn't care to fight. I hated the place, though. It was the worst. So I used my knowledge of mental health and superb acting skills to convince the doc to let me out at the earliest I could. And I went home to heal.

Today I sometimes wish I'd succeeded but mostly I just try to go on. My family is now ridiculously vigilant and watches me, worrying when they don't know where I am (and I've moved three hours away). I've let it and all my other awful not-me things disappear and tried to erase them. I can do that but I can't take away the fear from my family.