ANOTHER ATTEMPT

Growing up, I always fantasized about the different ways I could kill myself. Regurgitated thoughts of suffocating myself with duct tape would consume me. I\'d contrive the most dramatic and shocking ways of doing it, hoping that whoever would find my body would be scarred for life with the vision of my death. Selfish, but that\'s just me.
This had been my third attempt in six months, and it wasn\'t anything special. Just a bottle of vodka and 46 Zoloft pills. I wouldn\'t shock anyone with that. But this time, I had gotten to the point where I didn\'t want to shock anyone anymore. I just wanted to die.
If I had turned off the shower before I lost consciousness, the smoke alarm would never have gone off, and my mom wouldn\'t have found me before I passed. And I would have died in peace, in a nice, hot shower. Just like the long ones I used to love taking when I was younger.
When you get to the emergency room, if you\'re conscious enough, they give you two options: you can have your stomach pumped, or you can drink the charcoal. I had half-woken in the ambulance on the way. I chose to drink the charcoal, since the thought of a tube down my throat made me cringe. Of course, I reconsidered the tube as I choked down the charcoal, thick and black. It was the consistency of peanut butter and chalk mashed together, and had the flavor of burnt feces.
I spent only one night in the hospital that time. I had to share a room with another attempted suicide named Kelly, who had injected herself with the rest of her mom\'s supply of insulin; an idea she got from seeing a film called Reversal Of Fortune, which featured her favorite actor, Jeremy Irons. Neither of us slept that night. We stayed up and shared stories about our previous attempts, and about how much thought we really put into them. She had the same passion for killing herself that I did. She wasn\'t depressed either. She just wanted to know what it felt like; the control of being able to take your own life before anyone or anything else could take it from you. It was comforting meeting someone who understood the thrill of dying the same way I did. Every now and then, I wonder if Kelly\'s finally made it.
Third time\'s a charm.
Three strikes and you\'re out.
The third attempt was the one that sent my mom over the edge. Two weeks after getting out of the hospital, I was sent to The Elmbrook Facility for Mental Health. It\'s ridiculous how they try to make \"mental institution\" sound less embarrassing by calling it by a fancier name. But, no matter what you call it, it\'ll still be a building full of roaming psychos who are in a world inside their minds that no one else can see or understand. It\'s no different from the rest of the world, though. We\'re just locked in.
It doesn\'t matter how long they keep me in here, or how much therapy or medication I\'m given. No matter how much time goes by, I know I\'ll never lose it. It\'s not something I need to get over, or be healed from. It\'s me. And it won\'t be gone until I am.