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Fifteen
David and I were only 15 and forever seemed like a long time to stick it out, but I saw no other acceptable alternative in light of the public expression of his pain. While friends and teachers attempted to console me with well-intentioned assurances that everything would be OK, I knew their promises were empty and meaningless. David was clearly not OK, and if I couldn't figure a way out of this, I was going to have to live with him for the rest of my life. I hoped he hadn't been too disfigured by the attempt itself. Did he have visible scars? Could he ever again wear a short-sleeved shirt? All I knew was that his mother had come home only to find him in some state of near death. Did she scream when she came upon her son dangling from the rafters? Had she taken her time putting away groceries, unaware that he was reclining in a bathtub filled with his own blood? Asking these questions took up the majority of my waking hours, though I don't recall expressing a single one of them out loud. When the woman I was starting to think of as my future mother-in-law called under the pretense of seeing how I was doing, I had a hard time listening. All I wanted were vivid details of the crime scene and, if possible, some illustrations to give the scene visual depth. It didn't take me long to realize that what she really wanted to know was what had happened to her seemingly happy son. "Did David ever say anything to you, Sharon? About wanting to, you know, hurt himself like that?" "Not that I can remember," I told her. "You would have told me, wouldn't you? If he had said something like that?" "Sure. Yeah, I'm totally sure I would have." But I was lying. All these years later, familiar with statistics about teen suicide, aware that hotlines and support systems exist, I'm still not so sure what would qualify as reportable. In my experience of 15, expressing vaguely suicidal thoughts wasn't uncommon. One of my favorite pastimes at that particular developmental stage was to lie in bed King-Tut-like, and imagine that my friends and family were sobbing over my pink sparkly coffin. "We never really knew her," they'd say, "and now we never will." Was the fact that I had spent many satisfying nights playing this fantasy on a loop that never grew old the kind of reportable fact David's mother was after? I decided it wasn't. "So, how is he now? Is he home?" "No, he's in a place where he can get some help." "Oh. What kind of place? "A place for troubled teenagers. An institution." "Oh. Wow. That's intense." Awkward pause. A million heartbeats passed while I searched for something more to say. "So," I laid back on my bed and walked my feet up the pink latticed wallpaper on the bedroom wall, "how are you"? She seemed not to have heard me. "He's very embarrassed about this whole thing. You should remember that when you talk to him. Don't say anything that might upset him." It's a little late for that, Lady, I thought. "Sure," I said, "I get it. No problem." She had me write down a phone number. I pretended I had a pen. Then she began to ask me how school was going and I muttered something about wishing I was taking French instead of Spanish. Spanish seemed so obvious. Thankfully, she still wasn't listening. Ever since I'd heard the news, I'd been consumed with increasingly complicated fantasies about David's attempt. As the days wore on, I graduated from visions of slashed wrists to slow-motioned imaginings of a leap from the roof of his ranch style home into a field of spikes. By the time my mother informed me that David's method of choice had been drug overdose, I'd conjured up so many spectacular scenes, I had trouble accepting the truth. "Did he bleed from the eyes or mouth or anything like that?" "Don't be so dramatic," she said. "He swallowed a handful of his mother's 'ludes. They pumped his stomach. End of story." Although this certainly was a more civilized way to go than anything I had fantasized, I felt it lacked a certain flair. My mother waited impatiently for a big emotional reaction befitting a 15-year-old girl who cried through every Star Wars movie, but all I really felt was disappointed. I recreated the scene in my mind, searching for dramatic resonance. No matter how many angles I shot it from, a glass of water and a prescription bottle didn't provide a particularly compelling visual. Then it registered that David's mother had easily accessible 'ludes sitting around the house. Interesting. Did my mother have 'ludes stashed somewhere in ours? What was a 'lude anyway? My mother rolled her eyes at my questions. "It doesn't matter what he took," she snapped at me between cigarettes, "it didn't work. I never knew what you saw in that wimpy little kid anyway. How could he do this to his mother?" Mom wasn't the only one who saw David's cry for help as an unforgivable failure. Most people I talked to seemed to think that the fact that he took the pills just moments before his mother was expected home negated the seriousness of his attempt. Everyone at school assumed that he was either a) trying to become popular, b) crazy or c) totally gay. None of these possibilities elicited much sympathy in the pre-Real World era of '80s Orange County. While the rest of my AP English class engaged in a heated discussion of Faulkner's Light in August, I drew pictures of tombstones in my notebook and made a mental note that if I ever felt the need to throw my life on the pyre of teenage angst, I'd make sure to get the job done right. My crowd was merciless when it came to failure, and apparently suicide was no exception.
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There
is no time more awkward for breaking off a relationship than the
period immediately following a suicide attempt.
