It was 1997. I was thirteen and in eighth grade. My older brother was a year ahead, absolving me of the average brutality of a thirteen-year-old scrawny kid, save for the actions of my brother himself. Instead I was well liked. I was funny and got kicked out of class a lot for being a smart ass. Some would have considered me “popular”. One day, I want to say in the fall, a kid tripped me in the hall. There was no spite to this action, I didn’t know the kid really. I can’t even remember his name today. I happened to be walking by, he happened to be a insecure piece of shit trying to impress a girl or something. His actions, however, were the catalyst, or the “tipping point”, for the direction my remaining adolescence would take.



Anyways, I got tripped. I fell. I dropped my Trapper Keeper and all my other books. Papers flew. Girls and boys laughed. Very cliché. I gathered my things, got up and ran to a bathroom to recover. I ran out of the school and sprinted home. I’m pretty sure I was hysterically crying the whole way.

My recollection at this point is in flashes, connected by the series of events that I know happened, but don’t remember. Perhaps I will describe those flashes. I remember sitting at the computer in our breakfast nook/office area looking up how to tie a noose. No one was home. This felt like a defining moment for me, I had made a decision and no one could stop me. The floor was very orange in my memory, and I can remember the exact webpage with instructions (and pictures!) on how to tie this knot. I can’t remember the model of the computer…Packard Bell I think.

The next flash is me, still crying, holding a noose made out of string and a tube of super glue. I can only assume that I could not find thick rope and did not consider the tensile strength of this string, or that of the super glue for that matter. So there I was, trying to hang myself with a piece of string and some glue. Pretty ridiculous…later, in the years to come, I would refine this process, but could never get the timing right.

At this point my brother came home, there was a confrontation, probably some name calling, yelling and whatnot, and I retreated to my room. The next flash I have must be synthesized. It’s of my parents pulling into the driveway and my brother running out to tell them what happened. The memory is kind of from the angle of my bedroom window, but skewed. Plus I’m pretty sure that at this point I was in some weird catatonic state on the floor, covered by this convertible foam chair thing with black and white stripes. My grandparents had one of these chairs in Connecticut (it was brown) that when folded together made a low chair. When unfolded it was a foam pad about the size of a twin mattress. Anyways, I was underneath this thing, hiding from the world.

I remember my parents feet as they came into the room. I remember the I Spy book in the hospital waiting room. I remember the first anti-depressant pill I took that very night. Just flashes. After that, things started to blur and blend together, and for the next ten years I would struggle with therapists, medications, horrible side-effects botched suicide attempts, a “therapeutic” boarding school, and all sorts of other shit.

I often wonder what would have happened if I had nimbly leapt over that kids foot, pirouetted, and then said, “better luck next time asshole”. That would have been pretty slick.