***The following post mentions suicide. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room. You can also call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Erupting: College Freshman Year – Section C
Just When I Needed A Friend
My college roommate had moved out because she found me to be an antisocial freak with quirky ways. In actuality, however, she moved out because she could not control me. Admittedly, I obviously had some quirky ways which my former roommate was not accustomed to just like she had some quirky ways that I was not accustomed to either. Yet, instead of choosing to work things out with me, she went for my throat and attempted to strangle me under her submission.
My former roommate had to have been surprised to have met her match in me because I refused to budge to her ways. I was not going for a peer of my same age trying to control me as if she was my mother. I left home to specifically get away from my parents and their narcissistic behaviors that beat my spirit down into a pit of depression. I was not about to allow her to do the same.
I had not intended to enter college dealing with a roommate, suitemate, dormmate, or campus-mate who mirrored my parents’ narcissistic behaviors. Yet, this is exactly what I encountered during my freshman year. I was encircled by a nest of young women who still behaved as if they were in high school on some mean girl assignment. I had not even faced this type of bullying during my entire time in high school.
Thankfully, after my former roommate vacated our shared quarters, I ended up with a room all to myself, and it was glorious. I prayed hard that God would grant me a reprieve away from anymore peopling as far as the dorm room was concerned … if it could be helped, but I knew that getting a new roommate should have been expected for the most part. As time trudged on, however, and there was no roommate in sight.
Towards the latter part of the semester, I was free of a narcissistic roommate, but my former roommate’s smear campaign against me followed me everywhere, and it did not help that the arrogant dormmate was still on campus harassing me whenever she had the chance as well (about a few months prior to her deployment). I had played dodge ball very well during my middle school years though. So I knew how to dodge people and dissociate when necessary. For the most part, that is what I did – dodged those bullies like the plague.
It was just around the time that I was on the verge of losing myself that I happened upon a friend. One night, while doing laundry and studying for a test, I went into the study room to get snacks. While in the study room a young woman was eating snacks and doing homework. We exchanged pleasantries and a conversation. We laughed, and this was something I had not done much of at all with my former roommate or my suitemates. In fact, I had not really connected with anyone else on campus at all.
This young woman who would become a very good friend. Little did either of us know that the course of my life was getting ready to change within a week of us meeting each other, but that was beyond the horizon for at lease a week. My new friend and I spent a week getting to know each other. We ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner together everyday. She became my off-campus buddy for adventures, and we had a lot of fun.
My new friend and I spent a lot of time talking about our school frustrations and our experiences with being bullied by some of the same people. We talked about our families and found that we had so much in common. It turns out that she was not liked very well either, and she seemingly marched to the beat of her own drum too. It was refreshing to find a friend, but even still, I had already fallen into a very dark abyss. I did not share this information with her at all at the time. Instead, I tried to deal with it on my own.
Pills, Radio Blues, And The Crisis Counselor
After gaining a room of my own, at night, I would freely, but silently, cry myself to sleep. Over a period of time, I had grown accustomed to calling the local radio station and talking to one of the DJ’s attempting to win the latest radio contest. Everyone in my dorm called this radio station all the time to play contests for prizes or concert tickets and/or have music requests played.
Somehow, I frequently got a call-in line all the time. I called in so much, the DJ instantly recognized my voice, and after having a few brief conversations, the DJ and me became “pals”. I’d call in trying to win a contest or ask for requests to be played on the behalf of myself and other girls in the dorm. It somehow worked out for us all (the girls in the dorm too). It never occurred to me that the DJ was a potential friend until I took note of how often I heard the songs I requested on the radio.
During one particular late night study session, however, a friend is what I thought I needed. So, I called the the DJ to actually see if there was time for conversation. I needed help. Inside of myself, I felt frantic and deeply saddened. Inwardly, I felt grief and turmoil, and I did not really know what to do. In my attempt to reach out, I was met with something I did not expect – rejection. The DJ was busy and ending the shift. It was such a stark change in scheduling that I was caught off guard. I needed a new plan. The DJ was not going to be able to help me.
It was so late that I considered it to be too late to talk to my newfound friend. She lived on another floor, and I did not really want to leave my room. Although we were late night buddies, she always fell off to sleep before me. So I figured during that late time of night, she was most likely asleep then too. So instead of calling her, I opted to remain silent.
I attempted to pray, but my attempts to reach God felt futile. I was blinded by a strong sense of pain that seemed to overwhelm me. I was tired, and I felt done with everything. That was the moment that all internal words from others that I had heard over the years began resounding loud and clear.
Those internal words that held the voices of others who ridiculed me, shamed me, blamed me, and projected upon me were words that were meant to hurt me. Those internal words arose and floated around before me like small sentence strips. My mind read aloud every single one of them. As I listened to them, I fell further into a sinking abyss of quicksand. I could not get out.
So I got up and took out some prescription meds, Tylenol, and birth control pills from a drawer. My plan was to take them all at once. The worst I believed that could happen was death, but then there was that imminent thought of dying and going to hell and burning for all eternity. Yet, at the same time, I wondered how anything could have been worse than what I was feeling in that moment. I had for years been living hell on earth, and I felt that I had lived hell on earth for a long, long time.
The traumas that I had suffered were irrelevant non-factors. My mind had long since stopped me from remembering them. In fact, no memories of even the severest trauma ever registered within my mind. All I could feel was hurt. My body was wracked in severe emotional pain. I was one huge “cry” or one gigantic “tear” always in formation. I was in so much internal pain that I could literally hear and feel my heart flutter then shatter into millions of unfixable pieces.
I was so desperate for someone to hear me and understand my pain that I broke down and called the local area suicide hotline. I was, in fact, feeling very suicidal. I wanted to die, but more than death, I wanted my pain to end. Surely a suicide hotline could help me, right? When I called, a young man answered the phone. He sounded very empathetic. I imagined him to be one of those good and fortunate people who might have never experienced anything bad in life. He sounded as if his life was good.
The young man listened to me though. He seemed to try to understand me. I told him how I felt and how it had been for me as a freshman. He empathized with me and told me he was still in school too. His connections made me believe that he really seemed to hear me. He paid such close attention to me that he basically saved my life, and this was long before tracking locations became a thing. He asked enough pertinent questions to get me help. Had he not, I would likely not be telling this story.
What I thought was a simple chat and exchange of information was this crisis counselor’s way of learning as much about me as possible so that he could get me help. He knew that I was a college student struggling with bullying, isolation, and inner turmoil. He knew my first name. He knew that I was in the process of taking pills. I had started drinking water to take them one by one as we talked. I had begun the process of counting them out but not revealing the total amount to him. There were 57 pills in all, I had already taken two Tylenol.
The crisis counselor kept me talking, and soon I found that we were talking about different things. I had not realized that this was all a part of his plan to distract me. At some point, though, I grew tired of the conversation … told him that I wanted to get off the phone, but he begged me to hold tight so that he could transfer a few calls. I did not realize, however, that he was on the phone calling all of the major college and university campuses in the area. He had also called the police.
It would later be told to me by the dorm mother that this crisis counselor was adamant to find me. He had notified the police and every single college campus in that city to let them know that a young woman with my name was in crisis and needed immediate help. Each of the campuses had a person to search their school’s directory to find anyone with a matching name like mine.
Although I had never shared my last name with the crisis counselor, I had given him enough information about me that helped those campuses to finally locate a few girls who shared my name and description (which included locating me). I have always wondered how those other young women must have felt being checked on between the hours of 1 and 3 A.M. regarding the state of their mental health. I wondered if anyone of them was suffering like me.
At some point while on the phone, I began to feel very antsy. The crisis counselor had me on hold for quite a while to the point that my mind began having its inner monologue with me. “You’re trying to die here, and this guy has you on hold. You’ve been on hold for a while. Something’s up. Hang up now! He’s too busy to help you after all.”
Yet, I lingered on and waited because I thought it would be rude to hang up when he had been so nice to me. At some point, I remember making the decision to begin just taking the pills. There were other voices within my head too … not just my mind’s voice … and those other voices demanded that I speed it up. So I picked up a wad of pills only to hear a key turn in the lock of my door. I was not going to have enough time.
Stay tuned for what happened next.
My Voice Unchained 