Memory Snapshot

School assignment: Write about a personal memory

Date: October 26, 2012. Time: 4:30pm. Cause of Death: Overdose.

 

That’s what my death certificate will say.

 

To die would be an awfully great adventure. I agree with Peter Pan. It would

be an awfully great adventure. I made a mental list of every kind of medication in my house and

what I wanted to put in my goodbye letters.

 

I held back tears as I got off the bus with Tyra. She’s such a good friend… but she isn’t

going to miss me. I said goodbye to her as we went separate ways- me taking the long way home, and her taking the short way. As soon as I turned my back and started walking away from her I

broke down into silent sobbing. That’s the last time I get to see her. I turned and looked at her

one last time as she hopped over the short wall by the playground. Goodbye.

 

I walked slowly, taking in the scenery by my house one last time. I watched the cars

speed down the road, I listened to the birds chirping, and I kicked a pinecone down the sidewalk.

 

When I arrived at my house, I opened the front door, looked around the living room and

went into my room. I turned on my iPod and blasted Skyscraper by Demi Lovato, hoping that it

would remind me that I don’t need to kill myself for things to get better. I’m strong enough to

get through it. But it didn’t work. I pulled out a notebook and pen and began writing letters. One

for Tyra. One for Kristen. One for my mom. One for my sister.

 

As I signed the last letter, I tried to pull myself together to go to Tyra’s house and give

her one. I ran to her house, knocked on the door, handed it to her and ran home. It took me less

than a minute to do all of that and get the medicine out of the cabinet. I started with my

antidepressants. I got a big cup of water and swallowed the last ten pills from the bottle. Then I

moved to ibuprofen. I took about 50 of those and as I did so, Tyra was banging on my door and

trying to find a way to get in.

 

When I started feeling lightheaded I put the pill bottle down and unlocked the door. Tyra

opened it quickly and followed me into my room. She had no idea what to do or who to call. She

picked up the empty antidepressant bottle and called the phone number on it, hoping it would be

Poison Control or someone that could give her the number for Poison Control.

 

She ended up calling CVS and she was shaking and panicking so she couldn’t understand

what the person on the phone was saying to her. She hung up and called 911. She explained the

situation and within minutes, the cops were in my room and checking my vitals. They asked the

two of us some questions and started me on an IV.

 

They put me on a gurney and took me outside to an ambulance that was waiting. They

rushed me to the hospital and tried contacting my mom.

 

At the hospital, they drew blood, connected me to a heart monitor, and made a charcoal

drink for me.

Charcoal? Ew. What is that even going to do? It took me 6 hours to drink it and it took all of my strength to not throw it all up. I had started to fall asleep multiple times, but they wouldn’t let me until I finished the drink.

That was the nastiest thing I have EVER tasted in my life. That alone is enough to make me never want to try to kill myself again.

I wanted to sleep, more than anything afterwards, but I felt so sick, and the only thing on my mind was getting home. I was starting to finally drift off while a doctor was talking to my mom. He was telling her that I needed to go to a hospital.

Hospital? What, do they want to keep me overnight so they can make sure all of the medicine is out? Wrong kind of hospital. They ended up taking me to a psychiatric hospital in Cerritos where I would have to spend the next 72 hours.

Date: October 26, 2012. Time: 11:00pm. Reason for Admission: Attempted Suicide.

Author's Note

Please let me know of any grammatical errors or any suggestions for improvement.

Reviews

[SSB]

Hi Alex Thomas, I'm not sure whether this was based on a true story or not, but it did feel very realistic to me. The description of his emotions and other people's reaction, and the technical details about the medicine and the hospital, were all believable. Well done!
Some may ask "why would he visit his friend right before he took the pills if he really wanted to kill himself". I would say this is the most realistic part of the whole story - contradictory as it might sound, all of us DO want to stay alive, even at the last moment of our life when we put together all the courage to end it, we want to find a reason, or someone, to make us stay in this world...
Thank you for sharing it!