Words by Breana

What They Don’t Tell You About Surviving

Life after a suicide attempt

You’ll be numb.

I didn’t feel anything toward life or death after my plan didn’t work out. I was just there. Existing. Trying to force myself to enjoy the accidental ecstasy pill I never meant to take.

No, I wasn’t drugged.

My X ingestion was the result of a major miscommunication. My plan had been to take a prescription cocktail, will all my mom’s meds for various illnesses . I was going to use a Xanax first…..not because I wanted to feel good, but because I thought it would give me enough courage to go through with it.

I don’t regularly take Xanax, but when I do, I get… soft. Floaty. You could slap me across the room and I’d smile and give you a hug. So it made sense, in the darkest kind of way, to start there.

Only, that’s not what happened.

My friend, who also happened to be my ex, misunderstood me. He thought I was asking for an ecstasy pill. And in the thick of everything, I took it without thinking.

When I realized what I had just done, I flipped out. I was furious. Scared. But once I calmed down and accepted the ride that was coming, something in me shut off. I didn’t feel high. But once I didn’t feel safe. I didn’t feel anything.At one point, he said, “I knew the drug hit you because my hand was on your thigh and you didn’t notice. Usually, you would’ve moved it.”
I just sat there.

And, this is the part no one talks about. That surviving can feel like floating in a body you’re not sure you want to return to. That the simultaneous absence of pain isn’t peace. It’s numbness.

And that numbness takes its own kind of surviving.
I didn’t know then that surviving would become its own full time job. That I’d spend years trying to write again, work again, feel again. This piece is one of the first things I’ve shared since.

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Words by Breana



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