[Buttons.]

Minutes later I hoisted myself up onto an examination table, closing my eyes as a doctor rolled up my sleeves to see my shame, the many and varied scars and cuts coating my arms, layers upon layers of raised and flat, wide and thin, purple and white scars that used to be my skin. The ones on my legs were worse to show, the words, wide, purple screamed ‘FAT’ and ‘UGLY’. After marking the battle scars on my body in a human outline on a piece of paper, I was informed my parents had been called, and handed a plastic cup of a thick, black tar-like substance. “Charcoal,” a nurse explained, with a grimace of empathy.


“It’ll line your stomach, limit the damage.” I didn’t bother protesting, or explaining that quite frankly, I’d had a change of heart, and I didn’t want any damage limitation, thanks very much. Under her watchful eyes, I took a mouthful of the charcoal. In involuntary wretch shuddered through me as the foul substance hit my throat. It stuck in my gums and coated my tongue, clung to the walls of my throat, tasted like liquidised chalk, sand and paint all thrown together to make the most unpleasant taste sensation known to man. A wry thought entered my mind as I reached the half way mark of the cup: ‘Well if this doesn’t put people off overdosing, I don’t know what will.’


I heard a flurry of activity and knew, with deep seated dread that my parents had arrived. Mum appeared with a fury on her face that I had never seen before. Verbal lashings were laid in before I could say a word, though Dad was remarkable calm, if looking a tad shell shocked. Gradually my parents calmed down, and we were instructed that I would have to stay on the paediatric ward over the weekend until the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Team could see me.


Dad left to gather some of my belongings from home, but Mum stayed with me and showed a strength of love, character and resilience I still marvel at to this day. She held my hand as a blood test was administered, even made jokes about the late night television programmes as we waited afterwards.


Later, armed with a pair of pyjamas, my diary and a host of regrets I slipped into the cold callous hospital bed, tugged my sleeve down over my bandaged arm, curled up in a ball, and wept. The silence of the sleeping hospital pressed on me, suffocating me with my own loneliness. My thoughts turned to the following morning, where I would have to get up and continue on with a life I wasn’t sure I wanted, and face the consequences of my self destruction.