Once upon a time...

Once upon a time there was a little girl who had everything going for her. She was smart and popular and everyone wanted to be her friend. Her grades were top of the class without any effort at all and everyone expected her to be a great success when she grew up. As a child she knew she could do anything she put her mind to but she was extremely self-critical and had a strong desire to be a perfectionist.

When she reached her teenage years she became bored with school and started using drugs. Her perfectionism slowly turned into a lack of organization at all since there was just too much going on in her head to care. Creative and talented she felt the teenage angst consume her in everything she did but lacked any direction or purpose.

As life became increasingly difficult to endure, she continued to experiment with ways to alleviate the pressure. She tackled the numbness brought on by the drugs and alcohol by cutting herself in the dark of room late at night. She went to concerts and bars and filled her nights with what seemed like fun although she always felt bad about herself the next day. Suicide started to seem like the only way out of the endless pit called her life.

Once upon a time there was a little boy who seemed to have nothing go right for him from the minute he was born. His parents split up when he was five and he never saw his dad. His mom worked three jobs just to keep the rent paid and he never had any new clothes to wear. No one liked him, including his teachers, and he was always getting picked on.

By the time he was a teenager he had basically given up on thinking that he'd ever be like everyone else. He was a loner with dirty shoes and journals filled with poetry and drawings that he thought would never mean anything to anyone but himself. While friends were having parties and going out, he was forced to stay home and watch his little brothers and sisters so his mom could work her late shift at the club.

Searching for a way to cope, he began to write more intensely. He experimented with drugs and found them to be an easy way of coping with life. He followed the rules, never spoke his mind and did what he was told, all the time dying on the inside. He wanted to shout and scream and say how he felt but he never got up enough courage to hurt his mom the way his dad did so many years ago. Suicide began to seem like the best way to get out of what was beginning to feel like a flawed existence.

Do you identify with one of these scenarios? Once upon a time, I was a little girl or little boy as well. And I thought that suicide was the only way to end the pain. If you are searching the web to find someone like you, then you have come to the right place. I wanted to start my blog by making certain that anyone who comes here understands I'm not some doctor or self-help nut who has no clue what it is like for you. I promise I understand and I am still here to tell you about it. I hope to share the path I followed and plan on offering it to you through this blog - maybe it will help lead you to yours.