To pee or not to pee?

[TW: this entire blog discusses multiple forms of trauma. Now I am healed and I’m here to tell the tale.]

Do you know the feeling when you are lying in bed at night and you have to pee?

You feel the urge to get up and go. But at the same time, you want to stay underneath the blanket and avoid stepping on the cold floor barefoot.

Your discomfort increases. You are not desperate yet but oh man, that would end your suffering. With time, your reasons to stay get smaller and smaller and your sole reason to go becomes more urgent.

You imagine doing the necessary mechanical movements: you uncover yourself, step on the ground, and walk toward your destination. Your mind is alert, yet your body is immobile. Maybe the next minute. The next one. How much longer do you wait until you do it?

I felt something like that when around age twelve I wanted to kill myself. I was also in the dark: nobody noticed, nobody cared.

There was a curly-haired boy in school who often looked me in the eye and said: “You are a nobody.” That was on point because that was how I felt anyway. He had a nice name but that name for me is tainted.

Some other boys in my class followed suit and called me Nobody when I was on the verge of jumping out of the window. They waved their hands in the air in front of me and acted like my glasses were hovering, you know, because I was a nobody.

For many years I recognized the sound of kids laughing as a way to kick me without actually kicking me. My husband knew about my childhood suicidal thoughts but I only shared the bullying a few months ago.

The curly-haired boy most likely doesn’t even remember this. He will never know what I had to live through at home ever since I was little and what his funny remarks caused.

One day I went to the homeroom teacher and told her the boys bullied me. She sat at the teacher’s desk, near the green board. Above the green board, there was a crucifix just like in every other classroom. I don’t remember if I told her what the boys did but she must have sensed the way I felt. She said it’s my problem and I should deal with it myself.

I learned for a lifetime there’s no point asking for help from the outside. If I do, I would only feel worse, more inadequate if possible. I am all alone.

As an adult, I found out this teacher helped kids who lived far away in deep poverty. I also found out that after the primary caregivers, teachers are next in line to protect children. This remains true even when the child is unable to ask for help. And I was there right in front of her and asked for her help.

I was not only living in deep poverty but also abused and neglected at home. These are concepts that I first learned as an adult. Back then I thought the only problem was the constant lack of money.

My job was to act like I received all the love and care in the world, just like the rich kids around me. If I couldn’t feel that way it meant I was bad. And I was sure I was bad. I wasn’t even able to feel my mother loved me. As an adult, I learned that me and my siblings should have been removed from the family.

I was so ashamed all the time because I felt I was disgusting inside and out.

I was so close so many times to walk towards my third-floor windowsill but for some reason, I stayed. When I crossed a road I didn’t even look left and right, low-key hoping that a car would hit me.

This lingering lasted a while, I don’t exactly remember how long.

I have no clue how I transformed myself from this state. I only know that nobody helped me. Or Nobody helped me. It depends on how you look at things.

Killing myself was a selfish thought. To end all my suffering, oh how I yearned for that. Of course, my aim wasn’t to be dead, that would have been stupid. I just didn’t want to go on, and ending my life was the only kind of authority I had over it.

Life never improved around me. My mantra based on my perceptions: “Everything only gets worse”.

A teacher discovered my scoliosis. That means my sole caregiver missed the development of a life-altering physical deformity.

A doctor told me my severe scoliosis would get worse as I get older. My brain would not get enough oxygen to function and as a result, I would become a vegetable. The tone of the doctor also suggested it was all my fault. I assume this was her way to make me do as she says but she was unsuccessful.

I got a plastic prison they called a brace. It pushed my body in the opposite direction, from armpits to buttcheeks. I tried it on at home a few times, it hurt a lot and I had no proof this would make things better. I had no one to discuss this, just like anything else. I was on the small side but with the brace on I needed to wear a shirt as big as a tent. I knew this would have been a social suicide. If you asked me, I preferred a regular suicide.

It was my clear decision not to kill myself, I remember it well. I was thirteen when I thought about the aftermath. I imagined the scene when my mother finds my broken body on the cold ground. After that, I knew I would never jump.

Committing suicide would not have been enough for me, anyway. I yearned I never existed, that no one would remember me after I disappeared from the world.

Not long ago I told my little sister about this. She said her childhood would have been so much more miserable without me in it.

I attempted to make my mother understand me and I told it to her as well. She retorted: “Well if you never told me how could have I known?!”

She is unable to understand me and I accepted this as my reality. I don’t expect things from her anymore she was always unable to give me. Now I am responsible for myself and everything is getting better for me. Healing hurts but it has a purpose, and it made me realize my existence also has a purpose.

A photo of me around that time

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