The Disappointment Kid (Completed)

14

"John, John, she's coming around, I think. Thank God. Katherine? Katherine, can you hear me?"

Well, I certainly hoped that that wasn't heaven. If it was, it sucked.

Slowly, I opened my left eye. I saw a ceiling. It looked suspiciously like my own ceiling. My mother's face loomed over me. I looked to the left.

Yep, my room.

I groaned.

"Are you okay, Katherine? Do you feel any pain anywhere?"

My father's voice was soft. I turned to look at him. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he had the biggest blackest bags I had ever seen underneath his eyes.

"Why am I here?" I asked.

"Your Maths teacher, Mrs Keating, phoned. She was very concerned about you. She said that she feared that you suffer from depression and that she thought you were in a state of acute crisis at the very moment. She demanded to know where you were. I didn't believe her, of course. Depression. What a preposterous idea! You are 17 years old. What is there to be depressed about?"

"Elisa, please, not now."

My father's voice sounded strangely commanding.

"You weren't home, and we didn't have a clue where you might be." My father's voice wobbled. "Mrs Keating then told us about a bench in the woods. She didn't know where exactly it was, but she said it seemed to be a sort of safe place for you. I dropped everything and ran as fast as I could into the woods. I called and called, but you never answered. When I eventually found you, you had already passed out. In my panic I had forgotten my phone, so I grabbed you and carried you all the way home, hoping and praying that you wouldn't stop breathing. Your breathing had already become so shallow, and you were so unbelievably pale. I was frantic. I couldn't think straight. Good God, I didn't think straight. You should be in a hospital. I could have lost you. Oh, Katherine."

Tears were streaming down my father's face.

"Well, good thing that I was thinking straight then. Of course she shouldn't be in a hospital. Do you honestly want a suicide attempt on her record? Jesus, John. I told you she would be fine." She looked down at me. "We made you throw up most of the pills you had taken. Then we settled down next to you to monitor your breathing. We've been sitting here all night."

Mother sounded accusatory, but I also detected a slight wobble in her voice.

I took all of that in, but the one thought at the forefront of my brain was that I had failed - again.

* * * * *

If you think that a suicide attempt, especially a failed one, is a life-changing event in a family like mine, a wake-up call if you will, you are sorely mistaken. I spent the next day in bed with my parents bringing me chicken soup and camomile tea. At the end of the day, I started to believe myself that I was actually getting over a bout of flu instead of a bout of death wish. After our small initial conversation, nobody mentioned words like 'death', 'depression', 'mental health issues', let alone 'suicide' ever again.

Less than 48 hours after 'the woods', as the whole thing was later euphemised on the very few occasions that it was even mentioned, I was back in school. I told no one about what had happened, not even Mrs Keating. My mother insisted that silence was essential for my future success. I have to admit, though, that, even if my mother had wanted to take a more pro-active approach and address the underlying reasons for my 'problem' with the help of professionals, I would most likely have refused to do so. I was ashamed. People already thought I was a little weird. Outing myself as being 'mental' or 'insane' was the last thing I would have put on my bucket list, if I had had one. And I mean swallowing enough pills to kill an elephant and chasing them down with a litre of wine isn't exactly a picture of mental stability. Admitting that the whole endeavour had failed would have been even worse, and seeing that I was still kicking, I couldn't come up with a way to cover this particular Charly Foxtrot up, no matter how hard I tried.