Will today be the day that I don’t wake up?

On purpose?

By accident?

I hope so.

I hope that today God, or Jesus, or the saints, or Buddha decides to take me with them. I’m sure they are happier. I’m sure the pain they have suffered has ceased.

I envy those who have succeeded in taking their own life. I wish it were me instead. But I can’t find myself having the strength to just “do it.” I think about it often.

Almost every day.

I pray for a tragic end, because I don’t want to be seen as someone who committed suicide. And yet I want to take my own life because it gives me a say.

Because my life, in so many ways has already been taken from me.

Me at 3: I want to die 

Dear world,

Where is my mommy and why do I need to be in this dark room with so many others? It stinks here. I can’t breathe, and I can’t see anything. Every time I want food I am ignored. So I begin to eat what is around me. It does not taste good.

I can’t see.

I can’t feel.

I can’t even cry.

I want my mom.

Will you be my mom? Take me with you so that I no longer have to be here in this world.

I want to die so that I don’t suffer.

Love, me

Me at 5: I want to stop breathing

Dear world,

What are you doing to me? I’m hungry but you won’t give me food because you think I’m too fat. But i’m just five, I’m supposed to be a bit chubby.

My sister is white and I am black. I have a huge gash on my head from when you decided that I, a little kid, should sleep on the top bunk. Not knowing my sleep pattern or my habits, you decided to put me up there, and then I fell and you held me. If you had not have put me up there, you would not have had to hold me. I don’t like to be held and at the same time, I need to be held.

Stop pinching me to make me smile in the pictures you want to send to your mother. Grandma does not like me anyway because I am black. She likes to hold my white sister more. She does not want me around her. So why are you making me smile?

When you pinch me, I want to cry…but you want me to smile….it hurts.

But I can’t smile….and no more tears can come out.

Maybe if I die, you will stop pinching me.

Love, me

Me at 10: Why have I not Died?

Dear world,

He keeps touching me and sometimes it hurts but sometimes it feels good. I can’t tell you though because you don’t believe me anyway. If I tell you, you will think I am lying. You always think I’m lying.

Maybe I have aids. I remember hearing it on the radio. It kills people.

I’m confused.

I want to die right now because I might have aids and so hopefully I don’t have to suffer a long time.

When he puts his thing in me, maybe this time I will get the aids. And then I will be able to be in heaven and not have to think about the pain anymore.

Sincerely, me

Me at 15: This will hopefully Kill me.

Dear World,

No one wants to hang out with me.

I can’t fit in with the other black people. They say I “act white.”

The cutting is starting to help me feel a bit more.

I like it.

Sometimes.

But still no one is listening. Even after they see the cuts on my arms and the blood dripping down my  right calf, the don’t even ask what is wrong.

My teachers are not asking me why I am wearing long sleeves when it is 90 degrees out.

So maybe if I scream, someone will hear me.

They just tell me to be quiet because it is impolite to yell.

My counselor is useless and the people I thought were friends think I’m weird.

I can’t even talk to my parents because they believe “if you pray hard enough, or long enough, or frequent enough.”

My prayer is that God will take me now!

Sincerely, me

Me at 26: I’m Still Here.

Dear World,

I am glad I hung on all this time because I needed to find peace, and feel a sense of freedom I could not when I was a child.

But now my decisions have created a schism in the family.

They have disowned me.

Threatened me with their gun.

With their Money.

Told me I’m just this broken and angry adoptee who will amount to nothing unless I “Get my act together.”

They tell me the only way for me to return to the fold (as if I’m some kind of lost daughter, or a prodigal son) is for me to rewrite my book, leaving out the parts where they were very much unfit parents.

I say no and they remove my financial support, they throw away pictures of me, and they return any gifts I gave them during the 18 years of living with them.

They no longer want any memory of me.

They washed their hands clean.

I want to die because though  I feel freedom, they are the only family I have ever known.

But I can’t die because I have my children, who would they be left with?

Is suicide selfish? Will my kids survive? Will they make it?

Let’s see.

But no, I can’t die because this may mean the courts will put my children with them. I need to stay alive so that this does not happen.

First though a sleeping pill, with some wine…..hoping that it overcomes us all.

Sincerely, me

Me NOW

Dear world,

I am still here but I don’t want to be. I’ve gone through many different stages in my life where I wanted to die.

I still want to die.

I can’t change that.

I can’t help that fact.

It is part of me.

It is part of who I am.

My biological aunt told me something that has stuck with me ever since. My birth-mother was a sad woman. She had a hard life. She couldn’t do it anymore.

Did she take her own life?

Depression is a form of death. It eats away at us and unless we get help, it too will consume us.

For me right now, it is not suicide that scares me, it is who I leave behind.

I love my family so much and I can’t imagine leaving them with so much pain.

And yet the pain I suffer will never go away. It has left its mark on me forever. I can’t change it. The damage has been done and I can’t fix this.

Every day I wake up I wish I had not. I wish I had been taken up into the sky because it is there that I know I’m safe.

I don’t worry about heaven or hell because I don’t know what will become of my body when I die. I don’t know where my soul will float off to.

I do know however that the people I leave behind will be broken.

Like me.

I don’t wish my condition on anyone.My experiences have made me into the person I am today and I know that this is supposed to mean I am strong, powerful and empowered.

But I am not.

I have survived nothing….because I live with myself. I live with my experiences, and maybe I have survived the “flesh-wound” of it all, but my heart and my spirit are still hurting, broken, and forever destroyed.

Nothing can make this better. No one can make this better. No religion can make me into a “whole” person because what I was is no longer what I am.

Choosing to live has become my suicide…each day I live, and breathe, and feel, is a day of torture, a day of wanting to not be living, breathing and feeling.

I feel I have no control.

You have lied to me from the day I was adopted. You took who I was and made me into someone I am not.

You literally took my essence away, giving me a name, a birthdate and a life that was not my own.

My birth mother looked for me and couldn’t find me.

The coercion you used to get false papers to take me to another country has fallowed me to adulthood.

You are evil.

In January I went to a doctor to do my immigration physical to apply for my green card and I had to be evaluated, as if I was some object. The doctor had to look at my privates to make sure I didn’t have any disease. They do this because they think foreigners are carrying diseases, and bringing them to the US and then infecting Americans.

How dare we?

So violating.

And I wait for months to hear whether the US thinks I’m suitable to be a permanent resident, even though BOTH my adoptive parents are American citizens and their biological children are too.

I wait in anticipation.

I expect to read “DENIED” because the world I live in, I’ve been denied my basic rights as an infant (right to a mother), as a child (right to love), as a pre-teen (right to my own body), as a young adult (right to travel), as a person (right to citizenship).

So I’m used to hearing these words “denied”.

And yet, I still live on.

I’ve denied myself the right to die, and yet I feel I’m in control of that one thing.

So dear world, when it is my time to go, please be aware that it will be on my time.

It will be the only thing I have left to control of me.

I will be the one to take my own.