a wave of depression crashes over me, and i'm suddenly reminded of the first time i tried to take my own life. i was in 7th grade, and had just turned 13. i woke up one morning to find that the scale was not in my favor, which at the time was the final straw. i took a full bottle of motrin and a full bottle of extra strength tylenol. unfortunately, i couldn't get out of going to school like i had planned. and honestly, i think a part of me really did want to go. a part of me was just longing to be saved; for someone to wrap their arms around me and tell me, "everything's going to be okay..." another part of me wanted to know how people would react, if they would care at all. a very small part of me actually wanted to die. i thought that's what i wanted, until i actually swallowed the pills. when i got to school i was only there for an hour or so before i started to get violently ill, which is when i told my teachers what i had done. they immediately freaked out and called 911. an ambulance came to my middle school, they called my mom, and i laid in the conselor's office crying. "i'm so sorry.." was all i could manage to say. the paramedics made me drink charcole, which later made me throw up more than i ever have in my life, which is a lot. the doctors at the ER said i was lucky that no damage was done, and sent me off to the psychiatric ward. i stayed 10 days, went home, and immediately relapsed into my eating disorder. my point is this, at that time i just wanted to know that someone cared. i just wanted to feel loved and appreciated. but now it's the very knowledge that plagues me day after day. people caring hurts. it hurts because i know that i am hurting them. if they didn't care about me my actions wouldn't affect them, they wouldn't mind watching me struggle. but they do care, and so it's difficult. i am not blind to the pain i cause them. i know how my family sometimes worries that i won't wake up in the morning, i hear the doctors to my mom to prepare herself in the best way she can for me to die, i hear my brother blaming himself for everything that's going on, i know my grandma just wants me to be happy and things to be better, and can't understand why they aren't. i see the many letters written,"we're praying for you.. please get better.. you deserve so much better than this.. i can't stand to watch you go through this..." while those used to be all the things i needed to know, they are now the things weighing me down and sometimes making it hard to breathe. sometimes when i look back on my life over the past few years i don't know whether to laugh or cry. right now i feel like crying... right now i'm wondering what would be more painful: a relapse and slow death, or an act of suicide. technically, it's suicide eithe way you look at it. one is just more sudden, quicker, somehow more simple. i can't help but contemplate the act as i write this... how simple it would be. almost like turning the tv off. swallow a bottle of pills before bed, and before you know it you're off. is it really that simple?