Addiction Conversations with My Fathers

The mental health unit: Age thirteen, suicide attempt three.I can't remember when it all changed between my father and me. There was a time in childhood where I was still willing to forgive the fact that his sister molested me for a very long time, he knew about it and did nothing, as a kid it's easy to overlook those things. Those are things you think about later in life. Things that will destroy you or cause you to try to destroy people around you if you don't get them fixed.I know...
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The mental health unit: Age thirteen, suicide attempt three.I can't remember when it all changed between my father and me. There was a time in childhood where I was still willing to forgive the fact that his sister molested me for a very long time, he knew about it and did nothing, as a kid it's easy to overlook those things. Those are things you think about later in life. Things that will destroy you or cause you to try to destroy people around you if you don't get them fixed.I know we were okay. We owned a house. My mother and father were together. They were successful I thought, but then my Dad used to take me for rides with him. He'd pick up friends, then girlfriends then they would do sh*t in the back of the car. Right in front of me. We had one of our few conversations and it ended with him telling me, "Don't tell your mother." I didn't, ever. Not even now. I think in my kid brain everything worked: Was working. Why mess it up? But then he left; leaving us with no money, car, nothing. Just left.I tried suicide for the first time the year before at about twelve, or just turned twelve. The time before that had been accidental. Sniffing glue and I passed out and stopped breathing for a few minutes. It was funny because my friend did nothing. Didn't call for help, nothing. Squeezed some more glue into the bag and went at it. I have his word that I stopped breathing, but he was high and I have always wondered if that part was true. I tend to be a show me and I'll believe it type of guy. If I don't see it I don't believe it. Maybe I'm not so much like that anymore, but I absolutely was for many years. The thing is I started breathing again on my own and when I came out of that I had this fascination with death. It just called to me. I can't explain it any better. Maybe the release of all responsibility, pain, hatred. Maybe.So not long after that I tried suicide again. I took every pill I could find and swallowed them. Prescription pain pills, aspirins. A few hundred pills or so. And I washed it all down with alcohol.I nearly died, but while I was in that place of waiting where my body was away from me, I had no pain. There was no one that was hurting me, using me, trying to rape me. Nothing. I wanted to stay there so bad, but they got enough stuff in me to make me puke most of the pills back up and I lived. Sick for a while, stomach permanently messed up, but alive.They sent me to the Mental Health Unit after the second attempt that year, my third try at suicide. I was there for thirty days; an automatic hold, but they were constantly telling me that if they didn't want to let me go they could keep me. My parents had signed the paperwork they needed. I can remember one or two groups. It was my first experience with group and I hated it. I was disruptive, refused to talk; told people to go f*ck themselves and generally didn't make any friends on the staff or any of the people there who were actually trying to get better.I had two sessions of one on one counseling. I remember the counselor's name, although I won't include it here. A nice guy: Honest, straight forward. The second session is when things went bad. We were talking along and I felt comfortable with him so I told him I had been sexually abused. Everything stopped. He went and got his supervisor, the supervisor and he got into an argument outside the door, the up thrust of which I heard through the door: There is no money in this, no way to pay the bill, we're letting him go, so don't explore that.To be honest I wasn't that surprised.I spent my last few nights on the Mental Health Unit getting to know a girl a few years older than me. I was surprised at how alone they left us when they went off to do whatever they did. We sat in the cafeteria while she slipped her panties off and let me peek under the table. No one came in at all. Just a few short months later I was living on the streets. Addicted to speed and alcohol...