Her Death Gave Me Life :: The First Suicide Story

My first experience with death, not the dying or the dead but death, was when I was ten.  I do believe that there is a difference.  One is natural but the other, the grim, is not.  I remember it in detail.

It was the only time I ever saw tears in my fathers eyes.  There was also something else there. In his eyes.  Disappointment, fear, confusion, even now I can't put my finger on it but as a young girl, it puzzled me.

She was my great grandmother.  The one who taught me the importance of letter writing.  The one who tried over and over to convince me that beauty is on the inside, yet she hid behind a wig because she was concerned about what others thought of the thinning silver on her head.  She was the one that said she saw herself in me, 

that I reminded her of herself.  

These words didn't truly sink in until later.  Much later.

It was always a treat whenever she would call and invite my sister and I over for "slumber parties".  We would stay up late into the night playing games, Chinese Checkers was her personal favorite.  I saw something mysterious in her.

Rebellious.  Fun.

Wild.  

She wasn't like most other adults that I knew.  I think that's what drew me to her.  I don't think others noticed this, or wanted to notice it.  I think they ignored it when she couldn't ignore it.  That is, until the day that tears found their eyes.

We weren't allowed to attend the funeral.  They wanted to protect us.  To keep this evil hidden.  Quiet.  But as I'm learning in my own life,

"Bone by bone, hair by hair, Wild Woman comes back.  Through night dreams, through events half understood and half remembered, Wild Woman comes back." ~Women Who Run With The Wolves~

I remembered the gun.  I had often lay next to it under the bed when she sent us off to hide as she counted before searching for us.  In some ways, I think her suicide was a letter to me.  A letter with a secret message to embrace the wild woman.

Her death gave me life.

I wish that it would have been this suicide that started waking me up, but it was his, nineteen years after his great grandmothers, that gave me a voice.

Notes From Birth | How I Became A Girl

I was supposed to be born a boy.  In a vacuum sealed bag, way up high in a closet lay a baby blanket with blue silk around the edges.  Doggies, Horses and Sailboats.  There were no ultrasounds back then, but she knew.  I think she had hoped it would be true.

When a screaming girl appeared, the photos depicted a "mistake" in her gestures.  I knew this because words were said.  She reminded me of all that I was "supposed" to be.  Many times.  (I like to hope that they knew not what they do.)

My toddler self didn't know what was right and what was wrong.  But I felt that I was wrong.  An ugly duckling in many ways.  I heard tales of women who went to bed with their shirts off... becoming boys when they awoke and so I tried this, hoping that it would work for me

it never did.  

I became the best type of girl-boy that I could.  I wore torn jeans, stuck out my jaw, and chopped my hair to make the sides short.    

I mimicked him.  The daddy that I held so high on a pedestal.  I became the hunter, the fisherman, the quiet girl, who never nagged or filled the house with drama.  I ate the spicy things that he grew in the garden because I was STRONG.  I was tough enough.  I wanted to make him proud.

I wanted to be wanted.

The day that I killed my first deer, a mother, a doe.  He was proud.  It's still the only photo of me that lines his office wall.  It still pains me when I enter.  I don't enter much.  I never went hunting again.  

I also became a girl the day that I killed that deer.  My father drove me to the other boy's house that was quickly gaining my love.  The one that was supposed to be a pastor.  The one that the parents approved of.  

The big work van rolled up and my love came outside as I bragged about my "kill" hoping for his approval.  

He looked confused.  Baffled.

I think he saw right through me.  I think he knew that this was not ME.  The bloody deer that began to smell of death wasn't who was inside this soul.  He tried to smile but his face never lies.  I was crushed.  I had decided that this boy meant more to me than my fathers approval so.  

I decided I needed the boy to approve.  

I didn't know how to be ME so I imitated his mother and his sisters.  I grew my hair out long, burned the baseball caps, put on a dress and took up knitting.  

I wanted to be wanted.

Stay tuned for part two of the story unfolding.