I thought it was normal, no one knew so they couldn’t tell me different.  By the time I was 12, I was dressing like a streetwalker running around with my friends, doing as I pleased. My mom tried to stop me but I just rebelled harder. 

I was also using pot. I became a cutter and very depressed.  At 14 I was raped.  My “friend” and his sister sat in the next room listening to me begging him to stop and then made fun of me.  All I can remember is the rejection I felt as he walked out of that room after stealing my innocence and getting teased for saying no. 

I had attempted suicide earlier that year because my grades were really bad, so I quit trying.  I was suicidal, and I went to school and out to go get high. My mom took me to the doctor for

anti-depressants and they put me on paxil.  The drugs almost killed me. 

At 15, I put the boy who raped me in prison, my Grandmother had a stroke, and my aunt was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  I watched my aunt fight for air to breath as the cancer ate her alive.  I could do nothing  to save her, I felt so helpless.

A year later I gave my Grandmother went home to be with Jesus and told her I would be there soon.  The day we buried her I overdosed on 1,350 mg of Welbutrin, an anti-depressant the doctor gave me to fight my depression.

Sixteen hours after I overdosed I was admitted into the hospital and my heartbeat was 210 beats a minute.  The doctor looked at me in amazement and said,  “You should be dead or at least had a heart attack or stroke.”