June 28, 1995GIRL COULDN'T TAKE PAIN ANYMORE,
TRIED SUICIDE
June 28, 1995GIRL COULDN'T TAKE PAIN ANYMORE,
TRIED SUICIDE
By Jonathan Dube
NEW MILFORD -- HER LIFE became so unbearable, a teen-age girl said yesterday, that she swallowed 40 aspirin to "make the pain go somewhere else."
It wasn't just the trauma of moving to New Milford in the middle of the school year and losing her close friends. Or the fights with her parents, whom she felt were too controlling. Or that her boyfriend had been in a car accident two days earlier, or that a good friend went to the hospital the night before for alcohol poisoning.
It was all of it combined, the 15-year-old said.
"Everything had just piled up, and I couldn't take it anymore," said the New Milford High School student, who spoke under the condition that she not be named. "I wanted to make the pain go somewhere else. I just wanted it out of my mind and my heart."
The girl was one of the 10 local girls who hospital officials say has attempted to commit suicide in the past few weeks.
The girl said she had no knowledge of a suicide pact among local teen-agers. A doctor said last week that two girls he treated told him they were among 15 girls who vowed to kill themselves if one did. The 15-year-old and her mother said they agreed to speak to The News-Times yesterday in the hope of helping others.
Both of them said the girl was not consciously trying to commit suicide when she took the aspirin three weeks ago. She just wanted to make the emotional pain go away, they said.
"I knew that it could harm me, but that wasn't on my mind at all," the girl said. "I wasn't concerned about that. I knew what I was doing. I was taking the pain away. "I was just sick of it all. Everything. Life."
That attitude is typical of teen-agers who attempt to commit suicide, according to Richard Salwen, the director of child and adolescent psychiatry and chemical dependency services at Danbury Hospital. The teen-agers don't necessarily want to die, they just want to stop their emotional pain, Salwen said in a previous interview. He was not commenting directly on the 15-year-old's case.
"For adolescents, time is condensed, so what ever their feeling now is the way they think it's going to be in the future," Salwen said. "So that makes them search for more than a temporary solution, something that makes it all go away and puts them at peace."
The girl said she has felt depressed on and off for three or four years. Once or twice previously, she thought about killing herself. "I thought about it seriously, but could never bring myself to do it," she said.
But things had gotten worse this year. Her grandfather, whom she was close to, died. Then she moved here from another Connecticut town where her high school had only about 400 students -- one-third the size of New Milford High.
"The school here's so big, you kind of get lost," she said.
She missed her friends, several of whom her mother won't let her visit.
"They've kind of forbidden me from seeing some of my friends," she said, looking away from her mother. "She doesn't like them very much."
The mother replied, sarcastically, "Oh, those are wonderful people."
"Mom, they're a part of my life," the girl replied. "They're my friends."
At one point during the interview, the mother left. The girl then shook her head, sighed and said, "Them." She said she thinks her parents sometimes are too demanding and too controlling. They tell her she has an attitude.
It also bothers her, she said, that her parents won't let her go to friends' houses where they know there have been parties with drinking. She drinks sometimes, the girl said, but also attends Alateen, a support group for teen-agers with alcoholic relatives.
She said her parents put too much pressure on her. Her father, she said, wants all of her classes to be honors classes by her junior year. All of this had combined to make her somewhat stressed and depressed, the girl said.
So, when an unfortunate chain of events occurred three weeks ago, she snapped.
First her boyfriend wreck a car; then, the next night, another friend drank too much alcohol.
Both nights, she traveled in the ambulance with her friends. Being in the hospital two days in a row shook her up, she said.
The following night she went to the Teen Center to hang out with some friends. After she returned home, she sat in her room for about two hours and wrote poems about her pain.
Then, at about 1:40 a.m., she took the aspirin.
"It just happened so quickly," she said. "I was just like, 'Whatever happens, happens.' I was so overwhelmed. I just couldn't take it anymore."
She fell asleep and woke up at about 8:45 a.m. She walked into her brother's room and told him what happened. He got their mother, who brought her to the hospital, where the girl stayed for two days. "It was my higher power that woke me," she said. "The doctor said that had I waited . . . I would have been dead."
The girl said she does not regret taking the pills, although she's not proud she did.
"I don't regret it, but I'm not happy I did it," she said. "It doesn't please me."
What bothers her most is that she hurt those who care about her. The mother said she believes her daughter has learned from the experience.
"I think she learned a very hard lesson," the mother said. "No, I don't think that she will ever do anything to herself again. I don't think she was suicidal and I don't think she is."
When asked whether she thinks she might try to commit suicide someday, the girl replied, "I don't take things day by day anymore. I have to take it hour by hour. I don't know what I'm going to feel like. I'm awkward."
