"Okay. What now?"

I woke up in a hospital at the age of 18, 3 days after I was admitted due to grand mal seizures that were initiated by two fistfuls of prescription sleeping pills and, ironically perhaps, antidepressants.

I'd flirted with suicide for a few years, but the night I took the pills was the only time I was fully invested. I did not want to live. It's hard describing the feeling to anyone who hasn't been there, but it's completely unlike any other sense of depression or self-loathing. Mine came with calm, decision, and certainty. There was none of the erratic angst that had plagued my other life choices at that time, none of the sickening sense of waste and self-hatred. Everything became serene and clear, everything slowed down, and I knew that it was the right thing to do.

The thing is, even now, typing this from vantage point of 16 years of LIFE since this suicide attempt, I can't shake the memory of the clarity of that decision. There is literally nothing that I've done with my life since then that has been so logical and obvious to me as death was in that moment.

Waking up was difficult. I remember that first moment of "what now", but it didn't come at the beginning of an uninterrupted period of lucidity. Due to the damage the seizures had caused, I was heavily sedated. Even when the sedatives were removed, I could barely stay awake for more than an hour at a time. The seizures and drug overdose had caused significant damage to my brain, particularly my short-term memory. I had to learn my parents' names over and over again, every day. A therapist would come into my room at the hospital and read words from a list to me, three at a time, slowly. I was supposed to repeat them back in order. Every day, I would struggle to remember one of the words. I cried like a child in frustration.

As time went on, the days leading up to the suicide attempt came back to me, and I realized how close I'd come to success. My initial feeling was regret, since I knew that I was supposed to die.

I had failed at everything I'd ever done, including death.

However, I realized that my choices were pretty limited. I could wait until I got my strength back, and try again, maybe a gun this time? Maybe take the pills and jump into the rock quarry instead of laying down somewhere? Or, I could try to live for a while and see if I could do any better.

There was never a point that I felt like life after death was a "gift". There was no moment of illumination of the sanctity of life in general, or my life in particular. There was no sense of relief that I'd survived. But, as time has passed, I've come to see just how limited my capacity for living was at that age. I was prepared to end my life before it had truly started.

In my case, nobody knew that I'd attempted suicide. If the doctors and nurses who treated me thought that, they never shared their opinions with me. I was diagnosed as epileptic, and everyone blamed my altered state on the seizures. The process of healing came slowly, and without support from others. Ultimately, that's what allowed me to build the strength to trust myself and move on.

If I could go back in time, I honestly don't know what I'd do. That incident radically changed my life in ways that affect me to this day. I wouldn't be who I am without it. On the other hand, I would give anything to re-live through the year leading up to the suicide attempt, and make different choices to prevent other people from being hurt by my bad decisions. I was falling apart at the seams months before I actually decided to kill myself, and I was too deep in my own quiet misery to notice that I was affecting the lives of others at the same time.

Life is better now.