The Side Show

I was only twelve years old when I first contemplated suicide. With tears laced with my father’s verbal lashings and a crippling self hatred streaming down my face, I emptied a bottle of painkillers into my hand, preparing to swallow them down. My mother walked in, talking me down off the proverbial cliff I had climbed onto and sent me off to school. It would only take another three years before I climbed back onto that cliff. Trying to nurse a broken heart. Trying to silence the demons in my head that sounded a lot like my classmates, I succeeded in swallowing the few pills I could find. Tasting like bittersweet poison going down my throat, I swallowed the pills and went to bed. I woke up to a cocktail of emotions, followed by an overwhelming numbness.  Darkness had made itself a permanent resident in my mind. Light in the form of inspirational quotes and comforting words from strangers couldn’t reach me. Self esteem boosting songs sung by conventionally attractive white pop singers didn’t make me do anything but roll my eyes. No one sings songs for sad black girls. There’s no national outcry when black boys kills themselves due to bullying. Black tears don’t conjure feelings of empathy. No one writes love on the arms of black people. I am the face of depression. Simone Battle, Lee Thompson Young and countless other black people names are left out of the conversation about depression and suicide. The national conversation shouldn’t only start when a young attractive white person dies