Recipe For Suicide

This is going to be more like a journal entry than a blog. I have a lot inside me that I need to get out, and this is the best medium for it.

  Night before last my daughter got a call from her best friend. She started the conversation out with, "Well, I drank a lot of bleach, some hydrogen peroxide and took a bunch of pills." My daughter broke down crying because she thought she was getting a 'good bye' call. Her friend was actually in the hospital and being treated. Her friend is only 13 years old! This child is also like a second daughter to me. She has spent half the summer vacation at our house. 

   What could cause this baby to do this? I put the blame squarely on her parent's shoulders. Her mother and father divorced a couple of years ago. Her father was into internet porn and was messing around. "Alice" (not the child's real name, but what I will call her) found out and told her mom. During the divorce, her dad told her it was all her fault it was happening. Alice, her mother and her younger brother moved into their grandma's house, which was right next door to where we lived. They were there for several months until grandma got a new boyfriend and kicked them all out. 

   They moved into a garage apartment right next door to grandma. Turns out grandma's new boyfriend was a creep who was a member of several swingers sites on the internet. That's two places Alice had to move out of in just a few short months. Alice's mother has always shown more love and affection to the little brother as well. All she does is berate Alice and shows her no support at all. She uses the kids to hurt her ex-husband. He actually mended the fences with Alice and is a better parent than her mother. 

   Whenever Alice, her mother and brother go anywhere, they always have to do what the little brother want, and never what Alice wants. She won't even take Alice shopping in some stores because they have nothing that would fit her. She does everything she can to knock this child down. When Alice decided to go vegetarian, like my daughter, the mother wouldn't buy her anything she could eat for a while. She would tell her there's a can of mixed vegetables in the cupboard, that's good enough for your dinner. When she finally did start buying her vegetarian food, she would eat it before Alice could. 

   Her mom bought a house and things got worse from there. Alice ended up being a cutter because of all the stress and pressure on her. Instead of getting her help, her mom would make self harm jokes in front of her. Not cool!! A couple of months ago, mom got a new boyfriend, that's when things really spiraled out of control. The mom was so desperate to have a man in her life that she started ignoring her kids to be with this man. Alice doesn't like him and her mom gets mad at her about it. He said he didn't like their cats in the house, so mom threw them outside. He still wasn't happy about that, so mom took two of them and dropped them off somewhere. All she told Alice was that they were gone. Alice had had these cats for years, they were her babies.  new boyfriend was also in Alice's room while she wasn't there, when she told her mom she didn't like that. mom took new boyfriends side. Of course. 

   Mom is even ignoring little brother now. Whenever he tries to get in her lap (He's 6 now) or snuggle beside her on the couch, she tells him to go away and leave her alone. She even told Alice once if she has anymore problems with the new boyfriend, she wouldn't be allowed to back over here. That really made me and my daughter mad. The other day, they had a mother/daughter day planned. well, new boyfriend showed up and guess what didn't happen? Yep, she chose new boyfriend over daughter, again. Later, she went through her daughter's phone and called several of her friends and blessed them out over some of the conversations they had through texting. I know this child, and it couldn't have been that bad. It was right after that, when she tried to commit suicide. 

   Alice called my daughter from the hospital yesterday and told her some things that made me want to take her mom in a headlock and pound the crap out of her. Alice asked her mom that if she dies will she go to Hell now. Her mother told her yes. WTF???? Grandma also came for a visit and told her that if she had died, she would be responsible for her mother having a heart attack and dieing too. Double WTF?? 

   There have been a lot more incidences that I really can't remember right now, but this child has a very miserable life. When she is here, I try to take them places, and do things with them. She told me once they we do more and go more places without a car then she and her mom do with a car. I've taken them downtown, to the park, to the big library downtown,  to a free concert downtown, and several different other places. We had one day where I let Alice pick what we did. She isn't stressed when she is with us. She even tells me she loves me all the time. She's a great kid, straight A student and never gets in trouble at school. 

  She is being moved to a mental hospital this afternoon and probably won't be allowed to have visitors for a couple of days. As soon as we get the green light. I am going to take my daughter to go see her. I need to see her as well. I have cried a lot over the past few days, and my heart feels so heavy right now. This baby could have died because her mother chooses her own happiness over her children. I do not like the word 'hate', but right now i have nothing but hate for her mom. 

   Parents. please cherish your children, support them and love them. Let them know they can count on you to be there for them. You never know what tomorrow may bring.

This is from http://jasonfoundation.com

Youth Suicide Statistics

• Suicide is the SECOND leading cause of death for ages 10-24. (2010 CDC WISQARS)
• Suicide is the THIRD leading cause of death for college-age youth and ages 12-18. (2010 CDC WISQARS)
• More teenagers and young adults die from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza, and chronic lung disease, COMBINED.
• Each day in our nation there are an average of over 5,400 attempts by young people grades 7-12.
• Four out of Five teens who attempt suicide have given clear warning signs
• The Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System (YRBS) is a survey, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that includes national, state, and local school-based representative samples of 9th through 12th grade students. The purpose is to monitor priority health risk behaviors that contribute to the leading causes of death, disability, and social problems among youth in the United States.
• The surveys are conducted every two years to determine the prevalence of these health risk behaviors. Behaviors that contribute to unhealthy lifestyles and those that indicate possible depression and/or suicidal ideation are included. Click here for the full report