Mental Illness Poem

Attempted Suicide

My poem is about my attempted suicide, which happened in 1996. I took 400 sleeping tablets and remained in a coma for 4 weeks. At the time, I was suffering from mental illness due to post traumatic stress disorder because my memories of being raped at nine years old were beginning to affect my ability to live a normal life. I became stuck in the psychiatric system for many years. My life became unrecognizable.

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Suicide Note

Stephen K. Treharne ©

Published by Family Friend Poems April 2021 with permission of the Author.

A tortured mind for twenty years,
now I write my final words of life.
Every line soaked with
sorrowed ink; I cannot hide how
I feel about this maddening world.

Monsters raped me at the age of nine,
caged me like an animal, left to die.
My inner self all broken and twisted.
The child in me that day was destroyed.
I became the victim of innocence.   

Crushed up pills smoothed into snow,
stirred slowly into sweet black coffee.
The final sip drips down my chin.
Tears splash on words of anger,
leaving stains of memory behind.

I look at the clock for one last time.
Early morning sun shines through the
bedroom window hugging my soul,
drifting towards the quiet light of belonging.
My eyes close, time begins to fade.

I woke up in a meadow full of honeybees.
My fingertips brushed through the morning dew,
as petrichor rose from the ground.
A stream flowed into the lily pond below.
dragonflies rested on the water's edge.

An unexpected touch on my shoulder,
I turned to see my grandfather.
"My dear child," he said, "you cannot stay here,
you have work to do." He kissed me on my head,
and said, "Goodbye, we will meet again one day."

Pure light pulled me back like gravity.
My eyes opened; doctors had saved my life.
Poison pumped from my empty stomach.
Every hole drowning with black charcoal.
The pain unbearable, I wanted to die again.

A voice whispered in my ear,
my lost mother said, "You are a survivor,
live your life, break the chains of your
shackled mind. Let peace enter your soul."
I found home that day, I was free, I was alive.

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