This is taking a lot of courage to write dear reader , since this is an event I don’t really like talking about. This day was something that I don’t like remembering and writing a paper on it sure isn’t something I’m looking forward to… but here it goes. This is the story of the day where I finally crumbled. This is the story of what happened March 26, 2013, this is what I like to call The March Mistake.


The story begins when I’m 10 years old going on 11 and my parents got a divorce. At first it didn’t do much to me, I thought it would be no big deal, a lot of my friends of my friends parents got divorced! Then the fights started between them, and my siblings and I got caught in the crossfire. Being the youngest I got the worst of the force of the blow...I got stuck as the middleman and the ‘stress ball’. I was already being bullied at my old dance studio, so it didn’t help that my parents were taking their stress out on me. It seemed that no matter what I did my parents were always disappointed in me. It seemed like I was their most useless child, and they had no need for me. It was like that for almost three years. Three years I felt alone in the place that I should have felt the safest.

Two years ago I got severely depressed and just as bad anxiety issues. This shouldn’t happen to an 11 year old! I should have been going outside with my friends, not staying inside looking at the ceiling trying to find reasons to be happy! And around the time I turned 12 I started getting suicidal thoughts...the crying spells started and I started to question why I was even here and why I was even born. I let anxiety consume my thoughts and my actions, I didn’t know what to do with myself, but I knew I didn’t want to be here. Things were like this until March 26, 2013, the day my life changed for the better and for the worse.


I remember that day, it’s engraved in my memory forever. The air was cold and crisp, the clouds were grey and there was a little bit of wind. I walked alone in silence, people around we were smiling and laughing like they didn’t have a care in the world, but me? I felt all alone. The cold air clung to the tears that were flowing down my face and I realized that this is it, that I just couldn’t do it anymore. I opened the door to my house and ran up to my room, I closed the door and fell to the ground sobbing. Crying was a daily thing for me at the time and well I thought it would help if I just stopped and cried for a couple of minutes, but no, the crying only made it worse. I decided that I was going to do it, that this would be my last day here alive.

I went downstairs to my medicine cabinet and found the strongest thing I could, which was 500g of Acetaminophen. I grabbed two pockets full and got a glass of water to take one, i was about to put the pill in my mouth when I got a text from someone that reminded me that I had a thing called Young Womens. I sighed and took the pill, personally I did not want to spend the final hours of my life with people who made me feel alone, but I took the pill and put my boots on to go walk up to the church.


I left my house and started to walk half a mile to my church, there was still snow on the ground and it crunched under my feet as I walked. I started to think of all the things that I would be missing, all the snow, all the Christmas’s, family birthdays, my brothers birthday, I thought of everything imaginable but it only made me want to do it more. The place I was in was very dark, and I only convinced myself to do it more. It should have made me not want to do anything, but anxiety and depression twisted my thoughts around and against me.

I finally arrived at the church and entered, I was the only one from my youth group in there. I sat in an empty room and sat in silence. I sat there for thirty minutes when a friend of mine named Feferi waltzed into the room and started saying how amazing her day went, and how perfect her life was. Feferi started to dance around the room and started to sing as well, she didn’t notice that I wasn’t joining in until I coughed. She looked at me and tilted her head, as if she was confused why I wasn’t acting like myself.

“ Angie? Are you feeling ok?” She came and sat in front of me.

“ Yeah...yeah I’m just a little tired, that’s all.”

“ Was it something that happened at school today?”

“ No, I’m just tired…”

She shrugged and got up,” If you say so sweetie, I trust that you’re ok.”


I got up to go and ‘get a drink’ and took two more pills. In that hour, I kept getting up to go to the drinking fountain to get water or go to the bathroom to take more pills. In total I took 15 pills, 12 alone would have been enough to kill me, but I took 15. I wasn’t realizing that if I survived this that my organs would be injured terribly, I wasn’t thinking about the consequences that would happen if I lived.

I went into an empty room where a piano was and started playing a stream of notes. It was nothing special, just notes I thought were pretty. I played alone for a few more minutes when a different friend by the name of Vriska came in and sat next to me. She smiled and said a few jokes that made me smile and laugh. Now Vriska was having some family troubles and she was a little depressed at the time too, so I thought that it would be smart to tell her what I did and let her learn from my mistakes.

“ Hey, Vris?” I said in a shaky breath.

“ What is it Angie?” Vriska stopped playing the piano, and rested her hands in her lap while turning her head to give me a concerned look.

“ You have to promise to take it to your grave though…” I say as I fiddled with my hands.

“ I promise.”

I told her what I did, and we both started crying. I left soon and hugged Vriska goodbye, and told her that she was my best friend. I got a car ride home from one of the women in my ward. When I got home I made my bed nice and got my most comfortable pajamas on. I thought that it was going to be my death bed after all, so I wanted to be comfortable. I closed my eyes, and I remember feeling extremely cold. It’s a truly terrible feeling knowing that you’re slipping away. I must’ve been asleep for only fifteen minutes when my mother and grandmother( who was staying with us at the time) entered my room, my mother was holding the bottle of Acetaminophen.

“ Angie,” she said,” Did you take these?”

“ Mother I don’t see why it matters…”

“ Just answer the question Angie.”

“ Mom please just let me sleep..”

“ Angie answer the question, now.”

I sighed and prepared myself for what was coming next, “ Yes mother, I did.”

Tears filled my mothers eyes as she translated to what I had just said to my grandmother who soon joined my mother in crying. They made me get up and go downstairs where my bishop( my religious leader) was waiting with my wards first counselor. It turns out Vriska broke her promise and told them what I had done. My bishop and first counselor called someone they knew that was a paramedic, he said that it was too late for me to get my stomach pumped and that someone I trusted would have to drive me to the E.R. We ended up calling my dad. When he got to my house and I got into his car, I broke down crying and just said “ I’m so sorry daddy, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“ I know sweetie, you tried your best and you tried hard, that’s all that matters.”

We were driving down to the hospital, when we heard a siren and police lights flashed behind us.

“ Oh no,” I said, “ Daddy this is all my fault, I’m sorry everything is…”

“ No sweetie, don’t say that. We’ll just confront this and hopefully I won’t have to wait any longer to get you the help you need.”

The police women came around to the car and my dad rolled down the window. My dad explained why he had been going so fast, and when she asked me if this is true I could only nod my head yes because I was crying so much I couldn’t speak. She let my dad go without a ticket and told him to hurry me to the hospital.

To make a long story short we arrived at the hospital, the doctors had tests done on me, they scanned me, took blood samples, stuck and I.V in my arm, and ever two hours they would put a solution in my blood that would lower the Acetaminophen level in my blood. Unfortunately the level wasn’t going down like they hoped it would. If it didn’t go down enough two things could happen, I could die or my liver would be permanently damaged an unknown amount. Everyone was hoping that it would be my liver, that I would live to see another sunrise. At that point even I was hoping I would live.

I must have been there for three hours when a male nurse came in. There was nothing special about him, he just had a clipboard. I was silently glad that it was just a nurse, I had talked to everyone from other patients that left before me, to a social worker that seemed to have endless questions. The nurse smiled a kind smile and sat on the chair that was by my bed.

“ Hi sweetie.” He said.

“ Hi…” I said in return.

“ Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” He picked up his pen and looked from me to his clipboard, then back to me.
“ No, not at all.”

“ What’s your name?”

“ Angie…”

He wrote something down, then looked back at me. “ Angie, do you think 13 years is enough?”

I had to think about that for a minute or two in silence, before I found myself blinking away tears, “ No,” I finally said, “ No it’s not…”

He wrote something down again and looked at me with the most serious expression anyone had ever given me, “ Angie do you really want to die?”

“ No, No I don’t…”

He got a determined look in his eyes, “ Then we’ll do our best to make sure that you don’t. I’ll personally make sure that you live, so don’t worry. You’re not done yet sweetie.” He left the room without letting me say thank you.

I started to fall asleep since they had just put more solution in my blood, when I heard my doctor come in and walk up to my dad who was sitting in the bed right next to mine.

“ Mr. Dilman” he said, “ We don’t know how, but the Acetaminophen level in her blood has gone dramatically down.”

“ Does this mean-”

“ She’s going to be ok. Just keep her with you for a week, don’t let her out of your sight, she’s going to have to miss a week of school. Make sure that while she’s with you she feels loved, if you do those things she’ll be fine.”

“ Oh thank you, thank you so much!” I heard clothing on clothing and can only assume that my dad gave the doctor a hug.

It’s been seven months since my life was almost cut short, because of that life changing experience I’ve seen that life is so wonderful! That there can be light in any situation, even if it seems so dark. I’ve made a full recovery, even though my liver was damaged only a little bit. Since that day I’m back to my old happy self, even though I do relapse ever so often. At the end of the day I’ll never EVER do that again, and I hope no one has to go through what I did, but that experience has made me stronger. It’s an emotionally tiring thing for me to talk about, but my story is one worth sharing. So I’m thanking you for reading my story, please promise me you’ll be strong and never stop trying to find hope. Thanks for reading!