13 Years Ago...

TRIGGER WARNING: Talk of a suicide attempt.

It's the Friday now of Labor Day weekend. Normally I wouldn't think anything of it, but then it occurred to me exactly what this day is. Because on the Friday of Labor Day weekend in 2001, I had my second suicide attempt which led to my very first week long hospitalization in a psych ward.

So it's been 13 years since that day.

I can still remember almost everything from that day. I remember the fight I had gotten into with my best friend. I remember them taking my school photo and how I had been crying just minutes before. I remember being on the phone with the friend I had fought with as I said goodbye and downed the pills. I remember writing my goodbye post.

I also remember when my mom got the phone call from the father after Katie called him in a panic to tell him what I had done. I remember Daddy actually physically throwing me into the back seat of the truck (because I refused to get in). I remember lying on the examination table in the ER starting to writhe in pain as the toxins started to take their effect.

I remember how hopeless I felt, how much I cried as they took me up to the psych ward. I was in hell, and I had been forced to live.

And now I just feel disconnected from it all. I don't even recognize that Emelia. It's so far from the person I am now. But I can feel compassion and sadness for her.

Don't give up, Emelia. It will get better, and you will find the strength to keep going. I know it's hard now, but years from now, you'll be writing a book series, married and trying for children, and you'll be happy. You're loved now, and you'll find even more love later.

I promise.

The Healing Body Project

This last Sunday (August 10) I took part in the first photoshoot for the Kent, Ohio based The Healing Body Project. 

Here is my story, along with photos.

I have gone back and forth with how I have viewed my body and myself throughout my life. When I was in grade school, I didn’t care much about it. I was a Mormon girl. I wasn’t supposed to be showing it. It wasn’t something to take pride in.

In middle school everything changed. I remember the turning point. It was Halloween, 7th grade, Los Altos Middle School in Camarillo, CA. I wanted to go as a teenaged angel. I had bought a white skirt that went down to a little above my knees, slightly tight, wings, and a square neck tight white shirt. I loved it. I thought I looked awesome.

Then I got to school. I was bombarded by comment after comment, how stupid I looked, that I was too fat for that outfit, and that I wasn’t pretty enough to make it work. I had been so excited to enter the costume contest, and by the end of the day I had decided I didn’t even want to watch them award the winners, much less take part.

Only one person said anything nice that day. One of my good friends, Sebastian, came up to me as I sat alone at a desk while people went off to the contest, and said, “Emelia, I just wanted you to know that I think you look really pretty as an angel.”

Just him.

After that, I started wearing baggy clothes. I shopped in the boys’ section at stores. I was just one of the guys. And it seemed to make a lot of sense to me, given the sexual abuse I experienced out in Utah when I was growing up. If nobody could see what my body looked like anymore, then I wouldn’t be abused again, right?

It took until high school to start buying from the girls’ section again, and even then I made sure it covered me, and wore hoodies all the time.

Anyway by then I had a new problem. I had started cutting in the end of middle school. Mostly on my legs, but sometimes other places, all over my body. Now I spent time trying to make sure I wore the right clothes to hide the marks. During play rehearsal, my friend’s brother asked me what was on my legs when I was wearing shorts. I never wore shorts again after that, not unless they came down to my knees.

By the end of high school, as long as I had pants on and could cover my scars, I felt good about my weight. I hated my face up until we had the jaw surgery and the nasal surgery (jaw because of my severe overbite that would eventually cause arthritis, and the nasal so I could breathe again). But once those were done, I felt good. I felt pretty. Not beautiful, but pretty.

I kept those ideas through college, despite the fact that I was going through sexual abuse by boyfriends and that I was sexually assaulted on campus. I didn’t have as big of a problem with my body. I just didn’t want people touching it anymore.

Not long after getting together with my husband, I had been put on Abilify to help with my depression. I was still cutting, still thinking of suicide, and still very sick. This actually did help a lot. It gave me much more energy to be active and do things, but the side affect was that I started to gain weight. I went from 130lbs up to 180lbs within months. I hated it! I even went off the Abilify to stop the weight gain.

I still remember how it felt like the air had been sucked out of me when I was told that my now mother-in-law was going around telling people how I had ballooned up. My husband was furious, and I just felt ugly.

I tried so hard to lose all the weight for my wedding, but it never happened. Medication weight gain is some of the hardest to lose, and even to this day, I haven’t lost it.

I used to think my husband would leave me eventually for a thinner, prettier, and healthier woman. Why would he want this? I wasn’t attractive. He had to be disgusted by me.

Then last summer, I tried to kill myself again. 50 Tylenol PM, 3 days in the ICU, and 3 days in the psych ward. After that, everything went downhill. My relationship with the person I had considered my best friend went to hell, and the treatment I was getting in my own home was horrible (by the same friend, not by my husband).

I cut as deeply as I could without needing stitches.

After that, I told my husband we couldn’t have sex for a while because there was no way to hide it. I didn’t want to be seen. I didn’t want him looking at me. I was a broken, horrible, disgusting creature. He would surely leave me soon.

Now here we are, a year after that suicide attempt, and 8 months from the hell I had been living in. I have really, really worked hard at the trauma therapy. I never thought these maladaptive beliefs that I have held for so long could be broken down.

But today, I look at these photos and instead of seeing something I hate and despise, I see my joy, my laughter, my confidence, and my compassion. I see a woman that has gone through hell and back just to survive.

But I did survive. Here I am, breathing, speaking, laughing, and just being me. I’m more me than I ever have been my entire life. This is the real Emelia, the real Emi Cordill that people hear about. This is who I was always meant to be. I almost died multiple times getting here, but damn it, I’m here.

And I like myself.