The first email I received from Ocean. April 27, 2005
| To : | stevehein.... |
| Subject : | help |
| Steve, I love your website. I feel so much better about everything after just reading what you write. I feel validated, I think. I'm 16 years old and in the US. I was hoping you would talk to me on the internet, like you apparently do with other teens. A little background... let me just say that I completely lost all trust in my parents the night my dad held me down physically to keep me from running to the neighbors house to call 911 because I was suicidal (he had disconnected the phone in our house somehow before I could even dial two numbers), and I was screaming and crying and my mom stood by and looked at me and did nothing. I was ready to cut my skin off to the flesh where he touched me. You can stop reading now if you really want… but I can't help but vent to you, I'm like the girls that call you crying on the phone only I'm writing on the internet... I feel terrified, tremendously guilty, and "attacked" every night when my parents are home.... That night my therapist wanted to get me to hospital… because I was very suicidal, my counselor suggested that much earlier but my parents refused to let me go to a "mental hospital”. So my therapist was ready to call CPS on my mom if she didn't get me to a hospital that night... because I can be very suicidal... but then in the car my mom convinced me to come home with her, on the condition that my parents leave me alone... but guess what they didn't... I feel terrified when I'm in an inclosed space with my parents... I often pick up something like a pen or a knife or scissors or whatever in case I have to defend myself... I've been doing this for a while... It's an irrational fear I have. Both my parents came into my room. My dad started talking, "I just want an explanation. I know you don't want to kill yourself, because know your not stupid. Now I want to know why you want us to think that you want to kill yourself. Your mother doesn't sleep all night because she worries about you. Your mother is depressed. Personally, I'm not worried at all about you, I'm worried about your mother." They kept saying that if I kill myself there will be 4 corpses there, because my mom and dad and brother would kill themselves... and I would be a murderer, and that I am heartless. And my mom was like, "Haven't you ever considered the possibility that *I* am depressed, too?" and saying that I was responsible for making her suicidal. And my dad was saying, sarcastically, "Look what a *joy* our daughter is to us now that she is grown... we've fed her, clothed her, all her life and look what a *joy* she is to us now." (this was all in Russian though, my parents are Russians). And I kept crying and screaming that I’m sorry, I’m really really sorry, would you please please just leave me alone! I just want to be left alone! And I ended up brandishing a knife at my parents, ready to kill myself or else kill them… and I *tried* to call 911 various times… it’s a complicated issue why my parents never want me to get help, they were against therapy too, like “So you think *some strange woman* will be able to help you better than your own parents?” They want control over me, they want privacy, they don’t want to look like bad parents, they want me to talk to them and not share things with a therapist, they want to pretend there’s nothing wrong, and that they never wronged me… that I am a happy but “bad” and ungrateful child… This was all in the middle of March of this year. My parents ended up driving me to the hospital… god, it was terrifying being in a car with them that day. It was nice and mellow and boring in the psychiatric hospital, and nobody was bothering me. I feel embarrassed that I wrote all this. I feel like you're going to judge me or something. I can’t imagine you judging me, it’s just an automatic fear I have. I need to find a way to not be homeless when I leave my parents house at 18. I have a year, a month, and a week left. I can’t leave now my parents will seriously get the cops to drag me back in handcuffs if I do, and I don’t ever want any conflict with my parents. I think talking to you would help me figure out what to do with my life. I hope this letter was at least interesting to you, if nothing else. Please respond. Sincerely, I don’t want to give my real name. |