Just Trying to Escape the Pain

 My cardiologist recommended that I start taking one baby aspirin every day because of a sluggish artery and angina. I didn’t give it much thought until I took it out of the package and held the plastic bottle in my hand. My mind immediately zipped back to a time when I was 4 or 5 years old.

I remember kneeling on the top of the sink when I dropped the glass bottle in the sink. I don’t remember climbing up there, but I remember the yummy orange taste of the baby aspirin as I chewed a handful of it. My mom would give me an aspirin when I skinned my knee, and so, I associated it with pain, even though they tasted so good. 

That day, I was feeling a pain that I couldn’t explain to my mother because it partly included her. I had been up late, crying in bed as my parents yelled at each other in the living room, 10 feet from my bedroom door. The next day, my head hurt, but my heart hurt, too. I didn’t want my mother to know that I had heard them. Honestly, I was afraid of her. I was afraid that she would yell at me, like she had with my dad, and blame me for listening. Then, I remembered the orange-flavored baby aspirin.

When the glass bottle fell into the sink, it didn’t break, but it did make a lot of noise. I immediately heard my mother outside of the bathroom door, “Kathy? Kathy, what are you doing?”

“Nothing,” was not the right answer.

“Kathy, open this door now!” she yelled from the other side of the locked door. 

Shakily, I scrambled down from the counter and opened the door without thinking to shut the cabinet door or grab the empty bottle from the sink.

She immediately put two and two together and we were on the way to the hospital to have my stomach pumped.

I wouldn’t call it a suicide attempt, but I was trying to escape the pain, the emotional pain as much as the physical pain of a dysfunctional household. It would be the first of many attempts to escape the pain.