september

College--the place you're suppose to go for a higher education, the time in your life older adults swear to be the "best time of your entire life", and is also the time where most students live a second life away from home, AKA dorm life. My second semester as a student at San Francisco State University and doing round two of the whole dorm thing hardly sounds like one of the contributing factors to nearly killing me, but it did, and I survived.

Days upon days of sleeping in my private dorm room, secluding myself out of the suite life with my suite mates to choose moping and crying instead of being social, and wondering why my life seemed to get worse and worse took a toll on my psyche and delivered me into the center of a dark depression. But this all started because of a cast-iron skillet. A stupid, cast-iron pan. Oh, and also a skinny bitch with the largest nose anyone on earth could ever imagine on a face!

Neurotic to say the least, Jane (name changed) and I had no previous mode of reference, and were forced to live in the same suite as each other, with our rooms right next to each other and also had to share a bathroom. She was always nit-picky about the most trivial things like furniture arrangement, and which toiletries were considerably important to be allowed to stay out on the countertop of the bathroom. Now Jane here, she had a particular item that she temporarily had kept in her room, and this item happened to be a cast-iron skillet. Finding that silly, the cast-iron skillet was moved into the kitchen, where its status went from "purely for Jane's use" to "public domain". I was unaware of the skillet's previous status, and used it one afternoon to heat up a tortilla. I washed it, dried it (although I admit it could've be dried a little more thoroughly), and set it out on the dish rack next to the sink to air-dry. Jane comes out of her room an hour later, sees the pan, questions how her pan was used. I respond that I used it to heat up a tortilla, and apologized for not doing a good enough dry job. Jane proceeds to overreact upon inspecting the pan, claiming that it's fucked up, it's of no use anymore, and how her grandma gave it to her as a gift. Feeling in the wrong, I apologize profusely, and promise to replace the pan. Normal people would've accepted the apology and reconciliation, but not Jane.

Day two after the pan incident Jane complains about the skillet's damage. Day three more complaints, another offer from me to replace the pan. Day five, more complaints topped with a sassy remark, "So do you want to replace my pan, because this one's fucked." Day eight, calls to her mother about what to do (with reassurance from her mother that the skillet would be fine), and another request to replace the skillet, with extreme overtones of attitude. At this point, I am frustrated beyond belief with Jane and her refusal to accept anything from me that I start crying, which makes Jane feel like a black-hearted person. With the heaviest stench of phoniness even the sickest person with the worst of congestion could smell, Jane came into my room to comfort me and said that she wasn't mad at me. WHAT THE HELL?!

Classes at school were not going as I had expected them to--they were boring, nothing really interested me, I felt like a loner who couldn't seem to make any friends, and previous friends I had made weren't being responsive. I felt so isolated, and going back to my suite where the three other girls already knew each other from being from the same town and going to the same high school together just reinforced how alone I was.

Not to mention my pathetic love life wasn't going well at all either. A boy I was hooking up with here and there would spend time with me, we'd have sex, he'd leave and we'd lose all contact with each other until God knows when. He had recently visited, we had sex, he left, I had felt used again.

A glass of water. Sixteen pills of Tylenol. Down my throat, into my digestive system and then my bloodstream. I climb into bed, sob, and try to sleep. A phone call of sobbing to my dad explaining how stupid I felt about what I had just done.

"Dad?"
"Yes?"
"I just did something very stupid. (sobs)"
"What'd you do?"
"I...I...I just swallowed sixteen pills of Tylenol. Oh God, I'm so stupid."
"Jessica. Jessica, I'm going to make some calls, ok?"
"(sobbing) Ok."
"I love you, Jessica."
"Thanks Dad, bye."

Half an hour later, a loud knock on the door and a booming voice questions, "Is everything ok?" My suite mates respond yes, everything is fine. An EMT asks for Jessica Seid, and my suite mates tell him that I'm in my room, they think. Another EMT in a loud voice starts talking to me, I start to cry, the blinds open, the light is so bright and blinding it makes everything seem so confused. I later find myself strapped to a gurney, in an ambulance, drinking activated charcoal. I refuse an IV.

I am admitted into UCSF's emergency room. I am evaluated, blood is drawn, toxicology tests say that I have overdosed. Had I not called my dad, and had he not called for help, I could've died.