The Night God Saved My Life

One morning I woke up and decided it was over. Today was the day I was going to die. That day I felt so powerful and smug. I looked around at the people in my life and smiled. I had a secret they didn’t know. I smiled more at the thought of my parents, who’s years of abuse and neglect had led me to this decision, having to bury me.

I busied myself that day with preparations for my death. I paid all outstanding bills and threw my journals, years of painful writing, into a dumpster. I smoked a pack of cigarettes as I sat in my car looking out at the ocean. It was 3 a.m. at a beach in south Florida. My plan was ingenious, perfected over the day to be decidedly lethal. I would get drunk to the point of almost passing out, swallow an entire bottle of sedatives, and drown myself. My body would probably wash up on the rocks.

I downed my entire bottle of liquor and dumped the bottle of pills on to the car seat next to me. Before beginning to swallow them though, I got distracted by an odd thing for a person in the midst of dying to feel. This odd thing led me to the path of being alive to share this story. I had to go to the bathroom.

As I finished and started walking out of the bathroom at that beach in south Florida, words I never imagined I’d utter poured out of my mouth. God, if you want me to live, you’d better give me a sign.

I started walking back to my car to finally end it, when the unimaginable happened. At that lonely beach at 3 a.m., I heard a man’s voice call my name. I looked around, confused, and heard it again. “What are you doing here?” this man said, “I haven’t seen you in several months.” I barely knew him, a man I had had a short conversation with at a Denny’s late at night. “I still want to finish our conversation,” he said, “but I can’t talk tonight.” He handed me a piece of paper with his number on it and said “call me tomorrow.” I was left in shock in my drunken state, not knowing what to do. I knew in that moment that I had received a sign.

I wish I could tell you that the three and a half years following that night have been easy, or that each day was better than last. Some nights I went to bed promising myself I would live one more day because the rest of my life was more than I could bear. Some mornings I regretted that promise, but kept it anyway. In the past month, I finally reached a place in my life where I understand why I kept fighting so hard, and why God would give me such a powerful sign. As I reach a place of happiness and inner peace, I thank God everyday for deciding I was worth saving.