Survivor # 1: Kayla's Story

" From the earliest I can remember my father was physically abusive. My first childhood memory is of him banging my head against the frame of my bedpost while I begged him to stop. As I grew older he grew more violent, and when he wasn't violent he was distant and it affected me very much. I started cutting myself at the age of 13, thinking that it would get someone to notice, to see how much pain i was in. It was a cry for help that turned into a full blown disease. I cut myself for 6 years. I felt like I had no one who understood me or what I was going through and I just got sicker and sicker. I spent my entire adolescence in and out of psychiatric hospitals; eventually ending up in SAFE alternatives (the only self injury rehabilitation center in the country) more than 5 times trying to get ahold of this monster that controlled my life. High school was miserable and unbearable. Eventually my whole school found out and I was tortured day in and day out. People would come up to me in the hallways and pretend to hang themselves, draw cuts on their arms with markers to taunt me, and fill my locker with hate notes telling me to kill myself and get it over with already. All of these things made it worse for me; and eventually in the winter of 2008 I tried to kill myself. I swallowed 180 trazadone and 50 ativan and waited to die. I don't remember anything afterwards, but i was told when I woke out of a coma 7 days later that my heart had stopped 3 times. I had problems with my short term memory and was kept in intensive care for a week and a half afterwards. I was lucky to be alive; the doctors told me that no one with that much medication in their system at any point in time should be alive; but god gave me a second chance. It woke me up out of my haze and i realized while laying in that hospital bed, watching my family and their grief; that I could never do that to them again. My parents transferred my school and I got the chance to start over. I flourished; I made friends, I started ballet and dance again; I captianed the cheerleading team, joined clubs and volunteered. I realized God gave me this gift of a second chance of life for a reason; and that reason is to help others. "

Kayla is currently a second year social work major at the University of Saint Francis on a $80,000 dollar academic scholarship with a 3.78 gpa. She states, "[I] plan to use my experience with self injury to give back the gift of life to others who were struggling as i was."

Kayla is not a victim. She is a survivor.