In Praise of My Failed Suicide Attempt

I was fifteen when I tried to take my own life.

It was the Ides of March, the day sixty co-conspirators famously assassinated Julius Caesar. Among them was Marcus Brutus, Caesar’s trusted friend and contemporary. You don’t forget these things.

I was a full-blown teenage girl back then. I cared a lot about how, when my mother and I would buy clothes, the Abercrombies and…